WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Select Board on Monday OK'd an alcohol license for the new Crust Pizza location at 46 Spring Street, in space recently occupied by the Red Herring.

 

Crust owner Jim Cervone told the board that he hoped to open a second location for the PIttsfield pizza shop in late August or early September.

 

Cervone said the business's practice is to get Training for Intervention Procedures or TIPs training for all employees 18 and older and that policy is to have at least one TIPs-certified team member on the premises at all times.

 

That said, Cervone said alcohol sales are not a focus of his restaurant.

 

"Crust is not the kind of place where you have five or six beers with your friends," he said. "We don't have a TV or things like that. You have your pizza, you have a salad, you have a beer and then you leave.

 

"Alcohol is a small part of our business, unlike other places, and I don't really care if that ever changes."

 

The Select Board, which also serves as the local alcohol licensing authority, also Monday approved a one-day license for Xavier Jones of the Firehouse Cafe to cater a party at Williams College on Wednesday and for the Clark Art Institute to hold several one-day events where alcohol will be served outside of its cafe, which has a seasonal license for regular sales.

 

Just three members of the board — Stephanie Boyd, Randal Fippinger and Andrew Hogeland — attended Monday's meeting, where the body made numerous reappointments to other town committees and made a couple of new appointments.

 

Paul Harsch was appointed as an associate member of the Planning Board, where he will serve in the unlikely event that panel cannot achieve a quorum to approve a special permit that comes before the body.

 

Justine Beringer was appointed to both the Municipal Scholarship Committee and the Diversity, Inclusion and Racial Equity Committee.

 

Fippinger, who serves as the Select Board's liaison to the DIRE Committee, spoke in Beringer's favor.

 

"I work with [Beringer] frequently at the college, and I've found her to be very keen to do this work," Fippinger said before the board approved her appointment on a 3-0 vote.

 

The largest segment of Monday's meeting involved no votes from the board, which heard a half hour presentation from Paul Fenn of Williamsburg's Local Power. Fenn laid out his company's proposal to develop a facility in the area to process municipal waste locally to yield hydrogen for power and industrial limestone — a process that would eliminate the need for costly and unsustainable shipment of waste to other states for either landfill storage or incineration.

 

Fenn was before the board asking that it consider signing a letter of interest in the project, a step that would allow Local Power to continue its development work without committing the town to ultimately participate in the project.

 

In other business on Monday, Town Manager Robert Menicocci reported that he would be asking the Finance Committee to authorize two expenditures from its reserve account to cover unforeseen expenses in fiscal year 2023, which ends on Friday.

 

One expense is fairly routine, an expenditure to cover shortfalls in the snow and ice removal line item of the town budget. The other, a $15,000 expense, will cover legal fees for work by the town counsel on Williamstown's collective bargaining agreement with the Department of Public Works, which, Menicocci reported, went to mediation.

 

Boyd asked Menicocci about the resolution of a discussion from the last Select Board meeting, where the board decided to financially support next week's July 4 fireworks display at Taconic Golf Club but was unsure what that level of support would be.

 

Menicocci said the town will contribute $1,000 from the Select Board's line in the FY24 budget plus $1,500 to the Chamber of Commerce from the FY23 town budget that the chamber will apply to last year's display. He also advised the board that it should start deciding now the level of town funding the board would like to see included in the FY25 budget to cover the July 4, 2024, pyrotechnics.

 

One resident used Monday's meeting to suggest that dollar amount should be zero.

 

Harsch, who in the past has argued against a town fireworks display, again made that case to the board on Monday.

 

He argued that the toxins released by fireworks and the noise pollution that impacts wildlife and pets in the town outweigh the entertainment value. He also made the point that a progressive town like Williamstown might not want to celebrate Independence Day with a ritual that evokes the "bombs bursting in air" at Fort McHenry in the War of 1812.

 

"We will always honor those who have gone to war before us and fought for our freedom, and we should," Harsch said. "But having a celebration that is a reproduction of war, in essence, doesn't make sense."

 

Harsch recognized that his opinion might be unpopular or even called "unAmerican," and he said that in the past he felt members of the Select Board "snickered" at his suggestion. But he suggested this board take the time to take a long look at whether the town should have a fireworks display at all, let alone one paid for, in part, with taxpayer money.

 

"We should be looking at a light show," Harsch said. "Something could be done against a large building or on screens. I know it wouldn't be as dramatic as booms in the sky, but, in the long run, we have to look at the planet and the town and the toxic pollution these things give off, not to mention animals who don't have a voice."