Friday, May 9
WILLIAMSTOWN -- Three incumbents are facing opposition in the town's first-ever Planning Board election, and voters will need to decide on Tuesday whether swapping experience for fresh blood is the best decision for the town.

Eight candidates are contending for one of five positions on the board.

On Wednesday, each of the Planning Board candidates spoke about what he or she hoped voters would consider before entering the polls.

Incumbent Richard "Dick" DeMayo, running unopposed, said he is concerned voters might elect every one of the three newcomers onto the Planning Board over their experienced opponents and lessen the effectiveness of a strong board.

"I'm not trying to short-change them, they're all bright people," DeMayo, of Bonnie Lea horse farm on North Street, said of the new candidates -- one of whom, Andrew Hogeland, is a conservation commissioner.

"It just takes a while to know the way a committee or a board works and it requires a whole lot of training. If all three new people got on, it would be very difficult to do public hearings and that sort of thing," he said.

Prior to last year's annual town meeting decision to hold Planning Board

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elections, the Selectmen appointed the board's members. The upcoming election is different than the Planning Board elections that will follow, because each position has a different term length and candidates may only run for one position. In addition, all positions are open, according to the election rules a majority of townspeople agreed to last year.

Incumbent Patrick Dunlavey is running unopposed for a one-year seat; Ann McCallum and incumbent John Holden are vying for the two-year seat; Hoge-land and George Sarrouf are competing for a three-year seat; Nicholas Wright and incumbent Christopher Winters are competing for a four-year seat; and DeMayo is running unopposed for the five-year seat.

After this year's election, candidates will run for openings on the board for the usual term length of five years.

Sarrouf said he would like to see all the present board members reelected.

"I think it would be beneficial for the town if the incumbents were left in office for this period of time because they're familiar with the projects at hand," Sarrouf, of Sand Springs Road, said.

The board has been handling a few complex tasks in recent months, including the drafting of a new bylaw designed to preserve "open space" in town, which voters will decide upon at the annual town meeting on May 20 at the elementary school at 7 p.m.

"It really takes a good two years to get a handle on all the town's bylaws," Sarrouf, a retired engineer and educator, said. "And, right now, the board is familiar with one another. We don't always agree, but we complement each other."

Winters, of Church Street, said he believed the variety of viewpoints on the board has led to healthy disagreements that have ultimately resulted in smart decisions on town matters. Winters was the sole opponent to the decision to put the open space bylaw to a vote at town meeting this year, for example, but his concerns are ones other board members have promised to continue to address if the law passes.

Winters, the director for institutional research at Williams College, said voters should also consider that his opponent, Wright, of Old Farm Road, is one of the dozen Williamstown residents who have been seeking to sue the Planning Board since 2006 for the board's decision to approve plans for a proposed eight-lot housing development off Bee Hill Road. Bee Hill's narrow dirt road, the plaintiffs have claimed, is too dangerous to allow construction vehicles access to the "Foxwood" development site. The land court judge has yet to make his determination on the case. Winters was not on the Planning Board at the time of the decision in question.

Wright, a retired epidemiologist, said his ties to the court case would not affect his judgment as a Planning Board member.

"The Massachusetts Ethics Board has already ruled in the case of Ron Turbin, now a Williamstown selectman, that his participation in the suit did not disqualify him from town office," Wright said. "My candidacy is similarly covered, with the proviso that, if elected, I must recuse myself if the Foxwood drive matter returns to the Planning Board."

Nearly all candidates seemed to agree that the Planning Board could do more work than it does now, including meeting more than once a month. McCallum of Main Street, who is an architect at Burr and McCallum Architects and an art lecturer at Williams College, has proposed a project for the Planning Board that would assemble another development bylaw designed to promote "healthy" growth in addition to the open space bylaw.

"Why not allow two dwelling units on every lot in the more populated center of town?" McCallum asked in a prepared statement she read during a candidates forum last week. "By allowing people to build a detached second unit, possibly over their garages or even a little separate cottage ... the benefits are many."

She listed those as: Allowing aging homeowners with increasing tax bills to stay on their properties, increasing density where the town's master plan calls for it, increasing "much-needed" rental stock and getting more use out of existing town infrastructure.

Holden, of Southworth Street, McCallum's opponent, has said he agrees with her ideas but hopes that voters would choose him based on his experience and contributions to the Planning Board so far.

Hogeland of Cold Spring Road, an environmental lawyer, said he would do more to publicize the Planning Board's work.

"I'd like the Planning Board to hold a series of public discussions on planning, to sit down with each of the likely interest groups and see what they have to say," Hogeland said.

The annual town election is Tuesday, May 13, from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the Williamstown Elemen-tary School gymnasium.