Mayor Robert Van Campen’s department heads sat for their first public questioning on Thursday, February 26, when the City Council’s Legislative Affairs Committee recommended all of them to the full council, then spent most of the evening on a rewrite of fire ordinances that in places date to the 1970s.
The appointees
Thawanna Pessoa, nominated to the planning board, said she has lived on Vernon Street her entire adult life, in a multifamily “where I have not seen the sun for a couple of days,” and brings ten years in construction. “I will follow the processes, do my homework, visit development sites,” she said; she speaks Portuguese and Spanish. Ellen Collins, the new human resources director, spent 18 years in municipal work, the last nine in HR in Somerville. City Solicitor Jaclyn Munson, who came from Arlington and the Boston law department, was asked by Councilor Stephanie Martins whether the city can stop paying outside consultants. “I was litigating, like, 25 to 40 cases at a time on top of my client advising,” Munson said. “I’m looking to create an office that’s really a full service legal office.” Monica Lamboy, chief development officer, cited 35 years in Oakland, Washington and Somerville: “Customer service is paramount, clarity of process, equity and level playing field.” Omar Boukili, chief administrative and financial officer, came from Revere. Robert Knox Jr., the DPW director, was at his son’s championship game; David Ela, housing authority board, was not present. Lamboy and Boukili were recommended “pending approval of the administrative code,” since their departments do not yet exist on paper. Analyst David Flood said the public hearing on the code could not legally happen before March 23.
The fire code
Deputy Chief Will Hurley, who runs fire prevention, said he read the ordinances and found “a lot of them hadn’t been touched” since 1993 or 1998. “A $25 fine doesn’t do anything in 2026. Two coffees at Starbucks is that.” His package adds pyrotechnics and grinding to the definitions, drops a 45-day waiting period before the city treats a building as abandoned, requires key boxes on any building with a sprinkler or alarm (“the alternative is we break the door”), sets a $1,000 fine for demolition or hot work done without a fire detail, and deletes a 100-foot rule for demolition details. The provision that “prompted the whole thing” is smoke detectors in bedrooms, enforced only at sale or transfer under the state’s 26F inspection. “We’ve been telling everybody to close when you doze,” Hurley said. “If you close your door and it keeps you safe, wouldn’t the opposite be true if a fire happened in the bedroom?”
Martins asked whether gas fire pits by the pool are now banned. Hurley said open burning has never been legal in Everett because of Logan Airport, “but, obviously, if somebody complains or if somebody sees you doing it, we have to make you put it out.” Councilor Katy Rogers asked about the Christmas tree bonfire of a few years ago. “I won’t say that we got in trouble for that, but I’m also not saying that we got in trouble for that,” Hurley said. Martins asked for tighter wording on which buildings must be protected and when bedroom detectors apply; Lt. Adam Ragucci said the requirement “falls under the responsibility of the seller.” The committee sent the ordinance out with no recommendation so Flood could put it in proper form. Chair Anthony DiPierro credited Council President Stephanie Smith with reviving an effort he had started years ago. The committee also endorsed a rule change codifying how seniority is counted: continuous service, then prior service, then age.
