Lanesborough Zoning Board Welcomes New Member

By Breanna SteeleiBerkshires Staff
03:27PM / Wednesday, September 02, 2026Print Story | Email Story

Gwen Miller was welcomed onto the board after being elected from the select board the day before.

LANESBOROUGH, Mass. – The Zoning Board of Appeals has some new faces.

Last week, the Zoning Board met to restructure its board.

William Matthiesen was elected Chair. He is stepping in following the resignation of Mark Seigars after a heated ZBA meeting in February.

Gwen Miller was welcomed onto the board after being elected from the select board the day before. Chair Deborah Maynard had said she previously worked with Miller on the Planning Board.

"She is a very, very smart woman who is up to date on all the laws and everything else that goes around," Maynard said.

Miller said she wanted to volunteer for the town, but she is no stranger to working with the town. She moved to Lanesborough in 2017 to raise her kids and was recently serving as Chair of the Planning Board.

She has also served on the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission's regional issues committee for the town.

According to her LinkedIn, she has much experience with town planning, recently working with the town of Lenox as their land use director and town planner.

She said she hopes to bring a nice attitude to the board.

"Just an even keel, a polite demeanor and some objectivity."

Tags: zoning,

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Lanesborough Chooses New Town Administrator

By Sabrina DammsiBerkshires Staff
09:19PM / Tuesday, October 06, 2026

LANESBOROUGH, Mass. — The Select Board has named longtime Easthampton official John Mason as the new town administrator after interviewing him and one other candidate on Tuesday.

About 45 applications were received. Eleven were brought before the seven-member selection committee. From that pool, the committee brought forward two candidates to the Select Board: Mason, Easthampton's director of Parks And Recreation, and Allison Schmitt, executive director for Entrepreneurship for All (EforAll).

During the Select Board meeting on Tuesday, the board voted, 4-1, to offer the post to Mason, following a meeting that lasted more than two hours.

Prior to the interviews, the board bid farewell to outgoing Town Administrator Gina Dario, who is taking a position as Adams' new Community Development Director. Her last day is Friday, but she will be a resource to Lanesborough to ensure a smooth transition.

Mason brings about 20 years of experience in municipal government, including the last 17 years as director of Parks And Recreation in Easthampton, where his responsibilities included grant writing, managing state and federal grants, overseeing budgets, and managing projects.

Prior to that, he served as executive director of a Boys & Girls Club near Boston, where he developed his grant-writing experience. He credits that role with helping him grow.

"We were trying to run an operation on good feelings and no money. It's tough to operate that way. So it was very challenging, and I had to learn how to grant write and to do it well," he said.

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