Thursday, April 2, 2009

Today at 3 p.m., after serving for 16 years as a Northampton City Councilor, Michael Bardsley took out candidacy papers and declared his intention to run for mayor against incumbent, Mary Clare Higgins.

“I believe the city needs a different set of leadership skills,” Bardsley said, citing a growing sense of disenfranchisement both from the public and from inside city hall itself. “I’m concerned that our local government and our decision-making process has been cutting corners.”

Currently, the mayor crafts decisions ahead of time with her staff, he said, and then offers her conclusions as take-it-or-leave-it propositions: “Either you’re for her, or against her. As mayor, I want to be more inclusive. I want the Council and public to understand the dimensions of what’s to be decided and what the options are before we settle on a direction.”

This approach, he says, will help strengthen a much-weakened sense of community, which is another central objective to his candidacy. He thinks Higgins’ current strategy for dealing with objections has alienated many. “Stifling dissent doesn’t build community. Trust in our city government seems to be steadily eroding,” he said. “I remember a time when people in Northampton were skeptical of the feds and what was going on in Washington, but they felt confident in their local government. I’m not sure that’s how it is now.”

If elected, he said he plans to follow up on work done with the Ad-Hoc Best Practices Committee he had been a part of during the last year and conduct a thorough review of how city hall works using this new lens. He said he hopes to make changes in the way it interacts with constituents, and to promote more neighborhood representation in government by promoting neighborhood organizations that already exist and creating them where they don’t.

In the past, Bardsley said, Higgins has been commended for her management skills and strong fiscal sense, but given the dire state of the budget, he wonders if this assessment was accurate. In any case, he believes leadership, rather than just management, is required to fix what is broken.

“The budget isn’t an issue we should only bring up every spring when we’re wondering how to pay for schools. All it does is put families in a panic, and it doesn’t offer a long-term solution,” he said. He vowed that he will work on such a long-term plan to keep all of Northampton schools open, and will not entertain school closure as an option. During his tenure on the Council, he said, he’s seen several schools close, and feels that any further closings would leave holes in those communities that would be a “huge loss” that he “staunchly opposes.”

Higgins announced her intention to run for re-election a year ago and took out papers nearly two years ahead of voting day. Though she has boasted about how little money, time or effort she has previously put into campaigns, this time around she anticipated a contest and is now well ahead of Bardsley in terms of fundraising. Asked whether this is of concern to him, Bardsley said no.

“Given these hard economic times, it feels wrong to solicit campaign funds from those who are struggling,” he said. “I hope to appeal to those without large incomes. I’m planning on running a lean campaign, without glitz, and I think it will offer a stark contrast to the mayor’s campaign that’s being funded by some of Northampton’s more well-heeled contributors.”

A profile of candidate Michael Bardsley and what his candidacy may mean for Northampton will appear in next week’s print edition of the Valley Advocate.

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