Letter: Williamstown Planning Board Proposals

Letter to the Editor02:30PM / Monday, June 13, 2022Print Story | Email Story

To the Editor:

An elected planning board member tells us that voting on the zoning proposals at town meeting will let the Planning Board know how we "feel." Any zoning changes passed at town meeting will be "forever," and virtually irreversible. Cite the research that indicates what effect these changes will have.

Perhaps the Planning Board should have spent more time reaching out to all the town's citizenry long before any town meeting. These articles were approved by the Planning Board long before this unnecessarily delayed town meeting will be held. Better yet, place the items for a vote at the town election, even if as non-binding questions if legally necessary. Why are major decisions being made by a small number of citizens at the broken town meeting?

How do all and any articles affect property evaluations and property taxes, but only for some landowners if some but not articles are passed?

Why is a town master plan being conducted if it is totally meaningless?

Perhaps all items should be voted down, as a group, rather than tabled so the Planning Board can start from scratch and ready their proposals for the 2024 town meeting. All town households should be mailed paper copies of the new proposals well in advance of the 2024 town meeting.

Finally, who serves to benefit the most from passing any or all of these failed proposals???

Ken Swiatek
Williamstown, Mass.

Tags: zoning,

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Williamstown Housing Trust Gets Update on Summer Street Project

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
05:38PM / Thursday, August 27, 2026

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. – Northern Berkshire Habitat for Humanity continues to make progress on a planned four-home subdivision off Summer Street despite rising costs.

NBHFH project manager Keith Davis was back before the board of the town's Affordable Housing Trust in August to give an update on the project being developed on a parcel granted to the non-profit by the trustees.

"The majority of the site work is now done," Davis said. "The road base is completely in. We won't blacktop the road until the first foundation is done. It doesn't make any sense to drive a loaded cement truck over fresh blacktop.

"The detention basin is in. All the [stormwater] structures are in. I talked to [DPW Director] Craig Clough about coming in and looking at it, so he can verify all the structures are in. Because a lot of them get buried. That's the next step, to do that and sod it."

The construction package to build the road and stormwater infrastructure cost NBHFH $330,000. The Affordable Housing Trust kicked in $120,000 toward that, and the trustees have committed another $100,000 toward the construction cost of the first home to be built in what the non-profit has named the Meadowlands Subdivision.

Davis told the board at its Aug. 19 meeting that a couple of issues have popped up that have slowed the project and added cost.

One was the removal of an additional five trees on the 1.75-acre parcel.

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