North County Officials Discuss Emergency Planning Needs

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Nearly 50 elected and appointed senior officials from across North County convened at Norad Mill on Friday for an emergency management presentation hosted by the Northern Berkshire Regional Emergency Planning Committee.

Committee Chair Amalio Jusino conducted the class and led the group through discussions on emergency planning. NB-REPC has previously received a national award from FEMA for community preparedness. 

Jusino said it is crucial for the communities of North County to work together and follow a regional model of emergency management, regardless of individual job titles. 

"Yes, we're all important, but I recognize that I need you at the table. I need you as part of the discussion," Jusino said. "Whether it's private or public industry, whether it's emergency services, whether it's senior officials." 

Jay Green, the town administrator for Adams and the NB-REPC treasurer, said the course was an opportunity for officials in North County to work as a group. 

"We wanted to get everybody together, and we wanted to go through why Northern Berkshire is just slightly unique and how we can work better together," he said. 

Jusino highlighted the COVID-19 pandemic as an example of emergency planning. The class discussed the county's handling of several pandemic-related issues, including the illness itself, the distribution of personal protective equipment, regional communication and attitudes. 

Jusino said the NB-REPC created an after-action report on the pandemic to help guide future decision-making. 

"This document is pages and pages and pages long. We worked on it all the time," he said. "We feel like we needed to do this after-action report so we have something I can read that we can learn from." 

Workforce issues, according to Jusino, have been a significant side effect of the pandemic, especially in the medical field. He mentioned Northern Berkshire EMS, which had 180 employees before the pandemic, now has only 80 and was as low as 65 at one point. 

"We're seeing those changes, but we have people with COVID, we've got people that have long-term COVID, we've got people who are out of a job, we've got people who quit," he said. "We've got people that walked away on the spot because they just couldn't mentally handle it or physically do it anymore." 

When the pandemic began, NB-REPC opened a temporary emergency operations center. Jusino said having a permanent emergency operations center would benefit the county in the future. 

"I'm going to show you what an EOC looks like in my dream world, and know that that's not beyond what we could have right here in Berkshire County. Because we have these eight communities that trust each other and work with each other," he said.

MCLA in Talks With Anonymous Donor for Art Museum, Art Lab

By Tammy DanielsiBerkshires Staff
05:19AM / Monday, April 29, 2024

Andre Lynch, the new vice provost for institutional equity and belonging, introduces himself to the trustees, some of whom were participating remotely.

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts may be in line for up to a $10 million donation that will include a campus art museum. 

 

President Jamie Birge told the board of trustees on Thursday that  the college has been in discussions for the last couple years with a donor who wishes at this point to remain anonymous.

 

"It's a donor that has a history of working with public liberal arts institutions to advance the arts that those institutions," he said.  "This donor would like to talk with us or has been talking with us about creating art museum and an art lab on campus."

 

The Fine and Performing Arts Department will have input, the president continued. "We want to make sure that it's a facility that supports that teaching and learning dynamic as well as responding to what's the interest of donor."

 

The college integrated into the local arts community back in 2005 with the opening of Gallery 51 on Main Street that later expanded with an art lab next door. The gallery under the Berkshire Cultural Resource Center had been the catalyst for the former Downstreet Art initiative; its participation has fallen off dramatically with changes in leadership and the pandemic. 

 

This new initiative, should it come to pass, would create a facility on MCLA Foundation property adjacent to the campus. The donor and the foundation have already split the cost of a study. 

 

"We conducted that study to look at what approximately a 6,500-square-foot facility would look like," said Birge. "How we would staff the gallery and lab, how can we use this lab space for fine and performing arts."