“I just think this is an opportunity for us — this free cash — to do something for the residents that hasn’t been done, relieve some aches and pains,” Earl Persip III said.
“I just think this is an opportunity for us — this free cash — to do something for the residents that hasn’t been done, relieve some aches and pains,” Earl Persip III said.
PITTSFIELD — City leaders hoping to direct a portion of Pittsfield’s unprecedented $17 million in free cash toward several accounts left a Thursday night meeting with a clear message from city councilors: Put that money toward Pittsfield’s roads and sidewalks.
“I just think this is an opportunity for us — this free cash — to do something for the residents that hasn’t been done, relieve some aches and pains,” Earl Persip III said. “We haven’t done a sidewalk in this town funded by the city in who knows how many years.”
The councilors on the city’s subcommittee on Finance voted against recommending two of the proposals before them related to free cash and asked the mayor to consider doubling down on a third proposal to put free cash into the public works stabilization account.
Council President Peter Marchetti said he’d be sending Mayor Linda Tyer a recommendation to take the $2 million the administration was suggesting to put into the general stabilization account and combine it with the $2 million that was suggested for the public works stabilization account for a deposit of $4 million.
He said he’d like to see the administration come to the city council with that request at the next meeting on Feb. 14.
Meg Britton-Mehlisch is the Pittsfield reporter for The Berkshire Eagle. Born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, she previously worked at the Prior Lake American and its sister publications under the Southwest News Media umbrella in Savage, Minnesota.
