WORCESTER-Following racist, anti semitic, and transphobic comments during the public comment portion of city council meetings, some councilors are calling for a review of best practices regarding security at city hall.
Councilor At-Large Morris Bergman put forward the order, saying at the meeting Tuesday that he has a sense “the first few months of this new term that tensions have escalated in this building by virtue of presentations before the microphone, virtually, we had an incident tonight.”
At Tuesday night’s meeting someone impersonating a local journalist made anti semitic and racist comments and at a previous meeting a caller used a racial slur before another caller made transphobic comments. It is suspected that the callers are associated with a group out of California, with Councilor At-Large Khrystian King noting in a statement that mailers from the group to city councilors’ home addresses included “verbatim” transphobic comments to what was said at one of the council meetings along with anti semitic comments.
Bergman said his order was not just for councilors but for the employees that work in city hall.
“I’d much rather explain to somebody why we have too much security, than to explain to somebody an unfortunate situation where we didn’t have enough,” Bergman said.
Mayor Joseph Petty called the order timely given that he’s been in discussions with City Manager Eric Batista over the last several months regarding safety in all public buildings in the city, including the schools.
“As we’ve seen, sometimes we don’t look ahead to things that could happen, and putting things in place to prevent that is important, “ District 4 Councilor Luis Ojeda said.
Councilor At-Large Thu Nguyen called for the city to look at trauma-informed ways “of doing collective care and safety “and raised the importance of making sure different types of communities will feel safe and welcome at city hall.
District 5 Councilor Etel Haxhiaj said she was a little nervous about the direction the order could go and asked Batista if in his time at city hall there had been incidents that raised alarm.
“We’ve had situations where we’ve had to call police where individuals have been aggressive to employees,” Batista said. “There was an individual that was apprehended in the law department because he was aggressive to some of the individuals in the law departments. So we’ve had scenarios where we’ve had to act pretty quickly and notify police.”
Batista said those situations are part of what’s going to be evaluated as they look at the safety in public buildings.
“We’re going to look at all those situations and come up with a comprehensive plan that hopefully meets the needs of everyone, not only employees but also the community as well,” Batista said.
“I just want to caution us to not lose sight of the fact that as a council we worked really hard to move to models like the mobile crisis unit that works to de escalate situations rather than deal with them through a law enforcement eye,” Haxhiaj said, calling to add a review of de-escalation practices already in use in the city to the order.
Bergman’s order was sent to the city manager’s office in a 10 to 0 vote. King did not attend Tuesday’s meeting.
Quality of Life Team
A motion from Nguyen requesting a report on how the Quality of Life Team is funded and a breakdown of how much time the team spends on its various tasks was voted down with the majority of councilors voting in favor of filing the item.
District 3 Councilor George Russell questioned if the funding information was available in the city’s budget. Batista said it was but that other information Nguyen requested, such as a breakdown of the hours the task force works on certain tasks were not.
Councilor At-Large Donna Colorio made the motion to file the item, noting that the council received a “comprehensive presentation” on the Quality of Life team at the previous meeting.
“I just find it redundant,” Colorio said.
Councilor At-Large Kate Toomey questioned if the council was getting to the point of “micromanaging” the different departments with what was being requested.
“This was actually requested by a few residents who wanted to learn more after the presentation last week, and so I would like us to honor the residents who would like to learn more about the Quality of Life team as well just having transparency,” Nguyen said.
Nguyen’s request fell on mostly deaf ears with the council voting 6 to 4 to file the item, meaning not to consider it. Haxhiaj, Nguyen, Ojeda, and District 1 Councilor Jenny Pacillo cast the dissenting votes.
The city’s Quality of Life team has drawn public attention due to the work it does with the city’s homeless population. During the meeting two other orders related to homelessness put forward by Toomey passed – an order requesting the city invite representatives from local colleges and universities when holding discussions solutions to homelessness and an order requesting the city investigate using currently unbuildable, undersized parcels in the city to build tiny homes.
Rats
The city’s rodent problem was once again a discussion at the city council meeting, with Colorio requesting a comprehensive plan to eradicate rats in the city.
“It seems like every time I turn around people are saying they never had rats in their neighborhood and now they have rats, it’s insurmountable,” Colorio said.
Residents can report rats on the 311 app, call 311, or email different departments, according to Batista.
The requests will typically go to inspectional services who will send inspectors out, but oftentimes the issues are deeper within the sewer system and then DPW also becomes involved, according to Batista.
“There’s a lot of work happening around the city on our water and sewer infrastructure,” Batista said. “That may also be causing some of the challenges here in our city.”
When DPW and utility companies are digging, there is mitigation work that they need to do, according to Batista. Ojeda asked if developers and contractors in the city are also required to perform mitigation measures when they’re digging.
Batista said he was not aware if there’s a strategy contractors have to mitigate disturbances that would send rats into the surrounding neighborhood but that he would be happy to look into it and include that in the report.
Toomey raised the possibility of creating a map for rat sightings similar to what the city’s animal control department has for coyote sightings.
Pacillo, stating that the Burncoat neighborhood has been dealing with a rat issue for years, suggested having an icon in the 311 app specifically to report rat sightings.
She also thanked a member of the department of inspectional services for coming to neighborhood meetings to discuss ideas on how to prevent rats, saying sometimes its just a matter of spreading awareness of what people can do in their own yards to help get rid of rats.
The council voted 10 to 0 to send the order to the manager.
Kiernan Dunlop is an award-winning journalist who has spent the past five years reporting in Worcester, New Bedford, and Antigua and Barbuda. Her work has been published in Bloomberg, USA Today, Canary Media, MassLive, and the New Bedford Standard Times, among other outlets. She can be contacted at kdunlop@theworcesterguardian.org
