Pittsfield Sees Updated Code Thanks to Review Committee

By Brittany PolitoiBerkshires Staff
05:49AM / Monday, July 29, 2024Print Story | Email Story

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The Ordinance Review Committee was thanked for its "tremendous" amount of work to update the city code.

"You don't realize that something is dated until you see someone rewrite the same thing in a different way so I appreciate you updating the language to be a bit more present," Ward 5 Councilor Patrick Kavey said during a joint meeting of the committee and the subcommittee on Ordinances and Rules last week.

Since September 2022, the committee has worked to rid the code of outdated language, typos, duplications, and conflicts — including the addition of gender-neutral language throughout.

This is required by the city charter every five years.

"We updated some of the processes that were outlined in the city code to reflect how they're actually being executed now. We also moved all of the fines and fees into one central location. Fines are in [Chapter] 4.5, fees are in 24 so someone reading the code could easily pick something out if they were looking for it. There were some conflicts between the individual chapters and those sections so that would be cleared up," Chair Jody Phillips explained.

"A couple of the other high-level things that we did is we incorporated gender-neutral language throughout the code, we standardized the annual reporting period for the departments, and just went through and tried to resolve some of the conflicts between the different chapters of the code."

General Code Corp., which provides the city's codification services, conducted an editorial legal analysis.

The subcommittee suggested a couple of edits on the redlined city code and those will be brought back to the full City Council. The document with all approved revisions will then be forwarded to General Code, which will apply blanket formatting, and a draft recodification ordinance will be prepared and submitted to the council for ordainment.

There was some concern about proposed changes to the section on city-owned motor vehicles that removed specifications for use, which ended in councilors advocating specific reporting standards. These mainly apply to the police, fire and public services and utilities departments.

The code states that:

The heads of the various departments of the City shall be responsible for the keeping of records of the
use and maintenance of all motorized equipment used by their respective departments.

A daily record of the use of each piece of motorized equipment shall be kept, which record shall include the following:

(1) Name of each operator;
(2) Time each operator begins and ends operation of such equipment;
(3) Mileage at the beginning and end of each such operation;
(4) Servicing of gasoline and oil, time of such servicing and amount thereof; and
(5) Nature of repairs and number of man-hours expended for the making thereof.

The committee proposed removing 1-5 but after discussion, they will remain.

"The reason we decided to take up the names of the people that were doing it because one, you don't want to make city code that strict that it has identified an actual personnel by name but that the records kept at the garage when an employee signs in and signs out would actually be the document you would look to make sure that those with vehicles are the ones that that department had authorized," Ward 7 Councilor Rhonda Serre, who sits on the committee, reported.

She explained that it gives department heads the responsibility of making sure that the city logs are being used properly.

Kavey understands that they are trying to make the process easier but was hesitant about the amendment.

"I understand the name of the operator, as long as the department head is keeping track, but I know that there's been concern over misuse of these policies so recording less information or leaving it up to the department head who I know has a lot of other things to do, I don't know," he said.

"I feel like the mileage should still be there at the beginning of the end, the gasoline the, time for servicing, the nature of repairs, and the hour of the repairs."

Commissioner of Public Services and Utilities Ricardo Morales explained that these logs are kept and that most vehicles are tracked with GPS.

"When it becomes a little more complicated is for the folks under the foreman that are on-call and the reason these employees are taking the vehicle home is because they are on a rotating basis on some sort of on-call system that is not always going to match the the name we are going to put down. It's going to be essentially all of the employees that are on-call in a list," he said.

"Not all of them will always be taking the vehicle home. It will be on a rotating basis and the reason they're taking it home is for that nature, to respond to an issue on the streets without having to report first to their reporting base."

Kavey agreed that it is "a little repetitive" but said one department head could take records with all of the above information and another could provide "light" information on vehicle use.

Phillips said there is no harm in leaving the terms in there.

"Thank you for all the work you did put into this," Council President Peter White said. "Because looking over the redline version, there's just so much nuance and changing to gender neutral. I think this is really moving in a better direction."

Ward 6 Councilor Dina Lampiasi agreed.

"This document is now a modern document," she said. "It's clearer in reading through it."

City Solicitor Stephen Pagnotta explained that the role of the committee was "relatively narrow in that was to update the ordinances" and the city is fortunate to have the committee's hard and efficient work.

"I just want to recognize the tremendous amount of time and work that was put in by this committee to go over these ordinances," he said. "It was a pleasure to watch their dedication and focus on this matter."

Pagnotta was also recognized as an "integral" part of the process as the advisor.

All documents about the code update can be found here.

Highlights of the suggested edits include:

Updating of processes and procedures throughout the document to reflect how the City currently operates.
Consolidation of all fines into Chapter 4 1/2 (Criminal and Noncriminal Enforcement) and all fees into Chapter 24 (Schedule of Fees). Currently, some fines and fees are listed within individual code sections, some only in Chapters 4 1/2 and 24 and some in both places with conflicting information at times. Where fine and fee information was removed within individual sections, it was replaced with language pointing the reader to the respective chapter containing the fine and fee information.
Consolidating this information into central areas will help to alleviate and prevent future conflicts when changes are made and assist with revision control as only one section will need to be updated.
Addition of a definition of "charter" and "city charter" and replacement throughout the code to reflect "City Charter" vs. references of "enacted by Chapter 72 of the Acts of 2013" for ease of reading.
Incorporation of updated gender-neutral language throughout the city code.
Standardize the annual reporting period for all departments where possible.