The nine-member body that represents Berkshire County’s second-largest community kicked off its first meeting of 2023 by re-electing Lisa Hall Blackmer council president and elevating Bryan Sapienza to vice president for the first time in a unanimous vote.
Sapienza, who replaces Peter Oleskiewicz, came into office mid-term in 2021 and won a full two-year term in that year’s election. WAMC caught up with Sapienza to ask about his goals as vice president Wednesday morning.
“We want to make sure that our community is safe,” he said. “We've had a couple of violent crimes in the area over the last couple of years, we want to make sure our community continues to be safe. We want to make sure that our you know, we keep up with our, you know, short term infrastructure needs, of course, you know, with keeping the roads clean during storms, and making sure that's a priority for residents, when we do get a bad storm that we do keep our roads clean and that the crews have the proper equipment and everything. I think that's one of the things that we, you know, we need to look at. And moving forward, just make sure that we can do to maintain a good quality of life. Of course, we have the short-term rental ordinance that will be coming around soon. So, we'll be putting that into place.”
At the meeting, Mayor Jennifer Macksey announced two new hires for the city.
“I'm very excited to announce that on Thursday our HR director will be starting,” she told the council. “Her name is Cara Farrell, she's coming to us from [the] Berkshire Regional Planning [Commission]. This position is a shared position between the city of North Adams, Adams, and Williamstown. Right now, it looks like Cara will be working in this building on Thursdays and Fridays. This is a grant-funded position over the next few years. So, we're going to see how this pilot program runs with this grant and working with the other communities.”
The other new face will be in the events department.
“Lindsay Randall has been hired part time to work with us 20 to 25 hours a week to manage our events," said Macksey. "I believe during the budget we had talked about consolidating some of the positions, and that really wasn't working well as far as the needs of the actual events. So, Lindsay is going to work for us about 20, 25 hours a week, and really focusing on working with entities that come into the community and have events as well as expanding our portfolio of events within the city.”
Macksey also had a pair of new grants to share with the council.
“We have received $15,000 in a grant for the North Adams Cultural District Council,” said the mayor. “We will be deploying a team to do programming and projects around the grant. But the most exciting news that I have for you tonight is that the city of North Adams has been awarded a grant in the amount of $629,000. It is for the Strong Communities Initiative Program. This program supports community-based violence prevention and intervention programs that will promote equitable access to protective factors that will reduce in violence and increase psychological and physical safety. Also, it will work towards reducing the risk factors for gun and community violence. This grant is a five-year funding program, and it is basically around violence protection from upstream prevention to early intervention. So, with this grant, our next step is to convene representatives from the school department, the police department, and work in collaboration with some local organizations to develop what we call an action plan as to how we are going to spend the money.”
After drawing attention to the fact that the council had not approved minutes for its November 9th meeting earlier in the night, Councilor Jennifer Barbeau used her concerns time to voice her ongoing issues with the body remaining in compliance with state law.
“If that's not happening and those meeting minutes are not being produced which are required under law, then it is the correct process to go to the state," she said. "I have filed Open Meeting Law complaints. I'm not ashamed of that, I'm not embarrassed by it. And this commission, this committee has been found to be in violation of that on more than one occasion. I work for transparency, and I'm going to continue to do that for the citizens of North Adams.”
