Northampton needs a City Council which shares the priorities of our people: schools, roads, city services, and the obligation to keep taxes and fees affordable.
An independent City Council which balances the power of a mayor. A council which does not take decisions of backroom advisory boards as final, but which does our own research and holds interactive hearings to seek input from our population. A council which fulfills our duty to shape the policies and priorities of our city to match our constituents’ needs.
Although I will be new to government service, my career has been a lifelong exercise in curiosity. I enjoy digging in to complex topics and finding solutions to deeply rooted problems, especially those which have fallen into gaps between people and departments, or assumptions and facts.
Those whose only school advocacy is to plead again and again for unforthcoming state aid choose to underfund our schools while engineering large year end surpluses, surpluses they treat with feigned surprise as “one time money” which can only be spent on projects, when it was originally recurring revenue we could have used for schools and people.
Like the practically minded people of Ward 6, I recognize the error of paying Eric Suher $3.175 million for an unusable church, and that Main Street is the critical route from much of our community to most anywhere else. Not only is it a dangerous fantasy to propose that a bike route within a complex road corridor could replicate the carefree experience of our rail trail, but making Main Street hostile to driving and parking would mean making Northampton hostile to our own people.
Project data shows that bike crashes downtown are caused not by being driven into from behind, but from mutual surprise, mostly in the intersections, and especially when bikes squeeze along at the edge where it is hardest for drivers to see us. Removing a lane would cause backups whenever anyone accesses parking, and moving bikes behind parking to a sidewalk-like channel fixates on crashes which have not been happening, while increasing the surprise behind those which actually have. Seniors aging-in-place in Ward 6 ranches reach downtown by car or wheelchair van and require fallback to ordinary parking and curbs free from conflict with a hidden bike route.
Downtown needs simpler, sensible fixes: lane lines, raised crosswalks, and teaching bicyclists to ride predictably where drivers can see us. Rather than continued neglect to sell a grandiose project, we need immediate correction of the wheelchair obstacle course which is our sidewalks.
Five years ago I came to Northampton to reconnect with family during a challenging time in history, when family bonds and the opportunity to be present in the lives of my niece and nephew felt especially important. And I love what I have found here, first as a tenant in our more walkable core, then as a first-time homeowner behind the Ryan Road school.
I grew up and attended public school in a small town a half day’s bike ride south of here. I moved to Cambridge to study engineering at MIT and spent a decade there. Then I lived in New York City. I know firsthand how fundamentally and permanently those cities differ from ours. Northampton needs policies which suit our local reality, rather than those borrowed from an imagination of such other places. Contrary to the present agenda of forcing unworkable changes on our city, I seek to change Northampton’s government into one which values and supports our community as it is.
Across our city, this year’s election is a referendum on our future. Will we elect a government which continues to push an out of touch agenda of projects over people? Or will we be a community which prioritizes its people, its seniors and its children?
I ask for your votes for a government composed of those who will join me in enabling Hamp to be the best version of itself.
Christopher Stratton is running for Ward 6 city councilor in Northampton.