North Adams Taxi Could Lose License

By Tammy DanielsiBerkshires Staff
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NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The City Council will hold a public hearing on Tuesday night at 6 p.m. on whether to pull OTT Taxi's operating license.
 
The taxi service was put on probation back in February for violations including unlicensed and underage drivers and unmarked cars being used to pick up fares.
 
Councilors at the time had little sympathy for owner John Lord's claims that he didn't know or understand the city's ordinance regulating taxi services.
 
But they did not wish disrupt the livelihoods of his drivers and the customers who needed the company's services and so issued a "stern warning" and 30 days probation. 
 
Tuesday's public hearing is prompted by what officials say are continued violations.
 
A document supplied by interim Police Chief Mark Bailey refers to 14 violations, four parking citations and seven instances of drivers operating taxies without valid licenses. These violations were between Sept. 30, 2022, and July 22, 2023. 
 
"Although there are reports of further violations occurring, these are the ones that have been documented by the North Adams Police Department, Bailey wrote.
 
In July, police say Lord was again seen driving taxi cabs, for which he does not have a license.
 
OTT has also moved out of its River Street offices this summer but has not changed the address on its license as required by ordinance.
 
Lord was informed by letter that "due to the continued issues, the City Council has determined they will need to reconvene to discuss them and determine its course of action."

Tags: public hearing,   taxi,   

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North Adams School Project Awards $51M Bid

By Tammy Daniels iBerkshires Staff
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The School Building Committee has awarded the Greylock School project to Fontaine Bros. Inc. of Springfield. 
 
Mayor Jennifer Macksey said she could "breathe a little better" with a bid contract that comes in nearly $2 million under budget.
 
The committee approved a bid of $50,498,544 on Thursday night that includes two alternates — the rebuild of the Appalachian Trail kiosk and the relocation and reconstruction of the baseball field. 
 
"I will say, all in all, for us to have overall the number of bidders that we had interested in our project, and especially to receive the GC bids that we did, the team Colliers and TSKP certainly did a good job attracting people to us," she said. "But this project ... really shows the testament of the good work that Colliers and TSKP and all of you have been doing throughout this process."
 
Fontaine had the low bid between Brait Builders of Marshfield and J&J Contractors Inc. of North Billerica.
 
The project had been bid out at $52,250,000 with three alternates: moving the ballfield, the kiosk and vertical geothermal wells. 
 
Committee members asked Timothy Alix of Collier's International, the owner's project manager, about his impressions of the bidders. He was most familiar with Fontaine, having worked with the company on a half-dozen school projects and noted it was the contractor on the Mountain View Elementary School in Easthampton that the Massachusetts School Building Authority has held up as an example school. He also had some of his colleagues call on projects that he had not personally worked on. 
 
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