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Commissioner of Public Services and Utilities David Turocy spent much of Tuesday's meeting answering the City Council's questions about line painting.

Pittsfield Council Upset With Faded Street Lines & Crosswalks

By Andy McKeeveriBerkshires Staff
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PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The City Council is upset that just weeks before school starts, the city's crosswalks have not been repainted. And they probably won't be done this year.
 
Ward 4 Councilor Christopher Connell filed a petition asking for a schedule for line painting after noticing areas throughout the city where the paint has worn  away and the crosswalks are faded. His concern is that the city could be incurring liability should there be an accident or a pedestrian gets run down when trying to cross the road.
 
"Are we responsible as a city because we haven't properly labeled it?" Connell said. "In my six years as a city councilor, I have never seen line painting going this long into the summer."
 
Connell specifically cited the intersection of Elm, Fourth, and East streets as an area where the lines had faded. Ward 2 Councilor Kevin Morandi cited the same thing with the intersection of Dalton and Hubbard Avenues.
 
"I've been around the city, I've seen the crosswalks, and they are disgusting. It is unacceptable," Morandi said. "We pay for services and we expect them to be done ... We've got school in three weeks, those crosswalks have to be done."
 
Commissioner of Public Services and Utilities David Turocy didn't have an answer that would appease Connell or Morandi. Turocy said the bid for the work won't go out until the spring. He said the department had been backlogged with work this summer and fell behind on preparing the bid. 
 
"We prioritized getting the street improvement bid out," he said, and when one was sent to the purchasing department to go out, it got lost in paperwork and never did.
 
"We don't have a contractor in place right now so there is nothing we can do."
 
Turocy is planning on bidding the work out in March, hoping to bring a contractor on early to help ensure the work itself is done in a timely fashion next summer.
 
"The goal is to put that out in March and we can say we want this part of the project done by July 1, and this part done before school starts," Turocy said.
 
One factor in the delay is that the city has been without a city engineer all summer after the last one left. The department took longer than expected in crafting a bid, which includes first making an assessment of which roads need it and then including types of paints to write into the contract. 
 
Connell, however, said while he understands determining which side streets require new paint takes some time, he didn't think it should take an engineer to put out a bid for crosswalks and intersections that are routinely repainted. Councilor at Large Melissa Mazzeo said there has to be a better system to have that kind of information mostly done every spring.
 
"Every year it seems this is an issue and I'm thinking we have got to figure this out by now. I don't think it is as hard as we are making it," Mazzeo said.

Ward 5 Councilor Donna Todd Rivers advocated for a program similar to the pavement management system which ranks and schedules roads for work and updated with newer information every year.
 
Turocy agreed that there needs to be a more efficient system for line painting. At this point, he said he is still in the process of figuring out which types of paints work best for different areas. 
 
"It is not that difficult, we just need the time to do that," Turocy said. "We're still learning and trying these paints to see how long they last. Some of it is the paint, some of it is the traffic on it."
 
None of that, however, solves what some of the city councilors see is a problem this year. Connell encouraged Turocy to rent or buy a line striper and repaint at least the crosswalks in the next few weeks.
 
But the line painting wasn't the only gripe about the Department of Public Services on Tuesday. After a long-fought battle over handicapped parking, Connell finally received approval from the full City Council to increase the number of handicapped spaces on downtown streets in May. That also hasn't been done.
 
Particularly, the City Council expressed concern over a handicapped spot on North Street, right where East Street turns onto the road. There were two spots there and one was removed — but not the one closest to the corner.
 
"There are two handicapped parking spaces around that corner, which I call deadman's curve, and the first one is the most dangerous and we took the other one out," Connell said.
 
Resident William Sturgeon had issued a similar complaint earlier in the night saying he recently helped get a woman's walker out of the back seat of a car and found himself in oncoming traffic.
 
"It is has been plus two months since this council voted to start the process," he said. 
 
Turocy did have an answer for that though: the week of Aug. 21. That is the week the new handicapped parking spots will go in.

Tags: crosswalk,   parking,   roads,   

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Crosby/Conte Statement of Interest Gets OK From Council

By Brittany PolitoiBerkshires Staff

Architect Carl Franceschi and Superintendent Joseph Curtis address the City Council on Tuesday.

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — With the approval of all necessary bodies, the school district will submit a statement of interest for a combined build on the site of Crosby Elementary School.

The City Council on Tuesday unanimously gave Superintendent Joseph Curtis the green light for the SOI to the Massachusetts School Building Authority by April 12.

"The statement I would make is we should have learned by our mistakes in the past," Mayor Peter Marchetti said.

"Twenty years ago, we could have built a wastewater treatment plant a lot cheaper than we could a couple of years ago and we can wait 10 years and get in line to build a new school or we can start now and, hopefully, when we get into that process and be able to do it cheaper then we can do a decade from now."

The proposal rebuilds Conte Community School and Crosby on the West Street site with shared facilities, as both have outdated campuses, insufficient layouts, and need significant repair. A rough timeline shows a feasibility study in 2026 with design and construction ranging from 2027 to 2028.

Following the SOI, the next step would be a feasibility study to determine the specific needs and parameters of the project, costing about $1.5 million and partially covered by the state. There is a potential for 80 percent reimbursement through the MSBA, who will decide on the project by the end of the year.

Earlier this month, city officials took a tour of both schools — some were shocked at the conditions students are learning in.

Silvio O. Conte Community School, built in 1974, is a 69,500 square foot open-concept facility that was popular in the 1960s and 1970s but the quad classroom layout poses educational and security risks.  John C. Crosby Elementary School, built in 1962, is about 69,800 square feet and was built as a junior high school so several aspects had to be adapted for elementary use.

Ward 6 Councilor Dina Lampiasi said the walkthrough was "striking" at points, particularly at Conte, and had her thinking there was no way she would want her child educated there. She recognized that not everyone has the ability to choose where their child goes to school and "we need to do better."

"The two facilities that we are looking at I think are a great place to start," she said.

"As the Ward 6 councilor, this is where my residents and my students are going to school so selfishly yes, I want to see this project happen but looking at how we are educating Pittsfield students, this is going to give us a big bang for our buck and it's going to help improve the educational experience of a vast group of students in our city."

During the tour, Ward 5 Councilor Patrick Kavey, saw where it could be difficult to pay attention in an open classroom with so much going on and imagined the struggle for students.

Councilor at Large Alisa Costa said, "we cannot afford not to do this" because the city needs schools that people want their children to attend.

"I know that every financial decision we make is tough but we have to figure this out. If the roof on your house were crumbling in, you'd have to figure it out and that's where we're at and we can't afford to wait any longer," she said.

"We can't afford for the sake of the children going to our schools, for the sake of our city that we want to see grow so we have to build a city where people want to go."

Councilor at Large Kathy Amuso, who served on the School Building Needs Commission for about 18 years, pointed out that the panel identified a need to address Conte in 2008.

Curtis addressed questions about the fate of Conte if the build were to happen, explaining that it could be kept as an active space for community use, house the Eagle Academy or the Adult Learning Center, or house the central offices.

School attendance zones are a point of discussion for the entire school district and for this project.

"At one time I think we had 36 school buildings and now we have essentially 12 and then it would go down again but in a thoughtful way," Curtis said.

Currently, eight attendance zones designate where a student will go to elementary school. Part of the vision is to collapse those zones into three with hopes of building a plan that incorporates partner schools in each attendance zone.

"I think that going from eight schools to three would be easier to maintain and I think it would make more sense but in order to get there we will have to build these buildings and we will have to spend money," Kavey said, hoping that the city would receive the 80 percent reimbursement it is vying for.

This plan for West Street, which is subject to change, has the potential to house grades pre-kindergarten to first grade in one school and Grades 2 to 4 in another with both having their own identities and administrations. 

The districtwide vision for middle school students is to divide all students into a grade five and six school and a grade seven and eight school to ensure equity.

"The vagueness of what that looks like is worrisome to some folks that I have talked to," Lampiasi said.

Curtis emphasized that these changes would have to be voted on by the School Committee and include public input.

"We've talked about it conceptually just to illustrate a possible grade span allocation," he said. "No decisions have been made at all by the School Committee, even the grade-span proposals."

School Committee Chair William Cameron said it is civic duty of the committee and council to move forward with the SOI.
 
He explained that when seven of the city's schools were renovated in the late 1990s, the community schools were only 25 years old and Crosby was 35 years old.  The commonwealth did not deem them to be sorely in need of renovation or replacement.
 
"Now 25 years later, Crosby is physically decrepit and an eyesore. It houses students ages three to 11 in a facility meant for use by teenagers,"
 
"Conte and Morningside opened in the mid-1970s. They were built as then state-of-the-art schools featuring large elongated rectangles of open instructional space. Over almost half a century, these physical arrangements have proven to be inadequate for teaching core academic skills effectively to students, many of whom need extra services and a distraction-free environment if they are to realize their full academic potential."
 
He said  the proposal addresses a serious problem in the "economically poorest, most ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse area" of the city.
 
Cameron added that these facilities have been deemed unsatisfactory and need to be replaced as part of the project to reimagine how the city can best meet the educational needs of its students.  He said it is the local government's job to move this project forward to ensure that children learn in an environment that is conducive to their thriving academically.
 
"The process of meeting this responsibility needs to begin here tonight," he said.
 
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