Letter: Williamstown's Proposed Zoning Changes Will Help Make Town More Diverse

Letter to the Editor02:00PM / Monday, May 30, 2022Print Story | Email Story

To the Editor:

Dear Williamstown residents: Williamstown is in a housing crisis. People are getting pushed out of town as they see their rents increase by $500 and even $1,000 a month. Few are able to purchase homes without a cash offer above asking price. Williamstown is becoming even more elite, functioning like an exclusive gated community.

In order to have a diverse community where those who work here can live here, we need to pass Warrant Articles 39, 40 and 41. All Williamstown residents need to be able to create duplexes and multi-unit housing (of three to four units) by right, not by special permit. Of course, the properties and buildings would still have to abide by existing town zoning and state regulations for details such as parking and unit sizes. So these warrant articles would simply eliminate the special permitting process and associated costs. Passing warrant Articles 39, 40 and 41 will enable our town to return to a more inclusive and diverse community.

Additionally, passing these articles would support farming and open space in our beautiful town. Here’s why:

Agricultural wage is less than the state's minimum wage. Some farms, if they can, supplement that wage with the value of on-farm housing. If we allow Williamstown farms the option of providing this form of benefit we will be directly supporting our farms. Farmers, like all employers, are struggling to get skilled help. If our farmers were able to more easily provide housing to employees and family members, they will have a better chance of remaining viable.

Please come out to vote on June 14, 2022, at 7 p.m. at Mount Greylock High School. This is the opportunity to make your vote count.

Sincerely,

Carin DeMayo-Wall
Williamstown, Mass.

Tags: town meeting 2022,

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Mount Greylock School Committee OKs Updated Policy on Seclusion, Restraint

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
05:57AM / Tuesday, August 25, 2026

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Mount Greylock School Committee recently approved an updated policy on time-outs, seclusion and the physical restraint of students.

The policy is based on updated state regulations that came down last winter. Superintendent Joseph Bergeron told the panel at its August meeting that his office waited on recommendations from the Massachusetts Association of School Committees that were released in May and ran the proposed changes past the district's legal counsel.

That timing — and an expectation from the commonwealth that districts have the updated policy in place for the start of the 2026-27 academic year — led to an expedited process for the School Committee, which did not do a first read with a vote at a subsequent meeting as is its practice.

"Policy JKAA speaks to the ways the school district and our procedures shall abide by the updated state regulations," Bergeron said. "We're not going to have a lot of leeway.

"Nothing about the way we interact with our students on a day-to-day basis is being shifted by this."

For example, the commonwealth does not allow schools to use "seclusion," or, "the involuntary confinement of a student alone in a room or area, with or without adult supervision," except some extreme cases, like when, "when student behavior poses an imminent threat of assault, or imminent serious physical harm to self or others, but only if safeguards are accounted for," the updated policy reads.

"From the state's perspective and my perspective, the idea of locking a child in a room without adult supervision is something we've never done," Bergeron said. "And it's something the state wants to make explicitly that nobody ever does."

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