NEW BEDFORD As spring approaches a time that is supposed to mark the opening of new public safety center and the decommissioning of a city fire engine city officials have raised their voices, again, to keep the engine in service.
During Thursday s City Council meeting, Councilor-at-large Brian Gomes submitted a motion requesting the council go on record again and send a letter to the administration in opposition to the decommissioning of Engine 8 on Acushnet Avenue.
The motion also requests the decision be delayed so that Mayor Jon Mitchell and the council can work together to find funding that will enable the engine to stay in service.
After shockingly disparaging residents with disabilities earlier this year, New Bedford City Councilor Linda Morad couldn’t help herself but to snidely insult yet another seemingly impossible-to-criticize group of local residents: the men and women of the New Bedford Fire Department, who have been working nonstop to keep the city from being reduced to cinder.
When the motion was put forward at Thursday’s City Council meeting by Councilor Brian Gomes to oppose the closure of Engine 8 at the North End fire station, every city councilor with the exception of Morad cosigned in support. Councilor Morad has also been on the record voting against a similar motion in August.
New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell still plans to remove Engine 8 from service, even after a series of large fires that rocked the city since Thanksgiving when three multi-family houses burned on Washburn Street.
Mitchell said on my program Wednesday that he plans to replace Engine 8 with a hybrid vehicle known as a quint that is both an engine and a ladder truck. His critics say there is no comparison between the two pieces of apparatus.
Veteran City Councilor Brian Gomes, who chairs the council s Public Safety Committee, also called into the program to inform us that the quint Mitchell has purchased is 15 years old and someone else s headache. He said the vehicle is too large to maneuver the tight streets in the near-North End and is a tight squeeze for Station 8 on Acushnet Avenue.
for the city s planning board to revisit its approval of Parallel Products site expansion.
to SMRE 100, LLC, in December 2020 for its Phase 1 plan to expand Parallel Products existing glass and plastics recycling facility.
Appellant Tracy Wallace, representing community organization South Coast Neighbors United, argued the approval came with conditions that are not stringent enough and not up to par with city ordinances.
Her plea to revisit site approval was met with vociferous support from residents, city councilors and a state representative who all shared concerns regarding noise and light pollution, traffic, land value and quality of life.
The Parallel Products plan
NEW BEDFORD Within the next two years, New Bedford residents will likely have the ability to tap a smartphone app, order recreational cannabis products from a local store and have it delivered to their front door.
The New Bedford Special Committee on Cannabis Regulation and Host Community Agreements Review convened Thursday night for its first of many meetings to discuss home delivery an activity recently approved by state regulators.
The Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission s new regulations for medical and recreational use of marijuana took effect early January, but regulators approved a plan to allow the delivery of recreational marijuana in 2019. Home delivery of medical marijuana in Massachusetts started in 2017.