Letter: Together, Cool heads will prevail

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To the Editor:

Rather tragically at Thursday night's Select Board meeting, we lost one of our own. The lesson made apparent by this tragedy is that our current system is broken. We need better and more timely communication; we need openness; we need the needs of the town of be first; we need more professionalism; and we need an environment free of fear.

So what remains for us to do is understand this problem did not develop overnight and that it will take some time and hard work to make the needed changes. We must make our concerns heard through our votes on Town Election Day on May 5 and at the annual town meeting on May 12 to create the first big step toward making needed repairs and healing our town.


As we move toward the future, it will be important to focus not only on naming the issues but even more importantly on how the issues might best be solved. It won’t be easy. There will be a fair amount of misinformation we will have to pick through to get to the information we need to make good decisions that pass the test of time. This will be a bit of a long road and it will be hard work. But if we do this together calmly and carefully, I know we will be successful.

So today, let’s resolve ourselves to harnessing our passion and use it to work together to create a much brighter future for Dalton!
 

ROBERT COLLINS
Collins is a member of the Dalton Select Board.

 

 

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State Housing Secretary Tours Downtown Pittsfield Developments

By Brittany PolitoiBerkshires Staff

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The state's new secretary of the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities on Monday saw how local developers are transforming historic buildings into downtown housing units. 

Secretary Juana Matias, appointed to the role in February, toured the former St. Joseph's High School on Maplewood Avenue and the near-complete Wright Building Block on North Street.   

Matias observed local leaders working collaboratively to dismantle bottlenecks in housing production, something she said the administration wants to see across all 351 municipalities.  

"This is a perfect model of the partnerships we want to see, and we love coming to the ground and seeing how people are leveraging public taxpayer dollars to help address the issue of our time, which is housing production," she said after the tours. 

Developer David Carver, of Scarafoni Associates & CT Management Group, is seeking support from the state Housing Development Incentive Program to transform St. Joe's into apartments, and Allegrone Companies has secured millions from the program towards the Wright Building renovation

They first visited the shuttered school that functioned as a shelter during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, greeted by broken windows and leaving with Carver's vision. 

The plan is to transform the school with good bones into 19 apartments, 20 percent designated affordable, and 30 percent of the building for commercial use.  Units are expected to cost between $1,700 and $1,900 per month; 14 one-bedroom units and five two-bedroom units are planned. 

The project team is in talks with the nearby Berkshire Family YMCA to expand their childcare activities to the building's lower level.  Residents and the daycare would use different entrances. 

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