A familiar name in New Bedford politics says he's looking to throw his hat in the ring.

Peter Barney, the former Assessor for New Bedford, announced Tuesday on the Phil Paleologos show that he has taken out papers to run for an At-Large seat on the New Bedford City Council.

"For the last year or so I've had a lot of people telling me that they wish I was back in government somewhere, and this is probably the way to get back into government because people seem to want me to do that," said Barney "so I'm going to try it I guess and see what happens."

Barney says one of the first things he would do as city councilor would be to study the layout of the city's fire stations.

"I looked at this for a long time and thought to myself we have just two major stations in the North End, really, but we have a whole bunch of other ones around," said Barney "perhaps we could take a look and maybe we could build some new ones that are a little bigger that lay out differently there's something the fire department could do to study that."

He also says he would take a closer look at the city's finances.

"For the first time they actually had the projected evaluation of the city for the year and once you have that in the (budget) booklet and you know what the tax levy is you can divide one from the other and work out the formula and you can get a tax rate," said Barney.

"Well noone called me to ask what it was, and as far as I know none of the councilors asked anybody who was in front of them if they could ballpark what the tax rate might be, and they certainly could have done that," said Barney.

Barney also cited the city's homeless population and housing difficulties as issues he would confront if he were elected to the city council.

"We have to keep an eye on the housing situation, we're bringing people out of Boston and other towns and bringing them here and sort of dumping them in the city and that's not good we've got to enhance our stock," said Barney.

"I know the Mayor's very concerned about the fact that we got an awful lot of people coming into town that don't stay long, and don't take an interest in the city, but they occupy the area and they kind of bring down the quality of life in the city," said Barney.

Candidates for the City Council must have their papers turned in by August 18.

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