Letter: Clickers, Crickets & Cliques in 01267

Letter to the EditorPrint Story | Email Story

To the Editor:

It's no secret that I feel strongly that Williamstown's town meeting is broken and should be largely replaced by the Australian ballot at the town election. I further suggest any expenditure greater than $50,000 be required to be approved by voters at the town election.

The town election permits all the electorate to have a 12 or 13-hour window to be able go to the polling place and vote, as opposed to voting on any item at a largely unpredictable time during a much shorter town meeting.

So, what is the Williamstown Board of Selectmen planning on doing? Spending an unpublicized amount of hard-earned taxpayer money on renting and buying clickers so a smaller number of attendees can vote "in privacy" at town meeting.

That's the purpose of the town election. The clickers will transmogrify the town meeting into an illegal town election. We are devolving rather than progressing.

Ken Swiatek
Williamstown, Mass. 

Swiatek is a former selectman.

 

 

 

If you would like to contribute information on this article, contact us at info@iberkshires.com.

Busy Night for Williamstown Police Includes Life-Saving Moment

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Police Department on Wednesday evening had its hands full with several incidents, including one that allowed officers to help save a life.
 
Between 5 and 9 p.m., WPD officers responded to a three-car motor vehicle accident, calls involving domestic violence and one emergency on Williams College campus where the local police were the first on the scene, Chief Michael Ziemba said on Thursday.
 
The evening included deployment of the department's K9 Unit for tracking and one arrest.
 
"While the number and types of calls are fairly typical, or what some would call 'routine' for our police department, being able to say that we were part of a small team of people who helped to bring back a young life is not something that happens to us every day."
 
The life-threatening incident occurred during a Williams College athletic event, Ziemba said. An athlete from the visiting team had trouble breathing and chest pains.
 
WPD officers administered oxygen and began life-saving CPR until an EMS personnel arrived, he said.
 
An automatic external defibrillator was used three times on the student.
 
View Full Story

More Williamstown Stories