Calls for transparency resounded at Tuesday night’s city council meeting in North Adams, Massachusetts.
A handful of people asked for more openness from North Adams’ municipal leaders at their latest bimonthly city council meeting.
“I just think it’s really unfortunate that the city doesn’t have more transparency with regards to committees and commissions and subcommittees talking to each other," said Julia Dixon, chair of the North Adams Public Arts Commission.
The city is currently revising its ordinance around that commission in its general government committee. Dixon says despite chairing the commission in question, her opportunities to attend meetings concerning the revision since its last mention at the city council on August 14th have been complicated by poor communication.
“There were three committee meetings for the general government committee in this time," Dixon told the council. "I was notified of two — one in advance, one the day of, and then one I wasn’t notified of, which is unfortunate because this is the only item that was on that general government committee agenda and I’m the chair of this commission that’s on the agenda. So I would go if I was notified.”
Her frustration extended to the city’s website.
“Not all commission agendas are posted," said Dixon. "The public arts commission meeting agenda wasn’t posted that we had on Monday.”
The general government committee, which meets again Monday in city hall, is chaired by Councilor Eric Buddington. Councilors Rebbecca Cohen and Paul Hopkins sit on it as well. Buddington mentioned in his remarks that both Mayor Tom Bernard and Councilor Jason LaForest are involved in the revision of the Public Arts Committee ordinance.
“We in effect have gone through and separated out the mayor’s proposed changes into the sort of stylistic and grammatical changes which we were generally in favor of," said Buddington. "When it came to the powers and duties section, we sort of hit a wall because neither the existing language nor the mayor’s language we felt was really simple enough to be understandable, so Councilor LaForest and I each proposed replacements and we’ve been working to merge those changes.”
The council voted to postpone a vote on the ordinance amendment until the next meeting, November 6th.
Longtime city hall critic Robert Cardimino offered another call for transparency at the meeting as he responded to a Federal Bureau Of Investigation report that North Adams had the highest violent crime rate in Massachusetts in 2017.
“North Adams has been number one for several years, and I pointed it out to this council,” said Cardimino.
The city, the smallest in the commonwealth with about 13,000 people, recorded 193 violent crimes in 2017. Its 181 reported violent crimes in 2016 also put it at the top of the FBI’s per capita rankings for crime in Massachusetts, and displayed a marked increase from 143 reported violent crimes in 2015. Cardimino then turned to remarks Mayor Bernard made to The Berkshire Eagle in an article on the crime rate.
“For the mayor to trivilialize the fact that you can walk down the street and not worry — and it all depends, mayor, on which street you’re talking about — we need action," said Cardimino. "What are you, mayor, and the police planning to do to bring down crime? We need more transparency.”
Cardimino proposed the organization of neighborhood crime watches and the reopening of the police substation in the Greylock Housing Project.
“We need to be assured that some kind of action is being taken," he said. "When someone calls the police about a domestic situation and the dispatcher tells them they have no officers to respond, to call the state police — something is wrong.”
Rob Lyons, who has been a central figure in a citizen-led effort to prevent the closure of the city’s gun range, also asked for more from city officials. He expressed frustration with Mayor Bernard’s public statements about finding insurance options to cover the range.
“Why it has taken well over two months before we received another quote, an additional month for the policy to be quoted, the statement of ‘no guarantee that we will find a company to take on the policy’ can easily be translated to kicking the can down the road,” said Lyons.
Bernard abruptly moved to close the range in June. Asking the mayor why he was “stalling,” Lyons made a direct plea for clarity before the deadline.
“We are quickly approaching December 31st date, and you are well aware that once it closes it will take an act of god to reopen," he said. "I would like to stop wasting council’s time if the decision you made will not be changed.”
Bernard did not address the crime rate or the gun range in his closing comments at the meeting. Bernard’s office told WAMC he was unavailable for comment Wednesday morning.
