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Date: 9/17/2021
HOLYOKE – On Nov. 2, residents in the city of Holyoke will head to the polls to determine the outcome of several municipal elections including City Council, School Committee and who their next mayor will be.
In the race for City Council At Large positions, four councilors – Councilors Howard Greaney Jr., James Leahy, Joseph McGiverin and Peter Tallman – are seeking to be re-elected, while two seats are vacant.
In an effort for residents to better know the candidates who will be on the ballot and their position on city-specific issues, Reminder Publishing reached out to each candidate running for City Council At Large. Each candidate was asked to submit a short biography along with answers to several issue-specific questions. Candidate biographies were printed in the Sept. 16 edition of The?Holyoke Reminder and can now be found at thereminder.com.
Responses printed by Reminder Publishing on behalf of the candidates represent the candidates own thoughts, feelings and beliefs. Reminder Publishing does not endorse any candidate nor their beliefs.
Candidates for City Council At Large include Kevin Jourdain, Mark Chatel, Israel Rivera, Jose Maldonado Velez, Tallman, Greaney Jr., Leahy, Jennifer Keitt, Tessa Murphy-Romboletti, Paola Ferrario and McGiverin.
Their responses, listed in alphabetical order, are as follows:
Reminder Publishing (RP): In your opinion, what are the most significant issues facing the city at this time, and what would your plans be to address them?
Chatel: Public safety, keeping neighborhoods clean, drug issues and city getting back control of our schools. For public safety would support and would [need] to make sure each department has all the resources as needed. Would want programs for those facing addiction issues. Would work with the mayor and school council, receiver and address state to gain back control.
Ferrario: Our most significant issue is the stagnation of our local government.
Our present elected officials are generous, dedicated people who care about our city and are doing their best. But too many of them are living in the past. For many years now, our City Council has been making decisions for Holyoke as if the world around us had stopped changing two decades ago. (Which, incidentally, is when Holyoke’s last Master Plan was written and adopted.) We’re not going to be able to live up to our full potential as a city, or attract the new dwellers and new businesses that can restore Holyoke as a prosperous, vibrant community, without leadership that understands that the economic growth we need can only happen if we plan and govern for the world as it is today.
Most, if not all, of our city’s day-to-day issues spring from this greater one. Our leadership keeps trying to address problems with tools and approaches that were beginning to fail a quarter of a century ago. That’s how we get decisions like the sale of Lynch School to the lowest bidder, via a marketing process that discouraged proposals for re-use of the architecturally-significant building, to make room for strip-mall development. It’s how we get decisions to pass over novel proposals for use of ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) funds, on the grounds that our current leaders aren’t already familiar with them. The list could go on forever, and it’s not going to change until we change our decision makers.
Greaney Jr.: Department heads are the key to most successful city operations. I will insist department heads submit accurate budgets and live within them. We need a more friendly business environment and will seek to improve those conditions. I will work to eliminate the gas moratorium in our city, which has been a deterrent for financial welfare of Holyoke. Finally, I will make very effort not to raise real estate taxes on our already overtaxed homeowners.
Jourdain: Job one is Holyoke needs a fiscal watchdog on the City Council. I will make sure the city stabilizes its budget, keeps Holyoke an affordable place to live, stops massive tax and fee increases, rebuilds our cash reserves, and conducts responsible capital planning. I led the successful effort with 65 percent of Holyoke voters to stop the largest tax increase in city history that was being pushed by Boston bureaucrats because they refused to properly fund our schools. I will also demand real local aid funding formulas from the state that treat Holyoke fairly.
Job two: end the foolish and unnecessary gas moratorium. It is needlessly hurting business and residential development. Holyoke cannot afford hundreds of millions in unnecessary costs to shut down our natural gas division. I oppose the plan to take away natural gas services from thousands of residents who rely on it and force them to do very expensive conversions to other heating sources.
Job three: grow jobs and economic development. We need to be more business friendly with fairer taxes and cutting out bureaucracy. I will support economic development strategies that will support job and tax base growth, as well as, clean up unused properties.
Job four: get local control back of our schools. My kids attend our public schools. I stand with our teachers, parents and students who overwhelmingly want local control back. The Boston takeover has not worked and they have no plan to ever give control back. I will hold them accountable.
Keitt: One of the most significant issues that we constantly talk about is communication. Our City Council doesn’t communicate to the residents. Often times, residents don’t know who represents them and there is little to no communication between our city departments. They don’t collectively support each other. Communication is hard to work at. There should be standards everyone should follow and we should start there.
We need to take back our schools. I want to ensure our schools have the resources they need to succeed and will maintain an open line of communication and work cooperatively with our School Committee and School Department. I will assist, whenever possible, in fulfilling the requirements of our turnaround plan to return control back to the city of Holyoke.
Obviously, there are other enormous issues that need our full attention, including houselessness, OUD, trash, etc., but without better communication those issues will continue to not be addressed as effectively as they should be. I think this is the most important and fundamental issue.
Maldonado Velez: The platform for my campaign stands on three pillars – technology, infrastructure, and unity. I believe addressing these three issues will aid in the deeper issues of our city, such as mental health and drug abuse, lack of opportunities both in education and the workforce, and lack of access to housing. In order to tackle these issues, we need to create a strong foundation.
We need to upgrade our systems to make our city more efficient. Licenses, permits, and all other paper forms should have an equivalent process on the city website.
Another major issue is our physical infrastructure. We need to look into repurposing old buildings and exploring ways to make buildings mixed-use. This opens up an opportunity for residents to both live and work within the same community. This will create a deeper sense of pride and ownership in our community.
We also need more opportunities for our community to grow, come together, and support each other. This means connecting with organizations that are already doing this type of work and how to best support them in order to continue.
Once this foundation is built and maintained, the opportunities that come after will be endless.
Murphy-Romboletti: There are many issues facing Holyoke right now: public safety, an opioid epidemic, a gas moratorium, quality of life and city staffing. The City Council has a direct impact on how we address these issues and right now we’re simply not functioning in a way that appropriately addresses these issues. I will advocate for a City Council that devotes time and resources to substantive issues rather than consuming hours of public meetings with political grandstanding or inefficient debates that either have been or should have been vetted in committee. I would work closely with the City Council president and City Council administrative assistant to review the City Council’s procedural rules and seek to update those that have not been uniformly enforced and look to communities for best practices on administering efficient and organized meeting agendas. For example, the vast majority of City Council votes are unanimous. Where there is no likelihood for debate, I would propose a “Consent Agenda” rule whereby uncontested items are taken up as a single package unless an individual councilor moves to vote on a particular item separately. This approach is common in municipal legislatures across the commonwealth and country and is a simple measure to greatly reduce the unnecessary expenditure of public meeting time and focus on meaningful, substantive issues that Holyoke voters expect their elected representatives to address.
Tallman: The significant issues are keeping our overall expenses in line with our tax collections. Working with our department heads and evaluating their needs is an important role we play as city councilors. It is vital for us as city leaders to show our city employees that they are valued members of our community.
RP: Do you have any specific ideas to balance the city budget to stabilize the cost of living for city residents?
Chatel: Yes, meeting with every city department head is very important. It is important that every department is able to work in a reasonable budget as much as possible.
Ferrario: First, let’s acknowledge that in Holyoke we have the cheapest electricity in the Valley, we have free trash pick-up services for single-family and for small multi-family dwellings. Our schools are decent, homes, even if their prices have increased almost 50 percent since 2007, are still affordable for this area. Holyoke real estate taxes are separate with different rates for residential and businesses. (This was done to protect the residents). Realistically It’s impossible to make the cost of living cheaper in Holyoke.
The good news is that the city is collecting a lot more money for property taxes.
The challenge is to help homeowners and renters who struggle with the current cost of living to remain in their home. For this we need government subsidized programs (like section 8), we need private companies who specialize in the refurbishing of buildings to create mix living (affordable and market price) apartment complexes, we need to pass an ordinance that will allow people who inherited their homes from family to pay property taxes at a grandfathered in rate. We need to take advantage of stimulus money to create funds to help people who can’t afford to maintain their homes. We already have some incentives in place to make homes energy efficient. Last we need federal and state funding to pay our teachers more and maintain and improve school buildings.
Greaney Jr.: I will encourage department heads to fully staff their departments and diligently enforce their collective bargaining agreements. I will also file legislation that the department heads do efficiency studies to improve city services. I will also seek emergency contingency plans. We cannot continue to use the COVID pandemic as an excuse.
Jourdain: Holyoke needs a fiscal watchdog on the City Council. I will make sure the city stabilizes its budget, keeps Holyoke an affordable place to live, stops massive tax and fee increases, rebuilds our cash reserves, and conducts responsible capital planning.
I will conduct with my first budget a top to bottom review of all departments including holding hearings to ensure all revenues and grants are maximized and actually being collected. All expenses will be thoroughly reviewed. All eligible state receipts will be reviewed and accounted for. I am also seeking a thorough review of state aid to the schools of the receiver since the City Council has to approve the overall school budget. I will also demand real local aid funding formulas from the state that treat Holyoke fairly.
Keitt: I followed the budget discussions that occurred this year and one thing became very clear. There needs to be a review of where our money is being spent.
Spending money to provide a temporary solution to long term problems hasn’t worked. We need new ideas. As I continue to expand my municipal budget knowledge, I’m looking forward to collaborating with others to create actionable steps to balance our budget and stabilize the cost of living for our residents.
Maldonado Velez: An old friend put it very simply: “We make money, we spend money, and the goal should be to spend less than what we make.” Right now we are spending more than what we make because we don’t want to invest in more efficient processes for our city. As a recent example, the City Clerk’s office just got the voting machines upgraded after 25 years. The new machines tally votes in 30 seconds instead of the 10 minutes that the old ones would take. This seems like a small number, but when you think of how many “10 minute long processes” are happening across all city departments, you realize how much money we are losing simply because we don’t want to invest in new systems. Investing comes with the expectation that we will recoup what we spend plus save money in the long run.
Before investing, we need to know which processes can be improved, what is working, and what isn’t. One of the first things I would do is bring together all department heads in order to create a new master plan, or edit the existing one, to make sure that we are a unified front. From these conversations we can get a better idea of where departments can collaborate, where the redundancy lies in our systems, and how to best streamline existing processes. I expect some balance happening from these conversations alone.
Murphy-Romboletti: The budget isn’t only an authorization to spend, it’s the most important document that encapsulates how we’re going to achieve our goals as a municipality. Stabilizing the budget requires more than cuts to staffing levels and reductions in city services. Stabilization means ensuring the effective, efficient and transparent financial operations of city government. For example, identifying new revenue sources is important, however, we need to make sure we are fully maximizing existing revenue sources, e.g., collecting payments owed under PILOT (Payment in Lieu of Taxes) and host community agreements and expanding those funds in fiscally responsible ways that will stabilize the cost of living for city residents.
Right now Holyoke has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to improve our city’s financial position. The influx of ARPA funds from the federal government presents a unique opportunity to reshape our government; we should be using this to make sure we are administering our finances correctly, assessing property values correctly and making critical improvements to public infrastructure. I’d be active in advocating for the right funding in infrastructure and services, through the city budget, bond votes, CDBG and ARPA funding. Right now councilors only use austerity to balance the budget and they do it poorly by cutting line items randomly in a way that does a disservice to public services and investments that would increase our quality of life and economic competitiveness.
Tallman: To balance the city budget, we must find efficiencies within our departments. We must look to raising our sewer rate to keep pace with running the wastewater treatment plant. We recently used $1.7 million in American Recovery Plan Act funds to help balance our recent budget.
Reminder Publishing reached out to Rivera, Leahy and McGiverin, but had not received responses by press time.
Part three of the candidates’ responses will be printed in the next edition of the Holyoke Reminder.