Local Leaders Elected as MMA Group Officers

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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Several Berkshire County elected officials and administrators have been named to leadership roles in the member groups of the Massachusetts Municipal Association, which held its annual meeting and trade show the weekend of Jan. 20.  
 
Andrew Hogeland, a Williamstown Select Board member, is president of the Select Board Association this term and Adams Selectwoman Christine Hoyt is chair of the District 1, covering the Berkshires. Hogeland was first vice president of the association last year and has served on the MMA's Executive Committee and Local Government Advisory Committee. Hoyt has been a member of the MMA Board of Directors. 
 
Mayor Linda Tyer, president of the Mayors Association last year, will continue to represent District 1 on the MMA Board of Directors as well as North Adams City Councilor Lisa Blackmer, elected as first vice president of the Municipal Councilors Association.  
 
Pittsfield's Personnel Director Michael Taylor was elected a director of the Massachusetts Municipal Human Resources Association.
 
The MMA is a private, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization with the mission of improving the effectiveness of local government in the commonwealth through public policy advocacy, membership education, intergovernmental relations, services to cities and towns, increasing public awareness, and fostering unity. 

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Town, Residents Concerned About Forest Service Plan to Use Williamstown Road

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — A timber manager with the U.S. Forest Service told the Select Board on Monday that his office was willing to work with the town to address concerns raised by residents over a plan to haul timber out of the Green Mountain National Forest across the state line in Vermont.
 
An overflow crowd of residents from both Williamstown and Pownal, Vt., attended Monday's meeting at Town Hall, where Stacy Stratton and other officials from the Forest Service laid out plans to cut and remove 1 million board feet of wood — about 2,000 cords — from the woodland just north of town.
 
The sticking point is how officials expect that wood to be removed from the forest: down White Oaks Road, a narrow, twisting residential street that town's director of public works says is ill-suited for the operation.
 
DPW Director Craig Clough was joined at the microphone Monday by nearly a dozen residents of Williamstown and Pownal to question elements of what the Forest Service is calling the "South of Route 9 Integrated Resource Project."
 
Most of those concerns centered on White Oaks Road.
 
Stratton told the board that somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 log truck trips will be required to remove the wood that the service plans to remove from the forest, but that number does not include all the heavy equipment that will need to be taken to the cutting site or the daily traffic from loggers traveling to and from the site.
 
The project itself could take anywhere from one to five years, Stratton said. That number won't be known until the Forest Service puts the job out to bid.
 
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