West Stockbridge — State Rep. Leigh Davis (D – 3rd Berkshire District) briefed West Stockbridge Select Board members on the town’s seasonal community designation during the board’s March 2 meeting. Seasonal community designation is part of the Affordable Homes Act signed by Gov. Maura Healey in August 2024. The legislation authorized $5.16 billion in spending over five years and includes provisions for municipalities designated as “seasonal communities.” In order for a town to access these provisions, it must vote to adopt the designation.
When the Affordable Homes Act was first signed, eight towns in Berkshire County met the 40 percent threshold of seasonal housing. West Stockbridge was not included in this initial round. After Rep. Davis and the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission advocated for a regional solution, Housing and Livable Communities designated 10 additional towns as seasonal communities in a second round of assessments, this time including West Stockbridge.
“So why this matters is that we’re really addressing housing from a regional perspective and obviously with West Stockbridge, we are focused on: What does that mean? If a town were to adopt a seasonal community designation and bring it in so quickly—the real framing about adopting a seasonal community designation is that we’re not approving swaths of development,” Rep. Davis explained. “What we’re doing is we are recognizing that we want access to state-authorized tools and funding to protect year-round housing. So the state is stepping up and saying we recognize that there’s a lot of seasonal pressures going on and we are going to give you the tools and the policies to do that.”
Should the town adopt the seasonal community designation, it would have to amend town zoning laws. The first of which would include allowing for year-round attainable housing on existing undersized lots. Lot size alone cannot deter development. Second, zoning laws will have to allow the development of tiny homes by right, only for year-round occupancy. This excludes mobile tiny homes. A tiny home per the Affordable Homes Act is a detached dwelling unit of 400 square feet or less.
The town will have 24 months from adoption to make these reforms.
In terms of provisions provided by the state, “If a community adopts the seasonal community designation, it opens them up to funding from the state. We have something called the Capital Investment Plan, which is a seasonal community grant program. The governor has made up to $4 million available to seasonal communities that have signed up in the [fiscal year] ’26 and ’27 budgets to support [seasonal communities]—so $2 million each fiscal year. This grant program, it is already in process with the 14 communities that have accepted their designation, and the grants are ranging anywhere from $50,000 to $175,000, dependent on population. So again, the state is giving each town some seed money to go then work on protecting housing to make sure it remains something for the workforce and making sure that it doesn’t go to seasonals.”
Additionally, according to Rep. Davis, “You can opt into residential exemption in terms of shifting the taxes from year round from one population to another. So people that have seasonal homes, they would actually pay more in property tax. That is an option; that is not something that a town needs to do.”
Adopting the seasonal community designation also allows a town to set year-round occupancy restrictions and establish a year-round housing trust fund for attainable housing. “[The seasonal community designation] is something I feel very, very comfortable advocating for and very comfortable that if there’s any questions, you can talk to me and I can facilitate more conversations, or you can talk directly to the executive office of Housing and Livability Communities because they want to protect housing; they want to protect workforce housing and affordable housing and make sure that we can all continue to live here,” stated Rep. Davis.
With the approach of annual town meeting dates, the seasonal community designation is becoming a recurring topic of town committee meetings throughout Berkshire County. The Housatonic Improvement Committee recently submitted a positive recommendation for the seasonal community designation to the Great Barrington Selectboard.
Interested parties can search for designated seasonal communities here.
Select Board votes to pause Wiseacre Farm odor reporting
Earlier in the evening, John David, the legal representative of Wiseacre Farm, spoke on behalf of Wiseacre, asking for a moratorium on reporting complaints to the town.
“I have formed an abstract over the last two years of reporting, and as one would expect, there hasn’t been any—as far as I recall—any reports made prior to July. If we want to put a moratorium on this, until either the earlier of the first reported report made, or the first of July. … I wouldn’t expect any complaints to suddenly start happening earlier,” stated David.
Select Board members voted in favor of the moratorium, agreeing that Wiseacre will continue reporting to the town on July 1. Discussion of the duration of this year’s round of reporting was tabled, with board member Kathleen Keresey stating, “We don’t know what the grow season is going to be next year or what the end of the cycle is going to be.”
The next West Stockbridge Select Board meeting (open session) is scheduled for Monday, March 16 at 6 p.m.
