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Monday marked the night when the Select Board was scheduled to make its advisory votes on all the questions that will come before the town in June.
On what promises to be the most controversial issue up for discussion, the board broke with the Planning Board, voting 4-1 against recommendation of the cannabis cultivation bylaw that the planners focused on for the past year.
There were a few other dissenting votes on the Select Board, which generally voted in favor of recommending all the other articles on the draft warrant it considered.
But the panel stopped short of asking voters this year whether they approve of a stipend for Select Board members. ....
16:28 The national reckoning with racial justice and police brutality has led to a conversation about the role of law enforcement in New England communities. The May 2020 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody sparked protests across the nation, including in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where residents worked to bring that conversation home. Residents formed the Racial Justice Police Reform Group in July. They also pushed the town to establish the Advisory Committee for Diversity, Inclusion and Racial Equity, or DIRE, that same month to lead discussion in the town of 7,500. One of their first tasks was to cut the police budget, a move that then-police chief Kyle Johnson resisted. ....
Williamstown Town Manager Stepping Down iberkshires.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from iberkshires.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
In a separate conversation, the board and town manager agreed to extend a search for volunteers to serve an advisory committee to help Town Manager Jason Hoch select an interim chief for the Police Department.
The investigation was sparked by a lawsuit filed in August by Police Sgt. Scott McGowan. The suit subsequently was dropped in December, and the board decided this winter to proceed with an independent, third-party probe into the issues McGowan raised, some going back 10 years.
Andy Hogeland took the point for the board on soliciting potential investigators. On Monday, he shared the responses from interested firms to questions raised by the board at its last meeting. ....
And one member of the five-person Select Board will be leaving his post a year ahead of schedule.
Those were the surprises to emerge from a meeting that mostly focused on the town s efforts to investigate accusations of wrongdoing in its police department and develop a plan to replace its recently retired chief.
Patton later said the town is just at the start of investigating the latest complaint and she was not at liberty to provide any details, including the department where the accusation arose.
But in her initial announcement, she did refer to another town department, implying that the new complaint is outside the Williamstown Police Department, which has been under the microscope townwide since August s announcement of a federal discrimination lawsuit brought by a sergeant in the department. ....