Last year, the event was held outside at Monument Mountain's track. However, four hours into the event, a microburst storm hit the track, destroying the event area. This year, event organizer Ray Gardino told The Berkshire Edge they are not taking any chances and will hold the event indoors.
Several who spoke against it were members of the Lake Mansfield Improvement Task Force, which spent more than 10 years working on a comprehensive plan for restoring and maintaining the lake that included a plan to close the road to vehicular traffic.
Great Barrington’s Town Meeting will be held outside, in cars. Yes, a drive-in Annual Town Meeting. We will drive up to the high school, remain in our cars, check in with the Town Clerk at a drive-through station, and park in the parking lot leaving every other space empty.
If the town meeting is not able to pass a budget by the end of the fiscal year on June 30, the town of Great Barrington, like hundreds of other small municipalities in the state with a town-meeting form of government, has a problem.
The Great Barrington Selectboard, Cutting Edge AV Inc. in Lee and Monument Mountain Regional High School staff are busy this week arranging for an outdoor sound system and an FM radio broadcast of the meeting, which voters can follow in their cars.
"Our biggest mistake was that even though we've made countless memories together, we didn't make more in a time of uncertainty, in a time where we can't even be together as a class and experience the things we have been looking forward to as kids: prom, graduation, Class Night." -Suriana Lee, valedictorian of the Lee High School class of 2020
In a letter to the editor, Mae Whaley writes, "As much as it is necessary for us to stay aware of the overt ways in which police departments across the country are contributing to racism, we cannot allow the constant images and videos of tear gas, rubber bullets and concussion grenades to lower our standards for how we expect our police to behave."