WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Three high-profile publicly funded projects that took years to get underway reached or neared the finish line in 2023.

 

The most hotly debated project to get on track? An actual track.

 

The multisport field and track at Mount Greylock Regional School has been on the list of the town's top stories for years.

 

This year, it climbs to No. 1 after the school district finally broke ground on the project in December.

 

The district has long needed a track for use by the most popular varsity sport in the middle/high school, and the varsity football/lacrosse/soccer field was long a concern due to its condition.

 

School officials started seriously talking about both needs at the outset of a school building project that began in in earnest when the district was accepted into the Massachusetts School Building Authority process in 2015.

 

Problem was, the MSBA does not allow districts to fold much campus work into a building project; buildings essentially mean buildings to the state authority.

 

The solution was the district had the proceeds of a $5 million capital gift from Williams College, given to the middle high school for use on needs outside the scope of the addition/renovation to Mount Greylock.

 

The School Committee spent years debating and exploring whether to replace the existing field with an artificial turf field and whether doing so would leave enough money in the "Williams gift" to also add a track around said field.

 

Ultimately, the committee was convinced — either for cost or environmental reasons — to move forward with a natural grass field. But it took more years of design, over-budget bids and redesign to finally get a contract that fit the district's ability to pay.

 

And, along the way, the School Committee had to make some tough choices: a March 9, 2023, vote to use the remainder of the money in the Williams gift, rather than holding back a reserve for future capital expenses, like replacing the roof at some point; and a Feb. 9 vote to ask member towns Lanesborough and Williamstown to authorize borrowing up to $800,000 to fill a funding gap

 

Town meeting members in both communities said yes, and after one more round of "value engineering" to bring the project's scope down to where it might fit the budget, the district was able to secure a bid that it can afford.

 

Work on the long-awaited project began in December. The new eight-lane track should be available to use in spring 2025, and the new multisport varsity field should be available by the following fall.

 

The Williamstown Fire District is not quite as far along in its process to build a new fire station on Main Street.

 

But it cleared its biggest hurdle in February when a special meeting of the district's voters approved borrowing up to $22.5 million toward a replacement for the outdated and cramped facility on Water Street.

 

Fire District officials hope not to need to borrow that full amount. They already have a $5 million gift from Williams College that will be applied to the projected $22.5 million cost of the project before any bonds are issued, and the district continues to pursue state and federal grants as well as donations.

 

But the resounding 509-32 vote at the February special district meeting was strong indication that residents in town support the project — and in much bigger numbers than they did 10 years earlier. In 2013, district officials twice sent to a special district meeting the question of whether to purchase the Main Street parcel where they intend to build a new station.

 

Twice, the majority of voters said yes but not the two-thirds majority needed to approve the expenditure. Finally, in 2017, the land deal was approved by a margin of 194-22.

 

The third major public infrastructure story of '23 did not require any townwide votes but arguably took even longer than the first two projects.

 

Nearly a quarter century after advocates started pushing for a bike trail along the Hoosic River in Williamstown, town and state officials gathered in September to cut the ribbon on the Mohican Trail, a multimodal path from Syndicate Road in the northwest part of town east and south along the Hoosic to the Spruces Park.

 

Someday, the trail will link to a planned bike path in North Adams and, eventually, south to the Ashuwilticook Trail, planners hope.

 

The Williamstown leg was built over two construction seasons, a project managed by the commonwealth's Department of Transportation. MassDOT also paid for most of the trail, but last winter, residents learned that the town was going to be on the hook for some of the trail's cost overrrun.

 

Originally, it appeared Williamstown would be responsible for $1.3 million toward the 2.4-mile trail. but by April, that number was negotiated down to $700,000.

 

While construction continues on another major MassDOT project in town, the rebuild of the bridge that carries Main Street (Route 2) over the Green River, yet another state project cleared a local regulatory hurdle in May, when the Conservation Commission signed off on the state's plan to install a roundabout at the Five Corners intersection in South County, where U.S Route 7 intersections state Route 43.

 

Speaking of construction, a long talked about housing development on Water Street also cleared the Con Comm in the spring. The board in June gave an order of conditions for a 16-unit residential development at the site of the former Grange Hall. In order to get relief from local zoning regulations, at least four of the units will be marketed as affordable housing, with income-restricted eligibility.

 

The other big development on the affordable housing front in town came from the continuing partnership of the town's Affordable Housing Trust with the nonprofit Northern Berkshire Habitat for Humanity. The latter in August said it intends to build four single-family homes on a Summer Street lot that the trust acquired in 2015 for the purpose of creating housing. Habitat already has built two homes on a lot the trust purchased at the corner of Cole Avenue and Maple Street; the first of those homes got its first owner-occupant in 2021.

 

With all this construction in the news, there also was one high-profile demolition in town at the end of 2023. Williams College in November moved ahead with plans to raze its Towne Field House on Latham Street, which the college had to close in the spring due to structural issues. Williams also has announced plans to build a temporary indoor athletic facility on the north end of campus; this winter, the college is finding other accommodations for its varsity athletes, including the former home of J-Star Gymastics in North Adams.

 

In May, town voters elected one new member of the five-person Select Board when Stephanie Boyd, a veteran of the Planning Board, won a three-year term.

 

The next week was the annual town meeting, which featured two notable procedural changes and a couple of contentious issues.

 

The meeting again was held at Mount Greylock Regional School, which was chosen in 2022 while COVID-19 was still a major concern because the gym is bigger and allows for more social distancing. The 2023 meeting returned there, and the Select Board already has identified that as the location for 2024, indicating that, essentially, it has replaced Williamstown Elementary School for the foreseeable future.

 

The second procedural change was the adoption of "clickers" to allow close votes at the meeting to be counted more efficiently and allow the members to vote with a measure of anonymity. The change started as an initiative of the Select Board and was made after a resounding 226-114 vote after a lengthy floor discussion.

 

The other two "hot button" issues on the '23 meeting warrant concerned a zoning change that would have allowed manufactured homes on any residential building lot in town and a proposal to overturn the town's current bylaw on dogs, requiring them to be on a leash when off the owner's property instead of the current standard of a leash or under "voice control."

 

The Planning Board's article on manufactured homes received majority support but not the two-thirds majority needed for passage. The 216-114 vote was five short of the 221 "yes" votes that would have been needed for adoption.

 

The leash article was inspired, in part, by residents use of the aforementioned Mohican Trail (which was usable and in use months before the official ribbon cutting). The meeting voted to take no action on the article, referring the issue instead to the Select Board, which subsequently unearthed an existing (and frequently unenforced) rule that already requires dogs to be on leash in town parks. The Select Board revisited the issue a few times in the first half of 2023 and has it on its agenda for the first couple of months of 2024.

 

The runup to the 2023 annual town meeting included lengthy discussions about the Mount Greylock Regional School District budget after administrators chose to defund an unfilled Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging position that the district created in 2022. Many residents and School Committee members argued that the district needed to follow through on its commitment to equity by funding and filling the position, but administrators that they have a plan to address those issues within their current resources and can work the district-wide position into the budget in a future funding cycle.

 

On the town side, equity also continued to be a major issue.

 

After lobbying from the trustees of the Milne Public Library, Town Hall was able to address pay disparities that kept library employees underpaid relative to their peers in other town departments. And the town completed a wider wage classification study in an effort to make sure all employees are paid commensurate with their responsibilities and experience.

 

Issues of equity and inclusion also were prevalent in the long-awaited report from the volunteer-led Community Assessment Research, or CARES study, that dropped in October, and the 2023 Comprehensive Plan (a document formerly known as the town's master plan) that was finalized in late November after two years of committee work.

 

Elements of both reports informed the Select Board's deliberations in the last few months of the year, including a push to create targeted property tax relief for lower-income residents. Those initiatives likely will end up with town meeting warrant articles at the May 2024 gathering.

 

A property tax measure that doesn't require town meeting action dominated the Select Board conversations in the late summer of 2023. Boyd and Randal Fippinger argued that the town should use the Residential Tax Exemption as a way to shift some of the property tax burden onto higher-valued properties and, they said, make the town's main source of revenue less regressive. Those arguments failed to persuade a majority of the board, which each year makes a decision on the RTE as part of its tax classification hearing.

 

2023 also has seen two other town bodies developing proposals that town meeting members likely will face this coming May.

 

The Planning Board is refining a bylaw that would allow for the creation of "cottage court" style development in the general residence district of town.

 

The ad hoc Charter Review Committee is has been discussing a number of changes to the foundational document of town government, including one that would allow for recall elections.

 

The Conservation Commission is discussing warrant articles that would bring the Spruces Park under the commission's control (as Margaret Lindley Park already is) and increase the panel's authority over wetlands in town.

 

There were a few new businesses added to the town's landscape in 2023, including Roam Gallery, which moved to Water Street from its previous home at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. And Pittsfield pizzeria Crust opened its second location on Spring Street in December while a new doughnut shop, Maestri's Munchies, opened in the Colonial Plaza earlier in the year.

 

In general, several business owners reliant on the summer tourism trade said they were impacted by a unusually small array of offerings at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in July and August.

 

But during the same time frame, at least one local business, Images Cinema, enjoyed a bonanza buoyed by two Hollywood blockbusters: "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer."

 

While there was not much movement of new for-profit businesses, one new non-profit came on the scene when volunteers led by Andrea Bryant opened Remedy Hall in the Williamstown Meeting House on Main Street. The new organization offers non-food necessities and help those in need connect with other social service agencies.

 

Town government lost one of its longtime staples when Health Inspector Jeffrey Kennedy retired this summer. Kennedy was a fixture at Town Hall for 28 years and Milne Library Director Pat MacLeod announced her retirement in the new year. 

 

The town also said goodbye to two other longtime public servants who died in 2023: former Williamstown Elementary School principal, Select Board member and executive director of the Williamstown Youth Center David Rempell and former police chief and veterans advocate Mike Kennedy.