NORTHAMPTON — On the eve of Nov. 4’s municipal election, mayoral candidates Gina-Louise Sciarra and Jillian Duclos disagreed Tuesday on several key issues facing the city, from whether to give the public school system more money to completing the build out of the Resilience Hub and moving forward with a massive downtown street redesign.
The two candidates squared off at a Ward 3 Neighborhood Association forum that also featured a separate discussion between Ward 3 candidates Quaverly Rothenberg and Laurie Loisel in which they also disagreed on many topics, including whether there is a “cabal” of power influencing city politics.
The race for mayor features incumbent Sciarra and challenger Duclos, who for much of the nearly hourlong discussion before about 70 people at Bridge Street School didn’t see eye-to-eye on several hot-topic issues facing the city over the next several years.
When it comes to the $29 million downtown redesign, dubbed Picture Main Street, Duclos said the plan “isn’t good or bad, right or wrong.”
The project envisions reducing traffic to one lane in each direction while adding a bike lane and expanding sidewalk space through the downtown area, as well as extensive underground infrastructure work.
However, Duclos, the former executive director of the Downtown Northampton Association, thinks there hasn’t been enough communication between the city and downtown businesses. She said she doesn’t care how beautiful the landscape will be if there aren’t businesses still open after three years of construction, and after several years of economic challenges from the pandemic.
To ensure that businesses are impacted as little as possible, Duclos said she would consider “instituting free parking, alleviating water bills — like actual real tangible things that would be huge for businesses.”
“We need to really understand what we can do to make this project successful,” she said, adding she hasn’t seen outlines of how this could be accomplished.
Sciarra has pushed for the project during her time as mayor, and Tuesday’s forum was no different. She called the project “critical,” and listed several arguments for why this is the case.
For one, Sciarra believes the project would make downtown safer to navigate, and she noted that the area is listed in the top 5% of accident clusters in Massachusetts. The project would also enhance the accessibility to the businesses downtown, she said.
“It’s really about vibrancy, right?” said Sciarra about Picture Main Street. “We are creating more space for people. We are taking our outdoor dining and we are putting it into our sidewalk infrastructure. We’re creating more free speech space for folks.”
Sciarra also countered the argument that communication from the city has been lacking, pointing out that a committee, Pardon Our Progress, has initiated the dialogue between businesses downtown and the proposed project.
After Sciarra spoke, Duclos asked the mayor, “can you name specifically what the the committee has done?” However, Duclos was cut off by moderator Tara Jacobs of the Governor’s Council. Jacobs said the questioning would have turned the forum into a debate, which was not the format on Tuesday.
When it came to the issue of the Resilience Hub, a former First Baptist Church at 298 Main St. that was purchased for $3.175 million to form a human services resource center, Duclos said the city needs to get back to funding the “basics” of local government.
Instead of funding the Hub, she said the city should invest more money into fixing roads and sidewalks, beefing up the Department of Public Works budget, and increasing the school budget.
“We have to reprioritize. I think we need to get back to the basics,” said Duclos.
In making her arguments, Duclos also criticized the city for buying the former church at a price that she said was above appraised value.
Sciarra disagreed, “We paid below appraised value.” She further made the case that the project has come together after years of research among numerous stakeholders, including local businesses, as a remedy to house vulnerable people in the city.
Sciarra said there are many who support the project, and said “we don’t hear from them enough.”
“There are over 30 people representing 18 organizations and service providers that were on the planning committee for this,” she said. At present, she added, the city and stakeholders are “working hard” to get grassroots funding to complete the project which will house some 50 different organizations when completed.
On the subject of school funding, Sciarra boasted about her track record. During her first campaign for mayor in 2021, she pledged to increase the school budget 4% annually. But in her four years as mayor, Sciarra’s budgets have increased education funding by 5.1%, 7.4%, almost 10% and 6.5%.
She said state funds for Northampton schools are the second lowest in the region behind Longmeadow and that the issue of funding schools is a top priority.
“This is one of the most important issues to me. This is the thing I care most deeply about, and I am committed to bringing out every possible dollar that is sustainable for our schools,” Sciarra said.
But she cautioned that moderation is also key. “What we can’t do is repeat mistakes of the past,” which have led to deficits.
Duclos said that a real plan needs to be developed going into the future. For her, this begins with communication between students, educators and city officials who need to “start really coming up with a plan and some solutions to really navigate this.”
She also said the schools need to look into curriculum and shift the way things are done, including meeting the needs of administrators.
“I think we really need to be clear about how we’re going to move forward and how we’re going to make sure we have the best public education system for the people who live here,” said Duclos.
Candidates were asked how they would approach a Proposition 2½ override.
Sciarra is almost positive an override will be needed for the next fiscal year.
“I’ve been very open about the fact that we will need another override,” she said, noting that reserve funds have been spent in recent years and more municipal resources have been added.
Among these are additions for public safety, like adding eight new firefighters. “Those are services that we need to maintain,” she said.
Duclos said that she would need to take a deeper look into municipal line items as mayor.
But she used the moment to decry how expensive taxes are and talked about people selling their homes, adding that storefronts downtown need to be filled to maximize the potential of the city’s tax base.
Ward 3 candidates
Rothenberg and Loisel, running for the Ward 3 City Council seat, have different approaches to how to fill downtown businesses and how make sidewalks passable in wintertime, among other issues.
They also have different opinions on whether the city’s funds are mismanaged and whether there is a “cabal” of power running the city.
When the candidates were asked if the city should be responsible for plowing sidewalks since the aim is to have a walkable city, Rothenberg said yes, while Loisel said the city should be forcing property owners to do what is currently their responsibility.
Rothenberg said she believes the city has an obligation to plow sidewalks, saying not doing so is a “civil rights violation.” To ensure plowing and other public services are completed, Rothenberg expressed the need to adequately fund the Department of Public Works by offering workers a living wage. She said increases to their wages in recent years haven’t been enough.
Loisel called impassable sidewalks a “serious problem” but instead of clearing the sidewalks, the city should increase enforcement to homeowners since they are responsible for clearing sidewalks around their homes.
A fundamental disagreement the two had boiled down to the size of the city’s $145 million budget, with Rothenberg arguing that the city mismanages its finances and that there should be enough money to fund operations. Loisel said it is not a matter of fiscal mismanagement, and that the city doing the best that it can with the money that it has to work with.
The two have differing approaches on how to bring businesses and nightlife downtown.
Rothenberg says a downtown Northampton development director should be appointed. She also thinks the city should buy some of the properties for sale and rent them out for fairer rental rates.
“This is a critical role of the Northampton government,” she said.
Loisel said the Iron Horse reopening is representative of the city partnering with business owners for a successful outcome. She said some regulations need to be updated, and is also of the opinion that Picture Main Street will help.
With regards to housing, “We need to be welcoming people into our city,” said Loisel. And housing is the key to doing that. She said that all types of housing developments need to be made from “affordable, market rate, and something in between.”
Rothenberg attributes increased “deregulation” as the reason for surges in housing costs. She said measures that have been taken so far, such as allowing accessory dwelling units, are taking some pressure off the housing situation, but measures have not been enough.
“I am in favor of a much more robust dialog that is based on more than just what consultants or studies that we’ve picked up from other cities have to tell us,” she said.
Housing then went into a question about how the property tax system can be made more progressive.
Rothenberg said solutions are few due to the fact the city is fairly constricted by state law but added that, “one option that we have is to make the first or many hundreds of thousands of dollars of the property’s value not taxable.”
Loisel said she had “never thought about it.”
Rothenberg said she has been on the front lines of the fight for more school funding due to what she says is a lack of resources for students with disabilities. She said the lack of money to appropriately fund the schools stems from the state, which makes the obligation to fund the schools on the city.
“The state’s funding formula has been stagnant for 20 years,” she said. “It’s incumbent on us as a city to fund our schools.”
Loisel said that the city has been strapped for money since an override was approved in 2020. “It’s complicated what’s happening in our schools,” she said.
A disagreement broke out about whether there is a higher puppet master of city politics.
Rothenberg said that as a stenographer who was recording the oral history of World War II veterans, she consistently heard about cliques that ran local government.
“I immediately began hearing about a small group of very familiar people who served things like 18-year terms, who had the same campaign manager,” Rothenberg said. “We know that it is a small group. I know because they gave me their blessings when I ran last term, and it was critical that I achieved that blessing.”
Loisel expressed hearty disagreement.
“There is no cabal here. That is just a crock,” she said. “I don’t think it gets us anywhere to say things like there’s been a powerful cabal in the city. It’s just false. It’s just not true.”
The two also disagreed on whether rhetoric in city politics has become too divisive.
Loisel said commentary has been “villainizing” and is often based on inaccurate information dispersed by social media. She said she’s “very concerned” and that “we need each other.”
Rothenberg said the current culture of social media debates is not a problem, comparing the interactions like the student newspapers of times gone by.
“We want to talk about policy and the budget…we must be free to have debate,” said Rothenberg.