Pittsfield Councilor Objects to Appointments; Police Remove Men With Petition
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Tuesday's City Council meeting proved more eventful than its rather routine agenda foretold.
One councilor forcefully queried appointments for volunteer city panels and, later, police ended up making a guest appearance to escort two residents from City Hall.
The meeting began with Ward 2 Councilor Charles Kronick starting a larger conversation about panel appointments after questioning and voting against a number of them.
After he voted against three appointments to the Traffic Commission — first-responder Brian Andrews, Kronick's former opponent for Ward 2 Matthew Kudlate, and Ward 5 Councilor Patrick Kavey — other councilors spoke to the need for the new members.
Kronick said he wanted to see people appointed who have experience in traffic engineering, stating that these candidates were lacking it.
"They're going in to sit in a seat where they don't have the experience to succeed," he added.
Council President Peter Marchetti called Kronick's testimony a public flogging at one point.
"I was going to do this at the end of all the appointments, but to the entire council," he said.
"We have volunteers in our community who volunteer to do these things. If you have personal issues with them, I respectfully request that you address the administration when the agenda comes out and not wait to have a public flogging of people."
Kavey defended the appointments to the commission, speaking for himself about the attention paid to Ward 5's roads and bridges over the last few years.
"As far as I'm concerned, I'm the chair of Public Works, I work with the Highway Department all the time. You have a petition in about how I have 30 percent of the work in the city going to my ward and you have 3 percent, remember you have Tyler Street happening as well, so that's not accounted for in that budget," Kavey said.
"But part of the reason that I've been able to get so much work done in my ward for the past three years is because I work with our city engineer, I go to our bridges, I go to our roads. We walk every single street ... although I might not be an engineer, I have a lot of experience seeing the issues on our roads."
Councilor at Large Peter White pointed out that he was on the Traffic Commission before he was a councilor and did a great deal of homework to be on the panel. He speculated that, based on Kronick's words, he shouldn't have been on there.
"We have residents who want to give their time to put in their input, I think that's more important than trying to stack boards with strictly people who are going to look at things from a technical standpoint," he said.
"For those technical standpoints we have our engineer, we have a commissioner and we have any city staff that may come in, I think it's a dangerous road to go down when we start putting these types of caveats and who we're going to appoint to advisory boards."
It was also pointed out that Andrews brings the perspective of a first-responder to the commission, which is valuable because he likely knows the city's roads well.
"I think the appointments are excellent," Councilor at Large Earl Persip III said. "I know everybody, I know each individual, they bring a passion to the city, I think it's important that we have people like this on commissions. That's how I started out, I actually was on the Animal Control Commission."
Not long after, the meeting went into an abrupt recess to have two members of the public removed by police.
The two men had previously expressed interest in speaking during the meeting to City Clerk Michele Benjamin but did not sign the sheet for open microphone. When they were denied the platform in the middle of the meeting due to procedural restraints, one became upset.
The men, who were later identified on Twitter by WAMC's Josh Landes as LeMarr Talley and Gary Jackson, wanted to present issues related to rental properties in the city.
During the recess from public access, Talley spoke of a situation with Cavalier Management and an apartment complex at 68 Union St. From what can be heard in iBerkshire's recording, he claimed that Cavalier only spent half a multimillion-dollar loan it got for the properties a decade ago.
He can also be heard referencing Barrington Stage Company and gentrification, saying the street wasn't cared about until the theater company came in.
Landes later confirmed that they wanted to present a petition that called on the city to inspect Pittsfield landlords neglecting to care for their properties.
For just under 10 minutes, there was dialogue between Talley, council members, and the police as they tried to de-escalate the situation and return to the meeting.
"I got all ya'll numbers, y'all crooked," Talley said to the council, expressing that he felt cheated out of his time and just wanted to be heard.
Tags: appointments,
