BCC contributes to Afghanistan school

12:00AM / Monday, November 15, 2004Print Story | Email Story

Berkshire Community College staff and students in October donated ten large boxes of school supplies to a village school in Afghanistan. Part of the Peter M. Goodrich Memorial Foundation, these supplies are in memory of north county resident Peter Goodrich, who was in the second plane that crashed into the World Trade Towers on September 11, 2001. One of the college's student clubs, the Global Issues Resource Organization (GIRO), sponsored and publicized the project, at the request of one of its members, Margalis Riera-Filson, a 65-year-old student in the Physical Therapy Assistant program. She brought the idea to the BCC club because it was her son, Marine Corps Major Rush Filson (a BCC graduate), who discovered a village school of 300 where he is stationed in Afghanistan that had no money and no supplies. Rush Filson had been a childhood friend of Peter Goodrich, and was in regular touch with Peter's parents. When the Goodrich's learned of the school, it gave them the answer to how to best honor their son's memory. The memorial trust fund in their son's name has funded this project. When one faculty member tried to buy some supplies for the project at the college store, store manager James Bowman recalled the seven boxes of old paper and pencils that he'd been intending to clean out since he began working there twelve years ago. He donated all of them. The other three boxes contain miscellaneous materials donated by other BCC faculty, staff, and students.

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Williamstown Homeowners Facing 7 Percent Hike in Tax Rate

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
02:03PM / Sunday, August 23, 2026

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Property owners will pay nearly a dollar more per $1,000 of assessed value in the current fiscal year under a tax classification proposal that goes to the Select Board on Monday evening.

According to a memo prepared by town Assessor Christopher Lamarre, the FY27 tax rate will be $15.16 per $1,000 of property value, an increase of 96 cents, or 6.8 percent, from the $14.20 per $1,000 property owners paid in the fiscal year that ended on June 30.

The increase is because of a 9.12 percent hike in the levy based on the budget and fiscal articles approved for FY27 at May's annual town meeting.

In FY26, the town collected $21.9 million from property taxes; this year, it needs to collect $24.1 million to pay its bills, a rise of $2.2 million.

That is by far the largest hike in the last 10 years — the period covered by data readily available on the town's website. In FY26, levy grew by 5.8 percent, following an eight-year period where the largest jump was 5.52 percent in 2018.

At the same time, the town continued to see growth rate in the tax base that does not keep up with rising costs. In FY27, "new growth" is pegged at $18.2 million, yielding just $258,004 in new tax revenue — far below the $2.2 million in needed revenue.

The total of taxable property in town in FY27 is $1.6 billion.

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