With Michael Wynn’s 16-year tenure as chief over as of July 8th, Mayor Linda Tyer has appointed Captain Thomas Dawley to the role on an interim basis. In the interest of attracting more candidates to the job, Tyer says the city must rewrite its bylaws to end the residency requirement for police chief and to increase pay for the position — but she’s found opposition to both measures in the city council. On Tuesday night, Ward 1 city councilor Kenny Warren suggested putting the former to residents of Pittsfield in the form of a ballot question for this year’s election.
“This is a thing that the voters can address," he said. "If they can figure out whether our mayor's term should be raised from two years or four years, they can figure out whether our public safety people should be residing in the city of Pittsfield.”
Warren said the source of the residency requirement for the police chief dates back to 1947.
“It says, all members of the police department, including the reserve police force which we had at that time, shall be residents and citizens of Pittsfield," read Warren. "That's in 1947. That was all the police. Obviously, we've gravitated to have a little flexibility in there. So, we have something that's been around since 1947. So, I would think that if you're thinking of changing something, you'd want to at least see what the voters think.”
In Warren’s language, the question to voters would be “Shall the City eliminate the restriction requiring certain public safety management positions to reside in the City,” with the positions in question referring to the police chief, fire chief, and commissioner of public works.
At-large city councilor Earl Persip said he wanted to see the question’s language clarified before weighing in on the merits of putting it on the ballot.
“This is too unclear for me right now," he told his colleagues. "The question is just too vague. It doesn't give me a what a yes vote does what a no vote does. It's not a true ballot question form. So, it's hard to vote on that. I think we put ourselves back into the debacle of the bike lane being on the ballot.”
Ward 3’s Kevin Sherman objected to the larger issue of even putting the question to voters in the first place.
“On November, the day before the election, what happens every single year when we have ballot questions, referendum, state or not, what happens in my experience as the chairman of the democratic city committee, is, I have neighbors and family members calling me, what am I doing on the questions by the way?" he said. "They call me the day before. What am I doing on that question, by the way? And I don't think that's a way to build good government, is to have a crap shoot at the last minute.”
Resident Meg Bossong, long a vocal critic of the Pittsfield Police Department over its murky finances and continuously rising budget, opposes removing the residency requirement and would support the existing policy be once again extended to all members of the force.
“I want to speak to the attitude of this department and public comments about the people of Pittsfield who it polices," she told the council. "We have seen this department refer to the neighborhoods of the West Side and downtown Pittsfield as a dense urban core. It is not. And it is really important that when we begin to think about policing that people be a part of the community that they are policing.”
Bossong noted that the PPD, which has seen its line item steadily increase, had spent not only the $11.9 million it was allotted in the fiscal year 2023 budget, but an additional $850,000 in overtime.
“If the reason that people don't want to live in the city of Pittsfield is about poor-quality city services and insufficient services for residents or insufficient schools, then the city needs to be spending more money on those services and less money on the department itself," said Bossong. "And last but not least, there is no public involvement in the negotiation of the union contracts for the police department, whether the patrol officers or the supervisors. The mayor's administration has continued to boost this budget every year. This council has signed off on every budgetary overrun for this department. There is no police advisory review board, and when we had one, it was toothless. And frankly, at this point, the police chief's having to look us in the eye at Big Y is the only accountability measure that we have.”
The council unanimously endorsed sending the question to the city solicitor for another pass at its language before its next meeting on August 15th.
