After Monday’s special election, Robert Collins is the newest member of the five-person Dalton, Massachusetts select board. The landscaper and forester won in a four-way race to replace board member Joe Diver, who stepped down in late 2024 when he moved out of the Central Berkshire community. After an unsuccessful bid for the board in 2024, Collins’ victory means he’ll serve out the remaining three months of Diver’s term.
Collins says he intends to run for a full three-year term in the annual town election on May 12th. He tells WAMC one of his top priorities is to stabilize Dalton’s ability to respond to pressing concerns.
COLLINS: The town has, for the last few years, has always been in crisis mode for every major thing that has come up. And lately, it's the new police station or safety complex. And with some planning, a five-year, 10-year planning, townspeople could have seen this coming. I'm hoping to promote and get departments moving forward with planning purposes and putting on paper projections of what we can expect in 3, 5, 10 years that department heads will need or want. And so, when they need, or necessity does come up, it's not a crisis, and it's not like, oh, my God, where'd this come from?
WAMC: Now, something we heard a lot about during the election was taxes in Dalton. Can you speak on that a little bit? There's a lot of cost of living concerns out there- What's your take on the current tax situation in town?
Dalton is a highly- 53% of the homeowners in Dalton are elderly, retired, fixed income people. The town doesn't have the expansion ability to grow any larger. I mean, we have a total of seven possible building lots in town to build houses. The infrastructure is all there, but we just don't have the open space.
Now, there's also a lot of conversation in the Berkshires, as always, about working with other communities, consolidating services. Dalton has a close relationship with some of the communities around it- What are your thoughts on that kind of regional aspect of how Dalton can work with the larger Berkshire community?
I campaigned on regionalization. It's the wave of the future, and I also believe that, between the state and federal governments, that they're looking to try to get the smaller communities to regionalized for a number of reasons. One is the availability of monies. If you have two or three towns that are sharing a police force or an ambulance service, then when the feds or the state allocate funds to these departments, they don't have to allocate it to four departments. They can possibly allocate a larger amount to one department that they know is covering two or three or four towns. So, I believe in the near future, I believe Dalton's ambulance department needs to become very aggressive on becoming regionalized and covering, possibly incorporating with Hinsdale, Windsor, Peru, possibly even Middlefield to encourage- But at the same time, the taxpayers in those towns are going to have to understand that it's not a not a free service, and that there should be a contract service with whichever department head or department is going to head that regionalized company. Maybe there can be a set fee from each town that would allocate money to the ambulance services, and then that ambulance service, per the regs, can do insurance billing for their calls, but we'll have a fixed budget that they can count on every year to keep their doors open and the lights on.
Now, what's your message to the larger Dalton community with the special election behind you? It was a good opportunity for folks to hear these different viewpoints on what's going on in town- What's your larger message to the Dalton community in the wake of your victory?
Well, I mean, at this time, I have to come up with a plan and try to implement my agenda. I’ve got about three months before I'm back up for election. I need to pick the task that I can feel that I can best suit the town the quickest to show that I can get stuff done. I think reimplementing the stormwater management committee is a big priority. I think we can get that done. Possibly implement FlashVote, which is a huge addition that we could get the word out to the public and get their opinion in short time and be very efficient on what the community feels on certain topics. Those are two of my major things that I think I'd like to try to get done right out of the box and the gate. And then, consider in moving forward, trying to help the ambulance service in our town to help them come up with a plan. If regionalization is that, I'd like to help them and be on the forefront of that, with the town side of it. And if I can get half of that done, I think the community and my voters and supporters would see that I am active and proactive, and I am trying to do my best, but I have a short window to try to prove myself. The other thing is, I still plan to continue my hours, my meeting hours, and I'll be moving them to the Callahan Room on Thursdays, from 5 to 6 every week. And I'll adjust accordingly if people aren't coming, or if, every two weeks works, I'll adjust it, but for the time being, I'll stick to having community hours from 5 to 6 at the Callahan Room to listen to people's concerns, questions, and see what I can do.
