Return to Normalcy Makes Pittsfield COVID Rates Rise

By Brittany PolitoiBerkshires Staff
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PITTSFIELD, Mass. — A return to normalcy has caused COVID-19 cases to rise in the city but health officials are not alarmed.

During Tuesday's City Council meeting, Director of Public Health Andy Cambi compared metrics from this summer and last summer.  

On Monday the percent positivity rate was 12.5 and the average case rate was 36.1 cases per 100,000. On the same day last year, the percent positivity rate was 2.4 and the average case rate was 11.1 cases per 100,000.

"What we're seeing this summer around is that we did see a slight increase in the daily cases in the couple of months that you had, June and July," he said.

"Nothing that caused concern for me to say, 'OK, we need to reconvene and we need to issue mask mandates or shut down businesses.' I think the difference this summer was we returned to more to normal activities, we had the great Fourth of July parade, we had a lot of gatherings, we had a lot of less restrictive travel."

Cambi added that because of this, the city started seeing "much higher" numbers than in the summer of 2021.  

Though the metrics have increased, patients haven't. There were around 10 hospitalizations this time last summer and that number remains roughly the same. There are currently 13 patients hospitalized at Berkshire Medical Center with the virus.


For the most part, the city has remained in the red incidence rate for transmission since late last year.  There was some reprieve in spring when Pittsfield briefly dropped into the yellow. 

Because the state's Stop the Spread program that provided free PCR tests to everyone was scaled back, people are now testing from home more frequently. Because of this, the city's Biobot sewage testing is said to be the most accurate representation of the virus' prominence.

Last year there were about 92.3 thousand copies per liter of the virus in the sewage and on Monday there were 1.1 million copies per liter.

"I think it's important to take a look at what we're seeing this past couple of days because we've seen a steep incline in the virus concentration that doubled in the copies per liter," Cambi said, adding that residents need to be prepared to take proper precautions if necessary.

He urged eligible residents to get a booster shot for their COVID-19 vaccinations and pointed out that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control created a booster tool to assist in the process.

Cambi also announced that the city has hired Gabrielle DiMassimo as a community health worker who will also help with contact tracing and that the expiration for at-home test kits was extended.


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Pittsfield School Officials Dig Into 'Not Ideal' FY25 Budget

By Brittany PolitoiBerkshires Staff

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — School officials dug into the $3.6 million in reductions proposed for fiscal year 2025 to bridge the funding gap.

Superintendent Joseph Curtis reiterated that the $80 million spending plan is not ideal but assured that the district will continue to serve its community with pride, purpose, compassion, and understanding.

"All the people here this evening went through an extensive process with no less than three meetings to really discuss and analyze and put forth proposals in a sense of reimagining their schools in the best interest of students and our district and school leaders brought forth many ideas using the resources that we have now with greater refinement and purpose and we went through that process with every bit of hope that we would have an intention or an opportunity to carry out some of those discussions and ideas that our leaders brought forth," he said to the School Committee on Wednesday.

"We learned when a budget was released that none of that — or a good deal of that, I'll use that — would be possible and so the budget I'm going to present to you today in great detail is in no way a budget that presents opportunity like we were discussing originally."

He explained that from every struggle the district experiences, opportunity can "certainly" be created and there have been many times in his 30 tenure with the district that it has been.

"And so we want to assure the committee as you will hear from our district and school leaders today that no matter what our circumstance, we will continue to serve children, families, and the community with every bit of pride and purpose that we have now," Curtis added.

"That we will continue to do that with compassion and understanding and that somehow we will get through this. And we know we'll get through this with your support."

Following the budget conversation with the committee, there was a workshop during which different groups spoke in detail about aspects of the proposal.

The district is anticipating a 3.5 percent increase from the FY24 city appropriation of $78,088,016, totaling $80,821,096. With more than $6.3 million in anticipated contractual increases and additional obligations, this creates a local budget shortfall of nearly $3.6 million.

Contractual obligations make up for $4.4 million of the budget drivers and special education out-of-district tuition costs more than $1 million due to additional students being educated out of the district, PPS being responsible for the full cost share, and a lower rate of inflation increase.

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