|
| News and events in Williamstown, Mass.
|
Williams Swimmer Earns Seven Medals at Maccabiah GamesWilliams Sports Information,
05:49PM / Sunday, August 21, 2022 | |
 WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. – Ev Nichol's first participation in the Maccabiah Games came in Netanya, Israel, at the age of 16 while a high school student in Memphis, Tenn. This year, he returned and collected a boatload of medals. Nichol, now a senior Williams College, competed in the Junior Maccabiah Games in 2017 in Israel. The Maccabiah Games are normally held every four years, but due to Covid, the 2021 games were postponed to 2022. This summer, Nichol competed in the Maccabiah Games Open Division in Jerusalem. "I'm not a spiritual, person," Nichol said. "For me the Games are more about the shared history of the athletes, 0 Comments
Read More >> |
Q&A: Templeton Makes Run for Senate to 'Step Up and Make a Change'By Stephen Dravis, iBerkshires Staff
04:21PM / Friday, August 19, 2022 | |
 NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — As the former owner of a business on Williamstown's Spring Street, the co-author of landmark resolutions passed at its town meeting and a frequent participant from the floor of committee meetings, Huff Templeton is well known in his hometown. He is spending his summer raising his profile throughout the rest of Western Massachusetts. In the spring, Templeton launched a campaign to represent the first Senate district in the state Legislature, a sprawling expanse of municipalities that includes all of Berkshire County plus parts of Franklin, Hampshire and Hampden Counties. It runs from Williamstown in the northwest corner down to 0 Comments
Read More >> |
State Land Court Lets Homeowners Repudiate Racist Covenants in DeedsBy Stephen Dravis, iBerkshires Staff
04:22AM / Friday, August 19, 2022 | |
 WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — State Rep. John Barrett III could not get state law changed to allow homeowners to strike racist language from their deeds. But he came pretty close, and the effort shed light on a problem that those homeowners can address, free of charge, in the documents that define their real property. "As the Land Court put it, it's a win-win for everyone," Barrett said recently. Back in 2020, he authored House 1465, a bill that would have allowed property owners to "request the Land Court to expunge a provision made void by this section." The provisions in question were the sort that were created in the 1930s to prohibit 4 Comments
Read More >> |
Historic Store at Five Corners Reopens in WilliamstownBy Brian Rhodes, iBerkshires Staff
12:50PM / Tuesday, August 16, 2022 | |
 WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Under new ownership and management, the Store at Five Corners reopened Tuesday morning for the first time in more than two years. The store and cafe, built in 1770 and located in the town's Five Corners Historic District, had been closed since July 2020. The 252-year-old building, originally a tavern, went through several recent owners before being purchased by the nonprofit Store at Five Corners Stewardship Association in January of this year. "It took us a few months to get it to where it is right now but I feel like our hard work paid off," said store operator Corey Wentworth. "I feel like it's really nice in
4 Comments
Read More >> |
Williamstown Planning Board Seeks Input on Short-Term Rental ProposalBy Stephen Dravis, iBerkshires Staff
05:36AM / Monday, August 15, 2022 | |
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Planning Board last week laid out its initial thinking about a potential short-term rental bylaw that it wants to bring to town meeting as early as May. As articulated at its Aug. 9 meeting, the board's goal is to allow residents and part-time residents to generate some revenue from their properties, allow those homes to provide needed additional rooms for tourists during peak periods and still prevent non-residents from buying one or more properties to create de facto motels in residential neighborhoods. "We really do want to maintain short-term rentals as an economic opportunity for people in town," Chair Stephanie Boyd said. 0 Comments
Read More >> |
Mount Greylock Gets Final Tab for School Building ProjectBy Stephen Dravis, iBerkshires Staff
06:17AM / Saturday, August 13, 2022 | |
 WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The final bill to Williamstown and Lanesborough for the construction project at Mount Greylock Regional School came in at $33 million, according to a final audit presented to the School Committee on Thursday evening. The Massachusetts School Building Authority gave the district its final audit on July 28. Superintendent Jason McCandless told the committee that the final cost of the renovation/addition project at the middle/high school is $64,693,600, just more than $44,000 less than the budget approved back in 2016. But the MSBA's contribution is about $1.5 million lower than the maximum grant projected by the state agency at the outset of the 1 Comment
Read More >> |
Letter: Why I Support Paul MarkLetter to the Editor,
04:00PM / Thursday, August 11, 2022 | |
 To the Editor:
I've known Paul Mark all his political life, and we couldn't ask for a better person to be our next state senator in Boston. Paul is an experienced and practical progressive who will hit the ground running in the state Senate. In 2010, Paul was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives to serve the 2nd Berkshire district. And ever since, he has fought for working families, calling for Medicare-for-all, higher-education funding reform, student debt relief, funding for vocational programs, and major transformative solutions to the climate crisis, among other issues. Yes, Paul knows what it means to work. He came from humble circumstances to earn associate,
0 Comments
Read More >> |
Williamstown Select Board Finalizes Charge for Charter Review PanelBy Stephen Dravis, iBerkshires Staff
05:15AM / Wednesday, August 10, 2022 | |
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Select Board on Monday approved the marching orders for the first comprehensive charter in more than six decades. It also sought to temper expectations about the scope of the Charter Review Committee that the board hopes to appoint next month. "This is not just the charter," said Andy Hogeland, who drafted the charge with Jeffrey Johnson. "This is the state laws and bylaws that affect the structure of town government – so not a substantive thing but a mechanical, structural review is our focus. "We added in here a couple of sentences that this review is not about non-structural things. This is not about 0 Comments
Read More >> |
Letter: Andrea Harrington for DALetter to the Editor,
07:08PM / Tuesday, August 09, 2022 | |
 To the Editor:
The election of Andrea Harrington was part of a wave of progressive DAs across the country elected by people who recognize that our justice system is too often unjust and in need of meaningful change. District Attorney Harrington has been true to her word as a reformer. Her opponent embraces the old paradigm that the justice system is the right way to rehabilitate, and embraces the use of diversion programs embedded in the justice system— expensive programs that expand the criminal legal system. District Attorney Harrington embraces an approach grounded in public health and a harm-reduction approach. She embraces diversion to public health programs that do not sit
0 Comments
Read More >> |
Williamstown Farm Reimagined as Education, Rescue CenterBy Stephen Dravis, iBerkshires Staff
07:09AM / Sunday, August 07, 2022 | |
Jane Swift shows some of the potpourri she has produced from cuttings from around the farm. WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — As she shows off the potpourri produced from cuttings around her Henderson Road farm, Jane Swift can joke that she has the best smelling barn in the Berkshires. "We're so lucky to live here," she says. "This is all stuff I just picked. People probably think I'm crazy. I go around sniffing stuff on the farm." In the near future, Swift hopes to add some new smells to the mix. She is working to transform the century-old family farm into the Cobble Hill Farm Education and Rescue Center. And by the late 0 Comments
Read More >> |
Williamstown Planners Still Split on Upzoning ProposalsBy Stephen Dravis,
02:53PM / Saturday, August 06, 2022 | |
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. – It took just two meetings of the newly constituted Planning Board for old fault lines to reemerge. About two hours into its July meeting, the board took up the question of how to address the numerous zoning bylaw amendments that were "referred to committee" by June’s annual town meeting. Several members of the five-person board indicated that some of the articles still merited consideration by the body and could return to town meeting in some form and with further explanation and analysis. Roger Lawrence was not having it. "I feel discouraged and got a sense of deja vu concerning this conversation," Lawrence 0 Comments
Read More >> |
Pittsfield Soccer League Summer Final SetiBerkshires.com Sports,
09:05PM / Wednesday, August 03, 2022 | |
 PITTSFIELD, Mass. – The Maroons and the Crows survived Wednesday’s semi-finals in the Pittsfield Soccer League with a pair of 1-0 wins at Wahconah Park. The second-seeded Crows used a first-half goal from James Pow to knock off Barcelona. On an adjacent field, Matt Naventi scored a first-half goal to send the Maroons past the Vultures and into next Wednesday’s league championship game. Eight teams began play this summer in the 10-year-old league. PSL organizer Nigel Gayle said that about 130 players participated in the weekly seven-on-seven contests. The 18-and-over co-ed league summer league is one of several adult leagues in 0 Comments
Read More >> |
|
No Legal Notices
|
MEMBER SIGN IN
