Tuesday Night’s City Council Workshop Meeting for 10/14/2025 covered:

Budget Presentations from Police and Fire Chiefs, and Parks and Rec Director Mark Price. Overview of South Avenue Park improvement to Loopers Basketball Court in time for Beacon Hoops kids community basketball program. The price reduction of the summer pool from $100/household to $20. The Skate Park upgrade. More.
Finance Director Susan Tucker’s note about the 3 largest areas of the budget that are fixed.
Housing discussed. Intricacies brought up as to why it’s so hard to afford Beacon, like FICO scores. Mayor open to face making Short Terms illegal to increase housing stock for long term rentals.
Community Refrigerator discussion led by Heidi Harrison and Mark Price, illustrating their 5 years of being involved with the one at the Parks and Rec building that is not owned by the City, even though people accessing the fridge often think it is. Heidi maintained that people who use the fridge are like family to them, but that the current management system is not working. Well intentioned, but something else is needed with management. She stressed how quickly the fridge can degrade in quality and dignity even within a few hours of a drop off of donated food. City Administrator Chris White stressed how the food labels and health regulations that restaurants follow were not applied to the fridge. He proposed buying people WIC and suggested the organizations should fundraise (they fundraise a lot as it is). This is an ongoing discussion.

Special Portion Dedicated To The City of Beacon’s Abrupt, Unannounced Removal Of The Community Refrigerator At The Park and Recreation Building

This is a clip of the video recap of Tuesday’s City Council Workshop Meeting that recaps the discussion the City Council had with Parks and Recs Director Mark Price and Assistant Recreation Director Heidi Harrison.

They delivered a presentation with photos of the refrigerator at the Park’s and Recreation Department Building over the past 5 years, at the request of City Administrator Chris White, who ordered the removal of the refrigerator, citing zoning code violations and liability issues for the City of Beacon.

The full presentation is available in the City’s YouTube or Vimeo, so one should watch that for all points covered. Assistant Director Heidi stressed that this was not a criticism of organizations involved with filling and managing the fridges, but that the 24/7 access was too difficult to monitor.

City Administrator Chris had other choice words like that the food was not preferred, that his own mother would have rejected it, and that the food spoils. Both were concerned about marking the food with ingredients for allergens, and Heidi and Mark provided examples of half eaten pizza slices or sandwiches that well-intentioned people placed into the fridge thinking someone might eat. Mark mentioned a pie that someone took a bite of, that might be delivered nicely wrapped, but was a scoop-n-go for someone else.

City Administrator Chris said that a refrigerator on private property would need to be in an enclosed shed. He pointed out that there were many distribution sites available, and that maybe they should be consolidated.

As a person who has both used and contributed to these locations, ALBB can say:

Each location is its own community and vibe. Which is a pleasant thing to mix community feeling. Consolidating locations would be a loss to nurturing corners of the community.
Hours of operation are limited. Picking up from Wednesday Distribution requires that a person be available with a car in the morning on select days. Some people are at work. Or on a bus to work. ALBB worked remotely from her car with laptop while waiting in that line.

Everyone agreed that more communication and coordination was needed.