image description — The new Williamstown fire station on Main Street is nearing completion.

Williamstown Fire District Prepping for Transition to New Station

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
05:25AM / Tuesday, December 02, 2025Print Story | Email Story

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Prudential Committee last week took the first step in selling off the current fire station property on Water Street.

Meeting in a room that it shared with furniture already delivered for the new Main Street station, the five-person committee voted unanimously to declare the current station "surplus property."

Late this month or early in 2026, the committee likely will call a special fire district meeting to authorize the sale of 34 Water St., the local fire department's home since 1950.

"After we get the district's approval, we need to issue [a request for proposals] in accordance with the provisions of [Massachusetts General Law] Chapter 30B," Prudential Committee Chair David Moresi said. "We can craft that RFP in a manner most beneficial to the district. We need to have an eye to the community at large.

"We can put restrictions on the building. We don't have to accept the highest bid. We may see there's something that's going to be really beneficial to the community, and we can go with that."

The committee heard on Wednesday that the new station on Main Street (Route 2) remains on schedule and under budget. Officials have said they intend to start the process of relocating to the new station this month.

Chief Jeffrey Dias told the committee the project has reached the point where he is fielding calls every day, sometimes two or three times per day, with questions about finishing touches being applied at the project.

"We're getting into the nitty gritty, which is good," Dias said. "We're coming to the end of the tunnel."

Some exterior finishing touches are being put off until the spring, Moresi said.

"Obviously, we're getting into the time of year when it's not ideal to finish some things," he said. "One thing we'll be postponing is the final layer of asphalt [in the parking areas and driveway]. We've come this far with a great project, and we don't want to cut corners now."

Moresi mentioned that final landscaping at the Main Street site also is on hold until after the snow melts and the ground thaws next year.

"We are far enough along in the project that we can say we'll be coming in under our budget numbers," he added. "Everyone should be happy with that."

In February 2023, attendees at a special district meeting authorized borrowing up to $22.5 million for the station project.

The Prudential Committee, which oversees the district (a separate taxing authority apart from town government) worked efficiently through a relatively light agenda on the evening before Thanksgiving.

It reviewed the district's financials, a task made easier now that the committee has a separate Finance Committee that sits monthly to go over the district's finances the week before the Prudential Committee meets.

District Treasurer Billie Jo Sawyer on Wednesday told the Prudential Committee that fiscal year 2026 actual expenditures are tracking well against the budget.

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Mount Greylock School Committee OKs Updated Policy on Seclusion, Restraint

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
05:57AM / Tuesday, August 25, 2026

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Mount Greylock School Committee recently approved an updated policy on time-outs, seclusion and the physical restraint of students.

The policy is based on updated state regulations that came down last winter. Superintendent Joseph Bergeron told the panel at its August meeting that his office waited on recommendations from the Massachusetts Association of School Committees that were released in May and ran the proposed changes past the district's legal counsel.

That timing — and an expectation from the commonwealth that districts have the updated policy in place for the start of the 2026-27 academic year — led to an expedited process for the School Committee, which did not do a first read with a vote at a subsequent meeting as is its practice.

"Policy JKAA speaks to the ways the school district and our procedures shall abide by the updated state regulations," Bergeron said. "We're not going to have a lot of leeway.

"Nothing about the way we interact with our students on a day-to-day basis is being shifted by this."

For example, the commonwealth does not allow schools to use "seclusion," or, "the involuntary confinement of a student alone in a room or area, with or without adult supervision," except some extreme cases, like when, "when student behavior poses an imminent threat of assault, or imminent serious physical harm to self or others, but only if safeguards are accounted for," the updated policy reads.

"From the state's perspective and my perspective, the idea of locking a child in a room without adult supervision is something we've never done," Bergeron said. "And it's something the state wants to make explicitly that nobody ever does."

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