Funny Or Mean? Pittsfield City Councilor Sherman Responds To East Street Misspelling Post

A contractor hired by the city made a mistake when they accidentally misspelled the word "school" on the newly paved asphalt on East St. in Pittsfield near PHS.

"SCOHOL" is how it was displayed before passersby noticed, some even took pictures and posted them on social media.

It's funny, no doubt about that. It's human, and people make mistakes, but it's still funny, except when people go too far, and some did on social media with their comments.

Negativity is rampant on social media, and I'm certainly not saying all or more than half of the comments were in poor taste, but it did get the attention of Ward 3 city councilor, Kevin Sherman.

This is in Ward 3 so I’ll take ownership. It was a mistake by the contractor. I don’t know if city oversight is involved when contracted out because that’s the point of it being contracted out. It’s getting fixed tonight at no additional cost to the city. I’m very sorry this happened. It’s being addressed and corrected. -Sherman on Facebook

I reached out to Sherman late on Thursday afternoon via text message because I echoed his sentiment about quelling some of the negativity surrounding the COMMENTS, and how important it was to clear up any misinformation about what actually happened.

In addition to two highly shared social media posts, Pittsfield Police Ofc. Darren Derby's being one, the other being, "It's Pittsfield Tonight" (Mike Daly), there were many other random posts mocking the highly visible spelling error.

Is this fair game to post about this sort of thing? Yes, absolutely. Free speech, baby! Sometimes, though, enough's enough.

When I first saw the picture, I assumed it was photoshopped, I thought that can't be real, so I drove down East St. and had the same reaction as probably everyone, like WTF, but it was funny.

So, I wrote to city hall and they immediately responded and said that it was a mistake and they were gonna fix it tonight, no cost to the city.

I get the joke, and I have no problem with the joke and people absolutely should have posted about it, but then the comments started about "where is the city on this, we haven't had any explanation, and there go our tax dollars again, this person should be fired, then there were comments on dyslexia and addiction", it was just getting a little out of hand. -Ward 3 Councilor Kevin Sherman

You can listen below.

A Pittsfield Police Officer who was incorrectly credited for the photo resulted in Derby editing his post on Friday afternoon, as well.