Clarksburg Officials Make Last-Minute Budget Cuts

The Finance Committee members Mark Denault, Rebecca Buck and Lori-Anne Aubin and Selectman Carl McKinney make last-minute budget cuts on Monday night.

CLARKSBURG, Mass. — The Finance Committee sliced thousands of dollars from the town budget on Monday night, just 24 hours before the annual town meeting to prevent a Proposition 2 1/2 override.

By the end of three hours, some $40,000 had been cut from the $1.2 million town budget.

Town officials have been struggling for months with erratic numbers related to free cash and local receipts because of accounting errors, which also led to a hold up in its free cash certification by the state.

Monday night, they were faced with a budget that turned out to be over the Proposition 2 1/2 levy limit by some $67,000.

"In light of our certified free cash and some other things that have come up, we actually know now that we are going to be over the levy limit," said committee Chairman Mark Denault. "This is the number we need to make up one way or another tonight."

The levy limit is $1,596,438 — the amount the town can raise through taxation without going to a Proposition 2 1/2 override vote. The town needed at first to raise $1.629 million — which jumped to $1,663,494 after reviewing the local receipts — to fund the school and town budget.

The town has $69,777 in certified free cash and $179,000 in the stabilization fund, of which $85,000 is committed to fund warrant articles.

There was $210,000 in free cash but the state has set aside $61,000 for reimbursements on culvert work on Henderson Road and more than $75,000 to offset accounting errors.

With so little in reserve, the committee and Selectmen Chairman Carl McKinney felt they had no choice but to begin cutting away.

Every department took a hit, from a high of $20,000 in cuts to veterans services to a low of $70 to the Senior Center. Town employees' raises were cut from 2.5 percent to 2 percent.

Also in attendance at Monday's meeting was Town Administrator Thomas Webb, town Accountant Christa Marsh, Treasurer Melissa McGovern (for part of the meeting) and former Finance Committee Chairwoman Mary Beverly.

Town meeting starts at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, June 18, at the Clarksburg Elementary School.

North Adams' Route 2 Study Looks at 'Repair, Replace and Remove'

By Tammy DanielsiBerkshires Staff
06:02PM / Monday, April 07, 2025

Attendees make comments and use stickers to indicate their thoughts on the priorities for each design.

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Nearly 70 residents attended a presentation on Saturday morning on how to stitch back together the asphalt desert created by the Central Artery project.

 

Of the three options proposed — repair, replace or restore — the favored option was to eliminating the massive overpass, redirect traffic up West Main and recreate a semblance of 1960s North Adams.

 

"How do we right size North Adams, perhaps recapture a sense of what was lost here with urban renewal, and use that as a guide as we begin to look forward?" said Chris Reed, director of Stoss Landscape Urbanism, the project's designer.

 

"What do we want to see? Active street life and place-making. This makes for good community, a mixed-use downtown with housing, with people living here ... And a district grounded in arts and culture."

 

The concepts for dealing with the crumbling bridge and the roads and parking lots around it were built from input from community sessions last year.

 

The city partnered with Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art for the Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program and was the only city in Massachusetts selected. The project received $750,000 in grant funding to explore ways to reconnect what Reed described as disconnected "islands of activity" created by the infrastructure projects. 

 

"When urban renewal was first introduced, it dramatically reshaped North Adams, displacing entire neighborhoods, disrupting street networks and fracturing the sense of community that once connected us," said Mayor Jennifer Macksey. "This grant gives us the chance to begin to heal that disruption."