CPA Committee member Daniel Gendron urged residents to 'ratchet down the rhetoric' and called for town meeting to decide all the land articles; Sandra Thurston of the Stratton Hills Condominium Association said the issue was too important and citizens had a right to call for a separate meeting.

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Voters will decide in May if they want to fingerprint the ding-dong truck driver.

An article on adopting a bylaw for civil fingerprinting was among those being reviewed by Selectmen for the annual town meeting on May 21.

The board voted unanimously on Monday night to ask voters whether the town should adopt by bylaw, which would enable police to conduct state and federal criminal background checks for people applying for the following licenses: door-to-door salespeople, alcoholic beverage license managers, dealers of secondhand articles, pawn/old metal/junk dealers, taxi drivers and ice cream truck or food vendors.

"Probably in Williamstown, the one that's most applicable here is door-to-door salespeople," Town Manager Peter Fohlin told the board. "We do have door-to-door salespeople, and it never fails that when we do, we get calls from the Police Department asking who these people are and why we're allowing them to go around neighborhoods."

At the urging of Selectwoman Jane Allen, the board amended the bylaw draft to lower the fee for conducting background checks from $100 to $50. Thirty dollars of that fee goes to the commonwealth's Firearms Fingerprint Identity Verification Trust Fund, Fohlin said.

They also removed two articles that were included in the draft warrant: one that would have created a festival bylaw and another that would have advised the Selectmen to take advantage of a provision in Massachusetts law granting a small property tax break to small businesses.

Otherwise, most of the articles on the warrant were recommended for approval unanimously by the Selectmen with little to no discussion. The panel had previously considered most of the items on the warrant, particularly all of the fiscal items, which also have been vetted by the town's Finance Committee.

There was considerable discussion and some division within the board when it came to the warrant articles relating to conserved land and affordable housing.

Like the Fin Comm before it, the Selectmen voted to recommend that town meeting reject a proposal to allocate $365,000 of town money to a yet-to-be-formed tenants association being organized to purchase the Spruces Mobile Home Park.

The town is partnering with the park's current owner, Rochester, N.Y.,-based Morgan Management on a Federal Emergency Management Agency grant that would convey the park to the town. It would be closed with no possibility of rehabitation.

If the Save The Spruces (or Save Our Spruces) group is successful in raising $600,000 to match the announced financial compensation Morgan would receive under the grant plan, the tenants say they would exercise their right of first refusal and purchase the park as a cooperative.

The proposal to fund Save The Spruces out of town coffers was spearheaded by Kenneth Swiatek, a Stratton Road resident and vocal opponent of plans to utilize the Lowry property off Stratton Road to build replacement housing for Spruces residents.

Swiatek repeated his assertion that the town could create more affordable housing, more cheaply in the flood plain if it devoted its efforts to mitigating the long-standing flooding problem at the Spruces.

"During the last 10, 15, 25 years, the town hasn't done anything to mitigate the three streams that flow onto the property from the south," Swiatek said.

Selectwoman Allen took issue with that claim.

"With [Public Works Director] Tim Kaiser and Peter Fohlin as our witnesses, the town did apply for a grant several years ago to do just that, and the grant was denied because the park was in a 100-year flood plain and they could not throw good money after bad," Allen said.

Fohlin confirmed Allen's recollection, saying the town and Morgan Management split the cost of a grant application prepared by local engineering firm Guntlow and Associates.

"The grant was not accepted because it was determined that flood mitigation measures would not provide sufficient protection from the park flooding every two years — statistically," Fohlin said.

By far the most contentious issue of the night was the Chapter 40, simple majority proposal for town meeting voting on the Lowry property or other parcels to be devoted to affordable housing.

Longview Terrace resident Robert Scerbo accused Rempell of muddying the waters by adding another special town meeting in advance of the previously scheduled 7:30 meeting on April 24.

"Injecting into an already confusing situation another special town meeting at 7:25 ... makes it an unfair situation for people who anticipated a 7:30 special town meeting," Scerbo said.

Scerbo further challenged a recent opinion from Town Counsel Joel Bard of Boston's Kopelman & Paige. At the request of the board, Bard researched the question of whether the Lowry property is protected by Article 97 of the Amendments to the Massachusetts Constitution and found that it does not.

Scerbo presented the Selectmen with an opinion from an attorney hired by the Stratton Hills Condominium Association that contradicts Bard's conclusion.

The letter from F. Sydney Smithers of the Pittsfield firm Cain Hibbard & Myers reads, in part: "It is our opinion that, in 1987, the Conservation Commission acquired custody of the parcels for conservation purposes consistent with Article 97 ... ."

Cain Hibbard & Myers lists among its specialties "real estate, land use and environmental law."

"There are legal precedents that exist throughout the state that would consider this land as protected by Article 97," Scerbo said. "I think you have a train track with two trains heading in opposite directions that may not result in a good finish."

Rempell did not address Smithers' opinion directly, but at another point in the debate argued that the town needs to proceed on the advice of its counsel.
 

"If we had four different lawyers, we could have four different legal opinions," Rempell said. "That does not mean the town shouldn't move forward with the town's business."

After a brief interlude of conciliatory talk at last week's meeting of the Affordable Housing Trust, Monday's meeting revealed more of the tension that has marked the Spruces-Lowry discussion since the FEMA grant was announced.

Daniel Gendron, a member of the town's Finance and Community Preservation committees, appealed directly to the president of the condo association to withdraw her article on the April 24 special town meeting warrant that would place Lowry and the larger town-owned Burbank properties into conservation in perpetuity.

"This is kind of like Korea right now," said Gendron, who turned his back on the board to address Thurston in the audience. "We really need to ratchet down the rhetoric and all this stuff. ... I would suggest that what we ought to do is bring it into the regular (May 21) town meeting and we can stop all this upping the ante. ... There's no question I'm in favor of [developing] the Lowry property, but if it was turned down at the annual town meeting, I would be OK with it.

"What is the problem with putting it in a regular town meeting and avoiding this bloodshed?"

Thurston responded that the future of the land was too important to leave to the annual town meeting, where it could be overshadowed by other town business.

"What we have done in signing a citizens petition is not 'shenanigans' as you called it," Thurston said. "It is our right as Massachusetts citizens.

"This issue is big enough that it deserves its own meeting. We can't have a five-hour town meeting."

Then, referencing Rempell's warrant for the added special town meeting, Thurston added, "A five-minute town meeting on this issue is absurd."

Rempell said the discussion will likely extend past the start of the previously schedule April 24 meeting, and he was loathe to schedule the added meeting any earlier.

In news not related to town meetings or the Spruces, the board OK'd three petitioners' requests for special events: a block dance party on Hoxsey Street from 4 to 8 p.m. on April 20 to benefit the non-profit Reclaim Childhood, the 17th annual Wiliams College Run for a Cure at 2 p.m. on April 28 to benefit the American Cancer Society and the Midnight 5K "Run from the Cops" to benefit Special Olympics from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. on April 28.

"It's a themed race," organizer Darren Derby of the Pittsfield Police Department said. "There will be no running from the cops. It's more of an attention-getter."

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