Letter: Support for Peter Beck for Planning Board

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To the Editor:

I write to enthusiastically support Peter Beck for a five-year term on the Williamstown Planning Board. Peter was a star student at Yale Law School. I particularly enjoyed having him in an Advanced Property law seminar where, in an unusual reversal, I as the professor learned a tremendous amount from Peter due to his experience in local government and planning.

To all of us at Yale Law School, Peter was one of those students who seemed as wise and mature as one of our fellow colleagues. Peter wrote a brilliant, and brilliantly funny, paper on Property Law for my class, which won a coveted student award. The paper showed how one of the basic property law concepts taught in classrooms across the country — that property law is a "bundle of rights" — is absolutely ill-suited as a metaphor and in fact has a checkered past.

Peter will bring good judgment, good humor, generosity, intelligence, and expertise to Williamstown’s Planning Board and I think the community will be extremely happy with his contributions to your wonderful town, which I have visited on several occasions.

Claire Priest
New Haven, Conn.
Simeon E. Baldwin Professor,
Yale Law School

 

 

 

 


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Mount Greylock School Committee Discusses Collaboration Project with North County Districts

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — News that the group looking at ways to increase cooperation among secondary schools in North County reached a milestone sparked yet another discussion about that group's objectives among members of the Mount Greylock Regional School Committee.
 
At Thursday's meeting, Carolyn Greene reported that the Northern Berkshire Secondary Sustainability task force, where she represents the Lanesborough-Williamstown district, had completed a request for proposals in its search for a consulting firm to help with the process that the task force will turn over to a steering committee comprised of four representatives from four districts: North Berkshire School Union, North Adams Public Schools, Hoosac Valley Regional School District and Mount Greylock Regional School District.
 
Greene said the consultant will be asked to, "work on things like data collection and community outreach in all of the districts that are participating, coming up with maybe some options on how to share resources."
 
"That wraps up the work of this particular working group," she added. "It was clear that everyone [on the group] had the same goals in mind, which is how do we do education even better for our students, given the limitations that we all face.
 
"It was a good process."
 
One of Greene's colleagues on the Mount Greylock School Committee used her report as a chance to challenge that process.
 
"I strongly support collaboration, I think it's a terrific idea," Steven Miller said. "But I will admit I get terrified when I see words like 'regionalization' in documents like this. I would feel much better if that was not one of the items we were discussing at this stage — that we were talking more about shared resources.
 
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