Letter: Night of the Living Voting Clickers

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To the Editor:

I did a little research regarding the proposed Williamstown electronic voting devices and am offering more information than was provided by Selectman Daley.

First: The cost of the devices is $26,000 for 1,000. Williamstown, actually has more poverty than Lanesboro, and I’m sure 26 needy families could make good use of $1,000.

The devices appear to be of Asian origin and are identified as SunVote M30 Response Keypads. Other towns in New England have begun using these or similar devices. Williamstown appears to be gung-ho to jump on the bandwagon.

They are designed to work via Bluetooth radio waves. The keypads use two lithium CR2032 batteries each. They employ two-way RF 2.4GHz digital communication technology.

Some questions are:

Are they safe to use for everybody?
Could they affect anyone's medical devices?
Could having 1,000 keypads simultaneously pressed have cumulative, unpredictable consequences?

Up to 30 percent of the population may be sensitive to RF radio waves. Common symptoms may be anxiety, hyperactivity, irritability, depression, chest tightness, fatigue, memory loss, headaches, dizziness, sleep issues, noise sensitivity, ringing in the ears, burning eyes, nervous bladder, heart palpitations, muscle tension, joint pain and skin rashes.

Can these keypads be hacked? Can voters/entities obtain additional keypads and vote more than once without being easily detected?

Conversely, how do you prevent the people sitting near you from seeing your vote?

There may be advantages to using these keypads. People may be more willing to oppose out-of-control spending if they can do it anonymously. However, it may be premature to adopt using these keypads without more longitudinal study.

Ken Swiatek
Williamstown, Mass.

 

 

 

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Williamstown Finance Sees Pressure on Property Tax Bills

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — A stagnant local economy promises to put increasing upward pressure on local tax bills.
 
That was the takeaway from a late October meeting of the town's Finance Committee, which sat down with the town assessor and town manager to look at long-term trends in budgeting as the town puts together a fiscal year 2026 spending plan which the Fin Comm will review this winter.
 
Williamstown's lack of "new growth," the term for increases to the town's tax base through either new construction or significant renovations to existing homes and businesses, has been a talking point for the Finance Committee for years.
 
Last Tuesday, Assessor Chris Lamarre told the committee that, absent a couple of outliers, the property tax base has grown at a pace of just more than 1 percent per year for the last 10 years.
 
Meanwhile, the tax levy — the amount raised through property taxes to pay for town and school operations — has grown by 3.6 percent per year for the last 20 years.
 
That means an increasing tax burden is distributed among the same taxpayers, driving up tax bills.
 
A memo prepared by Melissa Cragg, then the chair of the Fin Comm, last January reported that the average single-family tax bill in Williamstown, $7,739, was second only to Great Barrington's ($8,492) in Berkshire County. And Williamstown residents pay more toward property taxes as a percentage of income (19.82 percent) than anyone in the county.
 
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