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Volunteers pass out "I voted" stickers to voters on Tuesday morning at Williamstown Elementary School.

Mount Greylock Voters Re-Elect Greene, Miller to School Committee

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Voters in the Mount Greylock Regional School District Tuesday returned Carrie Greene and Steven Miller to the School Committee in the only contested local election on the ballot.
 
Lanesborough's and Williamstown's electorate ensured that the School Committee will have the same composition for at least another two years by choosing the two incumbents over challenger Christine Enderle in a three-way race for two seats on the seven-person committee.
 
Greene was the top vote-getter with 2,661 votes in the two-town district. Miller was second with 1,736. Enderle was third with 1,465.
 
All three Lanesborough residents on the School Committee stood for re-election on Tuesday in uncontested races. Christine Conry, Curtis Elfenbein and Ursula Maloy each were returned to the committee.
 
Greene, Miller and Enderle were running for two of the four seats designated for residents of Williamstown.
 
Miller was at Williamstown Elementary School on Tuesday evening to await the results and said that he looks forward to continuing his work to bring transparency to the School Committee's activities and increase engagement with members of the public.
 
"One of the things we've done is we now have agenda requests [for committee members] at the end of every meeting, so that makes it a lot easier to have things discussed," Miller said. "One of the things I want to keep working on is to have the meeting packets made available more in advance so that people are able to see what's going to be discussed at the meetings and decide whether they want to go or not."
 
Miller also committed to pushing for a continued role for the School Committee's subcommittees in providing a conduit for public input.
 
"One of the things I've been very happy about is in some of our subcommittees, we've been able to have a lot of interactions with people from the community," Miller said. "For example, when John Skavlem was chair of the fields committee, and I was chair of the education subcommittee, we had people speaking whenever appropriate.
 
"That's easier to do at the subcommittee level than the full committee level."
 
Williamstown saw 2,823 voters turn out for the mid-term election, which is more than the 2,500 voters who might be expected for the cycle, according to Town Clerk Nicole Beverly.
 
"It was a good day," she said as the balloting wound down on Tuesday. "A busy day, but a good day."
 
Fifty-six percent of the town's 5,009 registered voters voted either in person on Tuesday, in person at town hall during the early voting period or by mail.
 
Beverly said there were 178 in-person voters during the early voting period. She said she mailed out 1,267 mail-in ballots and had received, as of midday Monday, 1,185, a 94 percent return rate.

Tags: election 2022,   

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Cross-Commonwealth Walk Highlights Fight to Change State Flag

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — A small but growing group of activists from around New England on Friday began a planned three-week trek across the commonwealth to deliver a message to Gov. Maura Healey.
 
David Detmold, 69, of Montague, is the leader of an effort to raise awareness about the Massachusetts Indigenous legislative agenda.
 
On Friday afternoon, he took a break after hiking from the New York State line to talk about that agenda in the shadow of the Williamstown Meetinghouse, home of the First Congregational Church.
 
Detmold said the group's objectives boil down to three main points: listen to Native nations, defend sacred homelands, honor all people.
 
On the first goal, a major point of emphasis is a decades-long campaign to change the Massachusetts state flag.
 
As the group makes its way east toward the State House in Boston, it is handing out literature explaining some of its causes, including one that breaks down the objectionable elements of the commonwealth's seal, which adorns the flag.
 
One element that jumps out: the image of what appears to be a colonialist wielding a sword above the image of a Native American.
 
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