Letter: Williamstown Youth Center

To the Editor:

The Williamstown Youth Center has received money from the town of Williamstown every year since 2014. In 2014, they requested $70,000, and incrementally, their requests have increased to $77,000.

That financial support has become nearly automatic through the years. Are the town's taxes subsidizing those families who genuinely need financial assistance, or are the taxes sponsoring every family at the WYC? The WYC should become self-sustaining; otherwise, it will continually request funds from the taxpayers and other local organizations in perpetuity.

The Williamstown Community Chest provides an additional $55,000 a year to the WYC. In the future, that share of money could go to other needy organizations. The youth center needs to raise its fees and go back to having fundraisers to help offset its expenses. The national average for after-school care is $261 a week per child. According to the WYC website, it charges $900 for one child from Aug. 31 until the last day of school in June.

The youth center must do everything possible to alleviate this tax burden on town residents. Within weeks, the Williamstown Finance Committee will approve the request for another year of funding for the youth center that will become an article on the warrant for town meeting this year. If you are concerned about this ongoing issue, please contact the Williamstown Finance Committee at finance-committee@williamstownma.gov.

Pat Meyers
Williamstown, Mass. 

Mohican People Honored with Display in South Williamstown

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
08:23AM / Sunday, June 21, 2026

The idea for the installation was inspired by a sculpture installation at Field Farm.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — A granite installation in Bloedel Park next to the town's new traffic rotary honors the area's first residents and caps an effort that began five years ago.

 

The large granite wall across from the Store at Five Corners is adorned with emblems inspired by the symbols that decorate baskets of the Mohican people. It provides a testament to the presence of the ancestors of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians, who, thousands of years ago, lived in the land now known as Berkshire County.

 

The black and red images of a leaf and bear claw are accompanied by an interpretive panel telling part of the story of the native people who fought with the Americans in their Revolutionary War and later were forcibly removed from the area in the late 18th century. 

 

Today, the Mohican people persist with nearly 1,600 enrolled members on or near a reservation in Wisconsin.

 

But the Stockbridge-Munsee Community has never lost its connection to its ancestral home, and, in the last decade, more of the area's contemporary residents have worked to recognize that link.

 

Bette Craig thought the then-planned roundabout would offer an opportunity to highlight that historic link.

 

"It all started in 2021 when MassDOT was having a Zoom meeting to tell the local community about it and get feedback and so forth," Craig said on Thursday. "At the time, I was the president of the South Williamstown Community Association. I was saying things about [the proposed project], and one of the community people listening was Polly Macpherson, who I knew from the League of Women Voters.