WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — A little more than two years after appointing a committee to write the document, the Planning Board last week formally adopted the updated town comprehensive plan.

 

On a vote of 4-1, the five-person board endorsed the 70-page final draft of "Envisioning Williamstown 2035," which replaces the planning document previously known as the town master plan, last drafted in 2002.

 

Ben Greenfield was the lone dissenting vote in approving the wide-ranging document, which discusses the current conditions in the town and lays out a wide range of municipal aspirations in areas ranging from housing to conservation to transportation.

 

Shortly before casting his "nay" vote, Greenfield talked about what he saw as shortcomings in the document.

 

"I'll echo what others have said in the last week about economic development being not being as fleshed out as it could be," he said. "I was especially disappointed the town has twice, two years in a row, by more than two-thirds, voted to establish a municipal light plant to provide municipal broadband, and I cannot believe that a vision for Williamstown in 2035 doesn't have any sort of provision for the need for 70 percent of knowledge workers here or the need for municipal broadband or the equity that could provide. That's just an incredible missing opportunity.

 

"I feel that, as a resident, I commented on this multiple times and I wrote on pink Post-It notes, and they didn't make it into the document. As a Planning Board member, I mentioned that I thought it was a missed opportunity. And it still went nowhere.

 

"But that's just the way it goes in a democracy."