I watched last night’s Committee Chairs meeting and was able to get a better sense of the timeline for a final vote on funding for the new fire station. When we last left off at the City Council’s regular meeting in November, there was a first reading of the Mayor’s request to appropriate $6 million…
All posts tagged City Council
Citizen petitions and initiatives, oh my!
While writing my post about the Accessory Dwelling Unit zoning amendment, I made a note for myself that I should also spend some time digging into the issue of citizen petitions. By my (entirely amateur) reading of the City Charter, there are three types of citizen petitions available to Greenfield residents: Individual Petitions Group Petitions…
The City Council hears from GCET, funds Wisdom Way work, and continues to fret about the fire station and the library.
Despite the amount of time they consumed, the DPW cuts, Accessory Dwelling Units, and Greenfield’s tax classification were not the only topics the City Council addressed on Wednesday evening. Wisdom Way Per DPW Director Marlo Warner’s comments to the Council, the project to fix the crumbling sidewalk and embankments on Wisdom Way has been in…
The City Council approves a single property tax rate for 2021.
One of the many items up for discussion at the Greenfield City Council’s November 18 regular meeting was whether city would stay with a single property tax rate. The motion on the floor for this meeting was to adopt a single tax rate—i.e., residential and commercial property owners all public the same rate. Greenfield has…
Posts coming over the next few days on the Nov. 18 City Council meeting.
Last night’s meeting of the City Council ran more than four hours, and it is taking me a while to get through the entire recording. Look for multiple posts coming over the next few days.
Previously, on Greenfield: Accessory Dwelling Units
I have felt for a while that news coverage of politics and current events would benefit from the “Previously on…” segments that happen at the beginning of every episode of serialized TV shows.1 I think this is especially true at the local level, where so much of the context for any particular issue can get…
November 15, 2020 – The week ahead
Here’s what I will be focusing on over the coming week: Monday: Budget & Finance Subcommittee meeting (School Committee – The posted agenda for this meeting is pretty thin. The only item of note is “FY21 Budget to Date.” Tuesday: Ways & Means Committee meeting (City Council) – This meeting looks to be feeding into…
Should Greenfield landlords be required to have vacant rental units inspected?
A significant portion of the Appointments & Ordinance Committee’s November 11 meeting was devoted to a proposed ordinance that would require vacated rental units in Greenfield to be inspected by the Board of Health before they can be rented out to a new tenant. Under the proposed ordinance, if the BOH finds the unit to…
The EDC considers zoning amendments, property assessments (or the lack thereof), and the First National Bank.
It’s a few days late, but I managed to catch up on this past Tuesday’s meeting of the Economic Development Committee of the Greenfield City Council. It was a fairly brief meeting (as these things go), and the agenda covered three main topics: An update from MJ Adams An update on the review of Boards…
Charter Review Committee – Budget timing AND BEYOND!!
The final topic on the agenda for the November 9 meeting of the Greenfield Charter Review Committee (for a bit of background on this committee, see the beginning of this post) was Article 5 of the City Charter, which covers Finance and Fiscal Procedures. Given the complexity of municipal finances and the amount of stress…