Nominations Sought For Williamstown Employee Award

Print Story | Email Story

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The League of Women Voters of Williamstown is seeking nominations for its annual Employee of the Year Award.

The League established the annual award beginning in 2001 as a way to show appreciation for the work required to keep the town running smoothly.

Nominees should be employees of the town of Williamstown who have provided outstanding service to the Williamstown community – duty above and beyond what is expected of them. This service can have been performed during the past year or in previous years. It can have been a single exceptional act or have been spread over several years.

All employees of the town of Williamstown are eligible. For example, this includes snowplow drivers, librarians, cemetery workers, police officers, town department heads, custodians, teachers, transfer station workers, fire fighters, the town manager – anyone on the town payroll.


Nomination forms are available at the Milne Library and at Town Hall, or nominations can be sent to the League of Women Voters of Williamstown, P.O. Box 392, Williamstown, by May 7. Nominations should include a description of the exceptional service provided and the name and telephone number or email address of the person submitting the nomination.

The name of winner will be announced on May 21 at the annual town meeting.

Past winners are Tim Kaiser, Rose Hamman, Betsy Reali, Mary Kennedy, Pat MacLeod, Chris Lemoine, Mindy Hackner, Paul Langlois, Brian O'Grady; Janet Saddler, Patti Patterson and, last year, the entire Department of Town Inspections.
 

If you would like to contribute information on this article, contact us at info@iberkshires.com.

Williamstown Planning Board Hears Results of Sidewalk Analysis

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Two-thirds of the town-owned sidewalks got good grades in a recent analysis ordered by the Planning Board.
 
But, overall, the results were more mixed, with many of the town's less affluent neighborhoods being home to some of its more deficient sidewalks or going without sidewalks at all.
 
On Dec. 10, the Planning Board heard a report from Williams College students Ava Simunovic and Oscar Newman, who conducted the study as part of an environmental planning course. The Planning Board, as it often does, served as the client for the research project.
 
The students drove every street in town, assessing the availability and condition of its sidewalks, and consulted with town officials, including the director of the Department of Public Works.
 
"In northern Williamstown … there are not a lot of sidewalks despite there being a relatively dense population, and when there are sidewalks, they tend to be in poor condition — less than 5 feet wide and made out of asphalt," Simunovic told the board. "As we were doing our research, we began to wonder if there was a correlation between lower income neighborhoods and a lack of adequate sidewalk infrastructure.
 
"So we did a bit of digging and found that streets with lower property values on average lack adequate sidewalk infrastructure — notably on North Hoosac, White Oaks and the northern Cole Avenue area. In comparison, streets like Moorland, Southworth and Linden have higher property values and better sidewalk infrastructure."
 
Newman explained that the study included a detailed map of the town's sidewalk network with scores for networks in a given area based on six criteria: surface condition, sidewalk width, accessibility, connectivity (to the rest of the network), safety (including factors like proximity to the road) and surface material.
 
View Full Story

More Williamstown Stories