As 2021 draws to a close, transition is afoot in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Amid a surge of COVID-19 cases, the Board of Health has chosen a new permanent Public Health Director in former sanitarian Andy Cambi, who has served in an interim position since the departure of Gina Armstrong in September. Long-serving public officials on the city council and school committee have sat for their final meetings, and a new class of elected representatives will be sworn in in just two weeks. WAMC spoke with Mayor Linda Tyer about how she’s preparing for a new chapter in the city’s political history, what’s on deck for 2022, and why she thinks Cambi is the right pick for Public Health Director.
TYER: Andy has a very interesting background with the city's health department in that he has literally come up through the ranks. He's held a variety of positions in the health department, which gives him sort of a wide ranging perspective of what the duties and responsibilities of the health department are to the city of Pittsfield. He has, as Gina's right-hand person during COVID-19 pandemic, he showed himself to be confident and strong yet reasonable and careful. And those are really important leadership skills as someone is advancing to a director's position. We are also pleased that our Director of Public Health speaks Spanish, which is a growing population here in our community. And he has a vision for what the health department can do to expand its outreach to this community in ways that I think really will better serve everyone in our city.
This appointment also comes as the city faces this ongoing surge heading into the winter months- And this does mirror last cold season’s general trajectory of COVID-19. I've heard from Andy that the COVID-19 task force is back together. Any insights from the conversations happening inside that group at this point as we approach another holiday, and with it, the likelihood of another surge to follow?
Part of our recent meeting was planning for the distribution of the free at-home rapid test kits that will be coming from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. So we're still in the planning stages for how we will distribute those free at-home COVID test kits. They are intended to be given to communities who have a financial hardship, so we're working with some of our community partners to put together a plan for getting those into the hands of families that need them the most.
I wanted to ask you broadly about a lot of the transitions happening in city government in Pittsfield. We're seeing long-serving public servants like Katherine Yon of the school committee or city councilors with decades of experience, cumulatively, on the council stepping down at the end of the year. At a moment like this when there's this transition period, what does that mean for Pittsfield as a governmental apparatus? And as you head into this new season and this new crop of public leaders and elected officials and what have you, what is that process like on the city's end to ensure that that transition is as smooth as possible?
So first of all, I want to extend my thanks and gratitude to those elected officials who served this community for very long periods of time. Their contributions are certainly meaningful to the people that they represented while they were serving in elected office. The transition, bringing new elected officials on to the school committee and the city council is an opportunity for us to hear new voices, have some diversity of opinion and thought and experience representing the people of Pittsfield and influencing decision making. What we did for the city council is we held a new councilor orientation so that the new members of the city council could meet all the senior department heads, get a very brief overview of the individual departmental responsibilities, hoping to bridge that gap between, how do we work together, you as a legislative body, we as the executive branch, how do we communicate? How do we solve problems together? That was really the point of the orientation. And of course, welcoming two new school committee members in January will be an opportunity for us to have diverse representation.
With the departure of councilors [Chris] Connell and [Kevin] Morandi, we're sort of seeing this old guard of long-running opponents of yours politically in the city council depart. At a moment like that, where some people you've been contending with for some time now over a variety of issues are gone, ae you sort of expected to sort of welcome a new loyal opposition? Or what's the thinking on your end?
Well, you know, they have certainly challenged me, haven't they, Josh. And, you know, while it was often contentious, in my opinion, coming from them towards me, I always maintained the belief that while they rarely agreed with me or rarely supported the initiatives that I put forth, their questions often sharpened our thinking, forced us to put guardrails on our arguments to defend the idea. And so from that perspective, they played an important role. And I think with the incoming new members of the city council, we will always hope to have open communication. It is my hope that the new members will take opportunities to get to know me and to know the team and to understand that we view ourselves as partners, not as adversaries. And so I'm going to start the new year with that mindset.
Heading into that new year, I assume you're already putting your notes together on the upcoming 2022 State of the City address. Any idea at this point on what that might hit on?
Yeah, so we have started actually drafting and what we will likely do is do sort of a review of 2021 highlights and accomplishments, and also identify our wish list for 2022. So we will be continuing to work and fine tune and rewrite in time for inauguration day. That's when we anticipate sort of taking the opportunity to do a dual inauguration, State of the City. Since we're in COVID times, this would give us a chance to sort of take care of two important moments in one session. Inauguration Day, by the way will be held at Berkshire Community College. This gives us the ability to have plenty of room for people to feel comfortable attending inauguration.
Inauguration day is January 3rd.
