BRPC Berkshire Benchmarks Survey

04:00PM / Monday, January 10, 2022Print Story | Email Story

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Berkshire Regional Planning Commission (BRPC) announced the 2022 Berkshire Benchmarks Survey.

BRPC, working with the Berkshire Leadership Impact Council and numerous organizations around the county, developed the survey to better understand the issues affecting county residents.

Postcards are being mailed to all county residents with the survey link. Survey participants may also go directly to www.surveymonkey.com/r/Berkshire22 or to www.surveymonkey.com/r/Berkshire22_Spanish for a Spanish language version.

The survey asks a range of questions, such as "How much are you able to save for retirement?", "How welcome do you feel in outdoor spaces, like parks, conservation areas, and reserves?" and "How well do you feel your local town or city government represents your beliefs and values?"

The goals of Berkshire Benchmarks are to work with the community to understand priorities, help inform the region on how BRPC are doing, and assess whether BRPC are seeing improvement. Berkshire Benchmarks achieves these goals by improving the region's access to data and quality analysis. BRPC can all make better informed decisions and more accurately track performance over time through better data.

The survey results and recently revised "Regional Indicators" will provide vital information on how the region is performing in a diverse set of sectors. These sectors include economy, education, environment, government, health, housing, social environment, and transportation.

The survey results will be shared in April at a bi-annual convening which will also include the unveiling of a new Berkshire Benchmarks website and the release of a State of the County report.

Tags: BRPC, survey,

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Wahconah Park Skating Rink Under Construction

By Brittany PolitoiBerkshires Staff
01:44PM / Sunday, February 01, 2026

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The outdoor ice skating rink in front of Wahconah Park is taking shape, and the city plans to open it early next week.

If you pass by the historic park this weekend, you will notice a pop-up ice skating rink under construction on the property between Hudpucker's Pub and Grill and Thrive Diner. City officials hope for a soft launch early next week and have secured state funds for programmatic expenses and skate rentals.

Parks, Open Space, and Natural Resources Manager James McGrath on Friday said it will take several days to build the ice. The community will be notified through a social media post and a press release.

Community members are asked to stay off the ice until given the OK from the city.

Earlier this week, the City Council accepted $10,000 from the Massachusetts Office of Outdoor Recreation for programming opportunities at the 50-by-100-foot refrigerated rink. This will be used for staffing, youth assistants, adaptive skate aids, equipment rentals, bus vouchers, and other associated costs for public events.

McGrath pointed out that Pittsfield owns the system and will know how to assemble, operate, and then disassemble it for the next year.

"We're sort of at an interesting time here because it's kind of late in the winter, admittedly, but we're going to get some ice time out of the rink, and then we're going to pack it up, put it away, and we're going to bring it back out in subsequent years," he said.

"And we own this system, so looking at the horizon, we'll be able to have this portable system in place at that site on Wahconah Street for many, many years to come, and certainly, the whole idea is that this rink is intimately coordinated with the site planning for the new Wahconah Park and all the civil work that we're doing down there."

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