North Adams Council Debates Need for Ordinance Reviews
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Whether some proposed ordinance changes should get review generated quite a bit of debate at Tuesday's City Council meeting.
The first was a request from the Public Arts Commission to amend city code to include the terms "interior or exterior" to the definition of public art. The ordinance currently reads just "any work" accessible to the public.
The issue had been referred to the General Government Committee at an earlier meeting but that committee had not yet met. Chair Wayne Wilkinson said "because it was such a small change we are hoping to piggyback it with something else."
But it's been difficult to get the committee together during the summer, he continued.
But fellow committee member Councilor Ashley Shade questioned why review was needed at all.
"The language here is so simple that I think we can just all agree to vote on it now without needing to go through your committee," she said.
Council President Lisa Blackmer said she would prefer it go to committee because of the public arts ordinance is relatively new and has had a number of changes since.
The council then voted to refer it and have it come back by the first meeting in September.
The second change was requested by the Airport Commission through Mayor Jennifer Macksey regarding the composition of Airport Commission. The amendment would require the commission have at least one person with experience in aeronautics rather than two with "aviation or airport management experience" as had been amended in 2021.
The mayor said this would also bring the ordinance into alignment with Mass General Law.
When the amendment came up for a vote to passed to a second reading, Wilkinson objected.
"We were just discussing since there's a change in ordinance sending it to General Government," he said, referring to the public arts ordinance. "Now we're going to skip that?"
Wilkinson said from his remembrance the commissioners had wanted two members with experience and they had felt strongly about it. The mayor responded that this had came from the current commission because it is trying to fill seats and there is only one pilot on the commission now.
Councilor Jennifer Barbeau agreed with Wilkinson, noting one reason for the initial change was to open up opportunities to bring in someone from the surrounding town.
"I don't know I still have questions," Wilkinson said. "I like to see a quote in general government."
This, too, was referred to General Government and to come back to council the first meeting in September.
In addition, Councilor Marie T. Harpin said the ordinances aren't updated on the city website, pointing out the older version of the Airport Commission is still there.
"What's on there right now doesn't even show what happened a year ago," she said. "If this is what we're looking to do, maybe we can do this and do it correctly, and post it correctly so that the people in our community knows what's going on in our city government."
The new short-term rental ordinance also is not updated in the city's code online.
"If people are coming into the city and possibly looking to run a short-term rental, how would they know what our ordinance is?" said Harpin. "Because right now, there's nothing there."
Councilor Bryan Sapienza said he'd run into the same issue with outdated ordinances.
"I found that out recently when researching the taxi ordinance that we're currently revising," he said. "There were sections that were taken out but were never taken out of the online version."
Blackmer said the city clerk had submitted 13 ordinances for updating on eCode360, which manages the city's online code.
"I do agree with that being current, I don't think a few weeks is going to be make make that much of a difference," she said.
Harpin said those 13 ordinances and amendment updates were from 2020 and 2021 and that being that far behind reflected poorly on the city.
"I think it should be a priority for us to update them as we're entering in new ordinances or ordinance changes instead of just keep piling them up," she said. "I think we need to be aware of that."
She added that is has been very frustrating to get things moving through council, noting that the fee schedule has been on the agenda for four years. Shade was right, she said, in that they should just pass simple language.
"When do we start taking action? We were elected as councilors and decision makers of the city," Harpin said. "When are we going to start making decisions. This is easy. The mayor just said it was referred to her from the commission. This is what they were looking for."
Shade, however, said she couldn't agree with Harpin on the Airport Commission composition, feeling it was more complex than adding some wordage to the public arts ordinance.
"With that said I will agree with Councilor Harpin that we need to have a more defined process on how our ordinances get updated online, what the process is, and we should have some kind of understanding of how that happens," she said. "Everybody needs to know what the laws are in the community so that they can follow them otherwise we can't expect people to follow the law."
Harpin had made a motion to pass the Airport Commission amendment to a second reading; it failed with 3-5, with Barbeau and Councilor Peter Oleskiewicz joining her. A motion was then made by Wilkinson to refer to General Government, with the same three voting against.
