Letter: Vote Yes on School Budgets as Presented

Letter to the Editor05:00PM / Monday, May 18, 2026Print Story | Email Story

To the Editor:

Please Support the School Committees' Budgets as Presented.

In the privacy of a voting booth, we elected our school committees to keep a broad perspective of our communities' educational needs. I believe that as townsfolk we have the responsibility to respect their research, their deliberations, and their often soul-wrenching decisions regarding how best to attain excellence in our schools within the limits our communities can afford.

Sometimes we may disagree with committee recommendations, but unless circumstances are clearly extraordinary, considerable weight should be given to the fruits of the committees' labor. Their views are broad; they must consider their principle charge of attaining student excellence within the context of local, state, even federal spending, over which they have little, if any, control.

Many comments have been made in this forum and others citing the serious shortcomings of Williamstown's town meeting form of government. Many find it downright undemocratic. Often concerned citizens in our community wish to attend our usual once-a-year meeting, but for excellent reasons cannot. In a town that often professes to value “every voice heard,” a motion from the floor to substantially change the carefully-deliberated product of an elected committee further undermines the democratic process. One can have similar comments about Citizen Petitions. But that is a discussion for another day.

I strongly urge you to support those who are willing to do the challenging, time consuming, and often unrewarded work of serving on our committees. Please support the school budgets as presented.

Donna Carlstrom Wied
Williamstown, Mass.

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Williamstown Studying Major Overhaul for Main Street

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
05:14AM / Wednesday, July 29, 2026

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The town is working with a Worcester civil engineering firm to redesign Main Street with an eye toward a major project sometime in the next decade.

Community Development Director Andrew Groff was before the Select Board on Monday night to talk about Town Hall's use of a $500,000 state grant to do preliminary design on major improvements to that portion of Route 2 that runs from Water Street west to the Field Park rotary, through the middle of Williams College's campus.

Groff introduced the elected officials to Amanda Bazinet of Worcester's Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, who is helping the town to develop a plan for Main Street that would align with the commonwealth's Complete Streets Program.

"Our project goals, in addition to the increased pedestrian and bicycle accommodations, is just, in general, improving the sightlines and improving the intersection geometry," Bazinet said.

"Complete Streets … has a lot of different facets to it. As Andrew had mentioned, the goal is to improve the safety for all of the roadway users — not just the motorists. We're looking at improving it for pedestrians, bicyclists, anyone using a mobility device. We want to create streets that are safe for all ages and abilities to use. So, while bicyclists will still be allowed, legally, to use the roadway, we want to look at providing a separate bicycle accommodation along the corridor, whether it's a shared use path along both sides of the streets that is a little more accessible to young children or older people with disabilities to look at all transportation options."

One goal is to encourage "active transportation." The Massachusetts Department of Transportation, who the town hopes one day might fund the construction, has a "healthy transportation policy," Bazinet said.

That MassDOT funding would come through the Transportation Improvement Program, which is managed locally by the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission. The design work underway now is being done with an eye toward going after TIP funding years down the road.

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