Local Man Wins Auction for Williamstown Parcel

By Breanna SteeleiBerkshires Staff
04:38PM / Thursday, November 13, 2025Print Story | Email Story

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The town of Williamstown auctioned a quarter-acre parcel on Wednesday.

Four bidders came to the auction to bid on the 0.264-acre property on Harrison Avenue.

The bidding started at $14,450, and the winning bid was $40,000 by Williamstown resident Gerard Smith, who is not sure what he will do with the property yet, but plans to clear the wooded lot first.

"My intention would be to make improvements to the property. And I'm not sure what the scope of those improvements are just yet, but the market will tell me," Smith said.

Smith said he usually purchases properties and adds value to them.

The auction was held at Town Hall by Berkshire Auctions owner James Dalton. The auction winner was required to post a $5,000 down payment.

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Williamstown Fin Comm Hears from Police Department, Library

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
10:10AM / Friday, March 06, 2026

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Police Chief Michael Ziemba last week explained to the Finance Committee why an additional full-time officer needs to be added to the fiscal year 2027 budget.

The 13 officers in the Williamstown Police Department are insufficient to maintain the department's minimal threshold of two officers on patrol per shift without employing overtime and relying on the chief and the WPD's one detective to cover patrol shifts if an officer is sick or using personal time, Ziemba explained.

Some of that coverage was provided in the past by part-time officers, but that option was taken away by the commonwealth's 2020 police reform act.

"We lost two part-timers a couple of years ago," Ziemba told the Fin Comm. "They were part-time officers, but they also worked the desk. So between the desk and the cruiser shifts, they were working 40 hours a week, the two of them. We lost them to police reform.

"We have seen that we're struggling to cover shifts voluntarily now. We're starting to order people to cover time-off requests. … We don't have the flexibility when somebody goes out for a surgery or sickness or maternity leave to cover that without overtime. An additional position, I believe, would alleviate that."

Ziemba bolstered his case by benchmarking the force against like-sized communities in Berkshire County.

Adams, for example, has 19 full-time officers and handled 9,241 calls last year with a population just less than 8,000 and a coverage area of 23 square miles, Ziemba said. By comparison, Williamstown has 13 officers, handled 15,000 calls for service, has a population of about 8,000 (including staff and students at Williams College) and covers 46.9 square miles.

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