At its first meeting of the new term, the Pittsfield, Massachusetts city council called on Mayor Peter Marchetti to deliver a close to level-funded budget for the coming fiscal year. The petition from at-large city councilor Kathy Amuso came in response to steep tax hikes voted in by the prior council in late 2023 to fund the current $200 million budget. Marchetti, who spent years leading the body as its president, was sworn in for a four-year term as mayor on January 2nd. He opposed the petition at last Tuesday’s meeting, saying it’s too early in his administration to hold him to budgetary commitments. Before next week’s council meeting, Marchetti spoke with WAMC Berkshire Bureau Chief Josh Landes about what the vote means going forward.
MARCHETTI: Throughout the campaign, and also in my inaugural address, I discussed that I would look for ways to have government work harder and cheaper and do the steps. So, in some senses, I think that Councilor Amuso’s petition was somewhat of a, let's hold him to his campaign promises, and let's hold them to what he said in the inaugural address. She did have a conversation with me, and she gets it. She used to be the chair of the school committee, and when she was the chair of the school committee, we heard we need more money for education, we need more money for education. And so, Councilor Amuso and I had a conversation, and I think it's going to be a tough task. I don't know how close to level funded budget we can get. But I think there are avenues in places that we need to look, which, week one, the seventh day in office, those were not the time to be having those conversations. But I've heard what they said loud and clear, and we'll stick to my campaign promises, and we'll make sure that what we do delivers a budget as close to level funded as possible, but doesn't dismantle services that people expect.
WAMC: You mentioned during the meeting that some of these avenues to saving money for Pittsfield are long term, not short-term fixes, including school consolidation and reforming trash codes. Of those larger structural shifts, what might be able to come into play sooner as opposed to later?
Well, so we also talked, and we'll be meeting in the next week or two to begin the budget process – I think I’m going to a little bit earlier than what's been in past years, since this will be my first budget – but I think there are places where we can consolidate other services and we can find some ways to save dollars, whether it be in process, or we have duplication in a few places.
You've talked about working with an outside entity on reviewing efficiency across municipal departments. Who is this group that the city's working with, and what do you hope to learn from that process?
So, it's the Collins Institute at UMass, and we have worked with them on many other projects as a city. And so, what I think one of the things that we do in government is, we tend to think that, here we are in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and no one is doing what we're doing. Well, there are 51 other cities across the commonwealth, and I think it would be beneficial to have conversations with some of the other cities, some of the other DPW departments, some of the other finance departments and see if there are best practices out there that we're not using.
Let's look ahead to next week's meeting- What should folks expect on the agenda from your administration?
At this point in time, there are some grants and some more appointments. We are working on a couple of companies that are interested in coming to Pittsfield, and I don't know if those will be on this meeting coming up on next Tuesday or if it will be the following meeting, but there are some appropriations coming from the GE Economic Development Fund. And when those two are ready, I talked about money for the small business trust fund- That will come at the same time.
Pittsfield received an $8 million allotment from the GE Rest of River settlement plan. Any thoughts on how that money might work? It's gone into the city's economic development fund as well. Any thoughts on where that $8 million chunk might end up going to?
So, the GE Economic Development Fund, as it is, was close to just having a million dollars, so it’s somewhat replenishing it. And it will go to companies that we are in conversations with now to see if we can encourage them to come here.
