Day 1 budget review here.

Day 2 budget review here.

Day 4 budget review here.

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — On the third day of the fiscal 2023 budget hearings last week, the City Council, sitting as the Council of the Whole, preliminarily approved spending for seven departments as well as the water, sewer, and wastewater enterprise funds.

The building maintenance and building inspector departments passed with recommendations for increased funds.

The proposed municipal operating budget is $99,900,752 and the proposed public school budget is $72,398,262, totaling a municipal operating budget of $172,299,014.

Within that are a $2,200,000 increase in health insurance, a $780,492 increase in the retirement contribution, and a $563,888 increase in solid waste collection and disposal.

With the water and sewer enterprise line, the total budget is $188,589,144, which Mayor Linda Tyer requested to raise and appropriate at the last City Council meeting. It was referred to the Committee of the Whole for the Tuesday, May 31, deliberation.

During Tuesday's meeting, the council also voted to borrow approximately $4,255,000 for enterprise fund capital expenditures, $9,327,000 for general fund capital expenditures, and to transfer and appropriate $412,000 from the public works stabilization fund to the department of public services.

Cultural Development

The $127,806 budget was approved as presented with no discussion. It is a $5,731 or 4.69 increase from the previous year.

Library-

The $1,377,356 budget was approved as presented with little discussion. It is a $111,619 or 8.82 percent increase from the previous year.

It includes $57,000 in salary increases for five full-time senior supervisors and a $10,000 increase for books and audio/visual products.

City Building Maintenance

The $1,904,053 budget was approved as presented with little discussion. It is a $113,163 or 6.32 increase from the previous year.
 

School Building Maintenance

The $835,000 budget was approved with two recommendations made by Councilor at Large Karen Kalinowsky to add $40,000 to the contractual services line and an additional $25,000 for supplies.

It is a $65,000 or 8.44 percent increase from the previous year.

Kalinowsky made the recommendations to fulfill Director of Building Maintenance Brian Filiault's original asks.

"Both of those items were really important. I mean, the city, we're faced with a tremendous amount of damage. I can look in any direction in the city and it's just, things are old," he said.

"We've repaired everything as far as we can go, most of our systems took an incredible beating over this COVID."

When asked, he estimated that Tyer had not allocated the requested amount to control costs.

Building Inspectors

The budget of $555,707 passed with a recommendation to add $50,000 for an additional building inspector.

It is $64,085 or a 13.04 percent increase from the previous year.

Kronick suggested increasing to help combat negligent landlords in the city with another building inspector, explaining that it is a rarity for him to support increased funding for a department.

Councilor at Large Earl Persip III agreed that more attention is needed for city apartments and motioned to recommend a $50,000 increase in the building inspector line.

"There is blight that doesn't get taken care of there are building issues that aren't taken care of," he said.

"We have seen people come to these meetings recently and demand the inspections take place and I think there's a lot of property owners out there taking advantage of the building department and it not being fully staffed."

The budget already included a $51,555 increase for an additional inspector to focus on multifamily units.

"The State Building Code mandates that multifamily buildings of three units or more of residential use be inspected once every five years. My predecessor was short-staffed, didn't even have an administrative assistant for that position because that's a lot of the work is paperwork, we have a full-time assistant now and but we don't have the inspectors to keep up with that many inspections," Building Commissioner Jeffrey Clemons explained.

"So although we do multifamily inspections, it's usually out of a complaint or from another department or from an owner or tenant in we do these joint inspections but we probably do eight to 10 a year the most, we need to do many more than that and this is to proactively identify those buildings that need that maintenance work that has been put off because there is no inspections going on."
 

Community Development

The budget of $758,651 was passed as presented with some discussion.  It is a $24,260 or 3.30 percent increase from the previous year.

Director of Community Development Justine Dodds revealed that the $22,000 increase in the line for playground leaders will them in three city parks: Clapp Park, Durant Park, and The Common.

The budget for playground leaders had dropped down to $2,000 last fiscal year because of the pandemic. The previous year it was around $20,000.

Public Services

The $9,970,506 budget was passed as presented with discussion around the city's trash systems.  It is a $919,785 or 10.16 increase from the previous year.

Commissioner of Public Services and Utilities Ricardo Morales reported that the city's trash incinerating plant was shut off on May 1 and that the city is looking to get a contract with the new owners of the facility who are operating it as a transfer station.

The council approved a three-year contract with Community Eco Power, a waste-to-energy company, last summer despite its filing for bankruptcy with the stipulation that the company will give a year's notice before shutting down.

This became null when the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, Morales reported.

"It's unfortunate but at the time also, it was the only way moving forward that we could have the facility operating with a contract in place with the services that they were providing at that time," he said in regards to the contract.

The city is currently trying to work with Casella Waste Management to get a quick, temporary contract for the near future and then work out of a multi-year contract.

Solid waste collection saw a $292,500 increase that includes contracted services for residential curbside trash pickup and solid waste disposal has a $268,500 increase that includes a tipping fee at Covanta to dispose of the trash collected from the residential curbside trash program.
 

Water Treatment Enterprise

The budget of $5,216,417 was passed as presented. It is a $397,864 decrease from the previous year.

Kalinowksy voted against the water and wastewater enterprises because she believes they were underbudgeted. She cited the city's recent 10 percent increase in water rates and a 12 percent increase in sewer rates per year.

Wastewater Enterprise

The budget of 10,024,816 was passed as presented. It is a $633,433 or 5.94 percent decrease from the previous year.

The complete Pittsfield fiscal 2023 budget as presented can be found in pdf form here.

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