Ward 2 city councilor Charles Kronick saw his petition demanding a public hearing on the impact of homelessness in Pittsfield fail at the body’s September 13th meeting. He came back with a new one Tuesday night, calling on the council to postpone all funding requests and grant approvals for Pittsfield’s parks department until anti-camping laws are enforced in Springside Park.
“The parks department is not enforcing the rules of the park," said the councilor. "The park manager establishes the rules of the parks, which says no camping no fires, no drug use, no alcohol use, no living in the parks, no painting the trees, no destruction of nature in the parks. All that is happening. He's not enforcing it.”
Kronick made an anecdotal claim that unhoused encampments are spreading throughout Pittsfield, and described the situation as an emergency.
“The fundamental purpose of our city council is to represent our constituents," he said. "They own the park. In this case, they own Springside Park, not the campers, not the homeless, they don't own the park. The people who pay the taxes on the park, this their park. The purpose of government is to protect the property rights of the citizen, whether they be renters or owners. We have property rights. That's probably, if I had to choose this one thing the government is required to do, and I had to kick all the others out, human rights, whatever, kick them all out, I can choose just one, it is the protection of property rights as the essential tenant of liberty.”
“What gives taxpayers more of a right to a public park or a public right of way and someone who's homeless? Why can't they walk down the sidewalk? Why can't they go into a park?” asked Ward 5 city councilor Patrick Kavey. “Do I think they should be camping there? No. But then we go on in this petition and talk about how they should need to be removed and how the park manager needs to enforce it. The enforcers of them living in the park would be the police department. So have you thought to ask if the police department is willing to forcibly remove them? I have a feeling the answer is no. But when we sit here and we say that they can't live in our park, but we also don't want to support some type of housing where we could put them, then what's the solution? We want to take them out of the park but we don't want to house them. Are we going to put them on a bus and just send them out of the city, or are we going to give them the services they need to reintegrate back into our city society?”
Mayor Linda Tyer announced earlier this year that the city is making a historic investment in housing using a significant slice of roughly $40 million Pittsfield received in federal COVID-19 relief funding.
“I would much rather wait to see how the mayor is spending $8.6 million to combat homelessness in our community than just make assumptions and listen to hearsay about what's going on," continued Kavey. "I mean, how many of you have taken a walk- I know some of you have taken a walk through Springside Park. So, when we were at the height of the COVID pandemic, there were a lot of people camping in the park, and it was unsettling. And when you spoke to those people, they said, well, the shelters are unsafe, we don't feel like we have the services being provided to us from our community. We don't feel okay going into St. Joe shelter. Then we tried to deal with ServiceNet, and the state told us what we're only allowed to use one provider. So now, if you go into Springside Park, there are significantly less people in the park. There are still people there, but we're at least taking the strides as a city to get them into these services that they need and we're spending money on trying to make it so they can get the help they need, whether it's mental health services, addiction services, and we're trying to get them work.”
At-large city councilor Karen Kalinowsky, who has repeatedly opposed Pittsfield’s current effort to build new emergency permanent housing for the unhoused, backed Kronick’s petition.
“They scare some people," she said. "Some people are afraid. Us as a city we need to do something. You know, I don't know all that where all the answers are. But, you know, there's things that we need to do. And it doesn't mean that we don't like the homeless and we think badly of the homeless. It means something needs to get done.”
Kronick’s petition failed with the rest of the council voting against him and Kalinowsky in an 8-2 vote. Ward 7’s Anthony Maffuccio was not present.
