The City Council seat in Holyoke’s Ward 4 is up for grabs on Tuesday after its current occupant, Jossie Valentin, announced earlier this year that she would not seek reelection. The two candidates vying for the seat are Libby Hernandez and Michael Thomas Siciliano.
Ward 4 covers parts of the Churchill and Downtown neighborhoods, as well as smaller chunks of the Oakdale and Highlands neighborhoods.
Libby Hernandez, 48, has worked as a property manager for the Holyoke Housing Authority and chairs the city’s Parks and Recreation Commission. She serves on the board of OneHolyoke Community Development Corporation and as a member of the Community Preservation Committee.
Hernandez moved to the city from Puerto Rico in 1994. The first people to help Hernandez were in the Holyoke Housing Authority, so she said that when she was later able to “climb up the economic ladder” and began working for the housing authority she relished the opportunity to “help the same impoverished communities that I came from.”
The mother of four children who she has raised in Ward 4, Hernandez said she has been a homeowner in the city for the past two decades. If elected, she said her vision for the city will come from the residents of the ward.
“My visions are what my constituents have shared with me, which is … an improvement in the quality of life, curb appeal, public safety and specifically the big problem we’re having with homelessness and the national opioid crisis,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez said she hopes to sit down with community organizations, city departments and state agencies to figure out how to get people experiencing homelessness the help they need to get off the streets.
An example of a program she would hope to emulat is Springfield’s The Living Room — a facility run by the Behavioral Health Network that provides people experiencing homelessness with a place to go during a behavioral health crisis, regardless of insurance.
Hernandez said she hopes to improve the pay of city employees, which she said would help the city retain talent. She also mentioned the city’s water infrastructure, including fire hydrants, as an area of focus if she is elected.
Community agriculture is an interest for Hernandez, who said she helped found the Hidden Treasures community garden at Housing Authority’s Beaudoin Villages property. She said she hopes to do similar work elsewhere in the city.
“What sets me apart is that I follow through,” she said. “I’m genuinely invested in the community. I don’t have any experience with being a politician … I do have a lot of exposure to community leadership, so that’s what I bring to the table.”
Michael Thomas Siciliano, 47, described himself as a “full-time dad and part-time contractor” who has served clients large and small across the Pioneer Valley for more than a decade. He is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, where he studied history and sociology.
Siciliano, who has lived in the city for 20 years, said he is a founding member of the Chestnut Community Alliance. A graduate of Way Finders’ Resident Leadership Program, he said his neighborhood organizing work with the Chestnut Community Alliance has focused on quality-of-life, health and safety issues.
“I’ve been a strong proponent for many years in Holyoke for stronger resources for public safety,” he said.
Siciliano said that public safety and crime prevention would be two of his primary areas of focus if elected to the City Council.
“Ward 4 is struggling in regards to public safety,” he said. “There’s numerous areas in Ward 4 where there’s open drug dealing. We also have an issue with prostitution in 4b.”
Siciliano said that he feels that public officials have not been dealing with those issues. The police department is doing its best, he said, but he added that it needs more resources. He also said that the city needs a more “holistic approach.”
“There has to be enforcement of law, rules and regulations, with also the ability to provide people with social services,” he said. “What we need is to focus our human services to more directly deal with these issues. We have a lot of resources in Holyoke, what we’re struggling with honestly, it’s a lack of leadership.”
Siciliano said another of his priority is business development. But he said that a reason why new businesses are not coming into Holyoke is concerns about public safety.
“There is no plan to deal with this issue,” he said. “And the people who live in these neighborhoods, they deserve a lot better.”
Siciliano said he hopes to unite people in Holyoke, and that he shuns the typical adversarial politics of running in a competitive race.
“When I become Holyoke Ward 4 City Councilor, I’ll be working to take politics out of the equation,” he said. “This left-right paradigm, this opposition politics is one of the significant reasons Holyoke continues to linger in poverty.”
Dusty Christensen can be reached at dchristensen@gazettenet.com.