New Bedford council takes up plate camera veto, data center ban and overnight RV ban Friday

NEW BEDFORD New Bedford city councilors will take up Mayor Jon Mitchell's veto of their license plate camera ban Friday night, along with his own rules for the cameras and a citywide ban on data centers.

The council meets at 6 p.m. Friday, Nov. 13, in the City Council Chamber, Room 214, at City Hall, 133 William St., a day later than its usual Thursday. Council President Ryan J. Pereira called a special meeting because the Veterans Day holiday kept the city from posting notice of the regular Nov. 12 meeting 48 hours ahead, as the state Open Meeting Law requires, he wrote to City Clerk Dennis W. Farias on Nov. 10. Friday's meeting takes up the items that were set for Thursday.

The plate camera veto

First on the mayor's papers is his veto of the council's ordinance on automated license plate readers and other mass location tracking technology. The agenda lists the ordinance as passed Oct. 22 and the veto as received Nov. 4.

The council's ordinance would bar every city department, board and agency from buying, leasing, renewing, running or materially changing any plate reader or mass location tracking system, and from signing or continuing any contract for one. It would also bar spending city money in any way that conflicts with the ban.

"It is with this goal in mind, I am hereby vetoing An Ordinance Relative to Automated License Plate Readers ('ALPR') and Mass Location-tracking Technologies," Mitchell wrote in a one-page letter dated Nov. 4. In the same letter, he said he welcomed the council's consideration of a new ordinance restricting the technology, which he was sending at the same time.

That second ordinance is also on Friday's agenda, and it would add a new Section 2-13 to the city code that allows the cameras under written limits. In his Nov. 4 cover letter, Mitchell wrote that those limits include a public hearing and council approval before the city signs or renews a contract, deleting data after 30 days unless it bears on an open criminal or internal investigation, and audits of searches and data use. The Police Department's contract with Flock Safety, its camera vendor, runs out Thursday, Nov. 12, and the department decided not to renew it, the letter says.

Under state law, a council can pass an ordinance again over a mayor's veto by a two-thirds vote of all its members, but not until seven days after the veto comes back to it. The agenda lists the veto letter and the vetoed ordinance and does not list a separate motion to override. The ban passed 8-3 on Oct. 22, WBSM reported.

We reported the mayor's proposed rules in detail in our Nov. 4 story.

A citywide data center ban

The Committee on Ordinances recommends that the council approve the mayor's ordinance banning data centers, and the agenda says it would then pass to a second reading. Data centers are now allowed in five zoning districts, the mixed-use business district and the IA, IB, IC and WI districts, according to the use table in the ordinance. It would move them to the list of prohibited industrial uses in every district, the overlay districts included, and define a data center as a building or group of buildings used mainly to house and run high-performance servers, storage systems, networking equipment and related computing infrastructure.

The committee voted after a public hearing Oct. 26, on a motion by Pereira seconded by Councilor Abreu, according to the report signed by committee chair Councilor Shane A. Burgo.

We covered that hearing in our Oct. 26 story.

RVs and campers off the streets overnight

Mitchell also sent councilors an ordinance that would ban parking a recreational vehicle, motor home, mobile home, trailer home or camper on any public way or city property from dusk until dawn, with a companion change that lists the violation under a $300 fine. In a Nov. 5 letter, the mayor wrote that the city keeps getting complaints about occupied campers and RVs, which he said cluster on Cleveland and Harbor streets in the South End and on Coffin Avenue in the North End.

Road money and other reports

The Finance Committee recommends no further action on a request from Abreu and Councilor Joseph P. Lopes for a detailed accounting of the $713,441.91 New Bedford received through the state's Winter Recovery Assistance Program, based on the city's 269.48 miles of locally owned roads. The request asked whether the money would cover fiscal 2026 snow and ice costs, reduce a deficit or go elsewhere, and what it would mean for the fiscal 2027 budget and tax rate. The committee made that recommendation Oct. 19, on a motion by Councilor Roy seconded by Councilor Carney, the committee's report says, and recommends the same on a related state letter about the snow and ice deficit.

We reported on that Oct. 19 committee meeting in an earlier story.

The Finance Committee also recommends paying nine bills left over from the last budget year, $34,019.30 in all by our count, the largest of them $25,388.75 for the water enterprise fund. The Audit Committee recommends no further action on Burgo's request that it review the mayor's new staff hire.

Our Oct. 21 story covered the Audit Committee's look at that hire.

Two appointments come back from the Committee on Appointments and Briefings. It recommends approving Joana Goncalves as executive director of the Human Rights Commission and sends the appointment of Alyssa DaCunha as executive director of the Commission for Citizens with Disabilities to the full council without a recommendation either way.

The consent agenda would grant street closings for the downtown Christmas tree lighting on Saturday, Dec. 5, from 4 to 6 p.m., on parts of Pleasant, Market, William, Water and North Second streets, and for the city's New Year's Eve celebration on Thursday, Dec. 31.

How to watch

The meeting is streamed live and recorded, and it can be watched from the City of New Bedford homepage under Quick Links, then Meetings. The City Council Office is at 508-979-1455. The council's next regular meeting is Tuesday, Nov. 24, because of Thanksgiving, with items due by 10 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 19, and the agenda out Friday, Nov. 20.

Label: Reported by us, from the town's posted records.