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Williamstown Board of Health Seeks Amicable End to Dispute
By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Board of Health on Monday discussed how to communicate with a resident about an order to deal with a nuisance on their Simonds Road property.
Jean Rand stormed out of the Town Hall meeting room after a brief and contentious appearance before the board regarding her home at 1033 Simonds Road.
The property had been subject to a condemnation order from the Health Department in September 2022. And while most of the issues at the home have been resolved, one item remains: a pile of wood that the town believes is a nuisance and health hazard.
Health Inspector Ruth Russell gave the board a timeline of town's involvement with the property, including her December 2023 decision to rescind the order of condemnation, which Russell says was replaced with an order to abate a nuisance, "allowing them to go back in the home but with some orders for outside the home."
One was an order to deal with non-sanitary conditions on the grounds of the property, specifically a wood pile that was a "potential source of rodent harborage," Russell said. She showed the board a letter from June 2023 from the town asking that the wood be stacked properly.
Rand contended that the Board of Health had completely cleared the property in its September 2023 meeting and indicated that the town was harassing her.
"We had agreed that as long as everything else on the property was done, I was going to be done with this, and here I am today," Rand told the board. "I've bent over backward. … Yet I'm still being harassed."
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