Pittsfield Ward 7 Candidates Mull Mosquito Control, Homelessness
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Candidates for Ward 7 found common ground on a couple of topics during Thursday's debate sponsored by Pittsfield Community Television and iBerkshires.
Anthony Maffuccio and Katherine Nagy Moody agreed that the city does not have enough support for unhoused community members and oppose the city's contracting with the Berkshire County Mosquito Control Project for mosquito control.
Maffuccio has petitioned against the program in the past.
"I think it's a waste of taxpayer money," he said.
"I don't think we get the benefit out of it, from what they tell us. I don't think the scientific data is there to prove that spraying takes care of the mosquito population. They have a lot of unanswered questions."
Moody's campaign page says, that if elected, "I do solemnly swear to use all my science skills and powers of debate to defund the Berkshire County Mosquito Project's poison spraying program."
"I served on the mosquito advisory board under the Bianchi administration. We were tasked with figuring out if spraying adulticide into the air from the back of trucks is an effective and safe method of mitigating the mosquito population," she said.
"My research and data show that not only is the adulticide sprayed from the back of the trucks not safe, it is a carcinogen, it does not mitigate adult mosquito populations, and not only that, the adulticide kills every bug in sight."
The council voted to discontinue mosquito spraying in 2021, and it has been a contentious issue. The city's mosquito plan triggers adulticide spraying when isolates are detected for two or more consecutive weeks within one focal area, or a moderate risk for human infection is assigned by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
The debate in Berkshire Community College's Boland Theater was moderated by Bob Heck, PCTV and WTBR's coordinator of advancement and community production.
Maffuccio served five non-consecutive terms in Ward 7 and was ousted in the election. He works as an associate with the Aldi Corp. and is returning because he missed serving the community and ward residents.
"I would like to put this out there so everybody knows: I'm in good health," he said.
"I did have a spot where I missed three months, three and a half months, because I had some medical issues in my last term, but you had the confidence in me to support me for 10 years serving as your Ward 7 councilor."
Moody was raised in Ward 7, "the stomping ground of my youth and my place of peace in adulthood," and wants to serve its constituents. She is an engineer for the U.S. Department of Defense and takes great pride in serving the United States and ensuring service members have the tools they need.
"With my degree in biology, I bring research and scientific training with nearly 20 years of IT and engineering experience," she said.
"I'm adept at project management, long-term planning, making decisions based on facts, data, and research, and budget control."
Both candidates agreed that the city doesn't have enough resources available for unhoused community members, and that the city must establish a place where people are allowed to camp before enacting a camping ordinance.
"I think clearly right now, the answer is, no, we don't have enough [resources,] and the homeless situation in Pittsfield is never going to be solved with one lump sum of anything," Moody said.
"… How do you eat an elephant? You eat it one bite at a time, so let's divide off into our areas of expertise and figure out what we can do in this area. Right now, I would not vote for the camping ordinance until an authorized encampment zone is in place. We cannot criminalize being homeless; however, behaviors that are happening right now cannot be allowed to continue to ruin the resources that are meant for the many by a few people's bad choices.
"Those bad choices are already illegal, and we should be enforcing those bad choices and bad activities."
She would like to see the city's Opiate Settlement funds used to help folks who are in the most need of it.
"I believe that the authorized encampment zone that I am proposing should be partially funded by those dollars, and that a way of self-policing of the population there could be managed," she said.
Regarding resources, Maffuccio said Pittsfield has never had enough.
"It's a growing issue throughout the whole United States. We have a big issue in the city of Pittsfield with homelessness. It started in 2020, and it's just been escalating, and then it keeps on escalating year after year. Do I have the answers? No," he explained.
"We need more resources. We need more mental health services. We need more shelter beds. We need things put in place so that we're able to secure enough resources. The problem is, those resources are scarce, also, so there is no clear answer here."
He would also like to see an encampment zone established.
"The thing is, how do we get there? Who's going to be responsible for the enforcement in that encampment, if we have that encampment? But something needs to be done," Maffuccio said.
"… There are some laws in place now that can punish bad behavior. That we have to take into consideration, and that bad behavior needs to be punished."
Maffuccio was asked about his 2021 resignation from the Homelessness Advisory Committee.
"The reason why I stepped down from the homeless committee at the time is because they developed the homeless committee, which I helped spearhead, because at the time it was during COVID, and we had that population, and we had that open up the St. Joe's shelter," he said, referring to the temporary shelter opened in the former St. Joseph's High School.
"I resigned from that board because I did not think that they were being useful to the homeless community. As far as I was concerned, when I sat on that board, watched those meetings, I think those meetings were a waste of time. By the end of it, we never came to a resolution. There was just a bunch of talk, and that was it. No resolutions, no plans to move forward."
Moody believes that when you join a committee, you have a commitment to stick around.
"And when things get tough, you need to stay and do your best to affect change from within," she said.
"So when I am appointed to committees, I will not be resigning because I don't like the way they're going. I will be using my leadership skills to guide the committee towards effective and helpful resolutions."
Tags: debate, municipal election, Pittsfield city council ,
