Lifelong Pittsfield, Massachusetts resident Daniel Miraglia is a carpenter, artist, and avid outdoorsman. This year, he’s trying to add city councilor to his resume as seven candidates compete for four at-large seats on the 11-member body. In his first foray into municipal politics, Miraglia faces incumbents Pete White and Earl Persip as well as challengers Alisa Costa, Lucas Marion, Craig Benoit, and Kathy Amuso. A regular attendee of the council’s bimonthly meetings, Miraglia wants Pittsfield to invest more in preserving and promoting its natural resources. Ahead of Tuesday’s election, Miraglia tells WAMC that he wants to replace outgoing conservative at-large city councilor Karen Kalinowsky, whose mayoral campaign fell short in September’s preliminary election.
MIRAGLIA: Definitely downtown North Street has been a hotspot. We constantly see, even today – we’re going on downtown North Street – it gets more and more confusing every day. Now we're looking at- We got green stripes out there, we got red stripes, and we got no U turns, no left turns. Again, another reason why I wanted to run for the city council is we’ve got to get back to- To give an example, downtown Stockbridge. People stop there in droves and get out of their cars and walk the side streets. There's not a lot there, right? But why is there so many people there? They feel safe. Simplicity. It's a simple format, the old facades on the buildings. I’d like to see Pittsfield and downtown Pittsfield start taking advantage of our arts, cultural, you know, outdoor places, you know, or coffee shops. More art, more, like, antique shops. You know, where, once we control our downtown and we have a plan- And again, we have to think about being a manager rather than, okay, we're going to have a mayor, but if we manage the city on like a managerial level, and we say this is our goal, this is our goal, how do we get people to come downtown and stay downtown? How do we get youth to feel safe downtown? How do we get everybody to basically say this is an economic magnet to come here? Arts and culture are a huge economic magnet. I’d love to see more of that developed on downtown North Street. We’ve got to fill them shops up somehow, too. It's a huge tax base we're losing there. So, if we can- For example, downtown Hudson. You go into Hudson, and they’ve got a strip that's almost a mile long. Both sides of the road is- You think, how many coffee shops can you have to survive? They're everywhere. But the people are there. It is a great atmosphere. And that's what we need. To drive Pittsfield back, we need to say this is our plan, and we got to come up with a plan, looking at bringing in things that work rather than- I don't really want to get into, you know, when you see about businesses that are coming to Pittsfield today and taking up our spaces and our empty storefronts and they're being bent over backwards to get them in there. And it is a tax base, but we got marijuana shops basically on every corner in Pittsfield right now. So, a lot of our buildings that, you know, other people can come here for what we have to offer, a lot of the strategic places are being taken up by you know, again, auto body shops, you know, another Autozone on every corner, you know, pharmacies, you know. We got, we got to think out of the box and try to entice more businesses to come here.
This year's mayoral pits former councilor John Krol against current city council President Peter Marchetti. You're endorsing Marchetti in the race. From your perspective, what's the difference maker between the two candidates?
I think the experience Peter has in his past experience on the Conservation Commission, which is one of my strong points. I think Peter would probably, if I were to win his seat, would probably look at my experience and know that I'm a valuable commodity to be on the city council. And probably, I would hope he would look at either putting me on a board that I could help the city move forward, either as a delegate to the Park Commission or the Conservation Commission, and sit down and work with me and I think listen to my long experience that I have with lakes, ponds, parks- That's my passion. That's my experience. And that's what I'm running on. I’m running on my strong background on the perspective of how we can better manage our lakes and our ponds and rivers and our parks. And our downtown North Street.
You referenced wanting to fill the void of Karen Kalinowsky leaving the council. She was a somewhat conservative voice on a number of issues- Do you do you feel like generally, politically speaking, you align with, generally, Karen's platform?
Yes, I, definitely we’ve seen eye to eye on- It seems like every time we talk and we spoke, we definitely had a lot in common on the direction that she wanted and I wanted and the constituents wanted moving forward with changes to you know, the so-called politics and you know, how our administration, current administration has governed without looking, you know, thinking outside the box and, again, she was an advocate for making changes to North Street and she tried to make those changes at a recent city council meeting. And there was a vote that she thought passed and I thought passed at that meeting, five to four to put it in place on the ballot, the changes to downtown North Street. And that conversation got turned around at the next meeting when Mr. [Earl] Persip made a charter objection, and next thing you know, that vote kind of sort of speaking got deadlocked, and I still don't, I'm still confused personally, I myself, on that vote that night and why it's not on the ballot for the bike lanes and a reconstruction of downtown North Street.
So, let's sum up your campaign. Give me the nutshell: When you say Miraglia for city council, what does that mean? What should voters know about that?
I would urge a vote for myself, and I've seen it so many times that I'm the only one over the last four years that shows up at the city council meetings, actually speaking about issues throughout the entire town, in all the wards. And it really bothered me when there was talking about raising the taxes in the water and sewer. And I looked behind me, and I got the sense that all people just have lost faith in their county government, that their voices don't have a say, because there's nobody behind me when I went up there in advocating not to raise our taxes. And I was speaking for the elderly populations that are going to take the biggest hit. You know, after the pandemic- In my opinion, we're still not over that pandemic. People are struggling. You know, it brings you back to, you know, a subject that everybody's talking about is the panhandlers. And I got to look at it as, it's a simple thing. Without making a big issue of it, we have panhandlers, and the only way to address that is- We can't address that as, okay, we're going to hire more social workers, and we'll have a social worker or a police officer walk in, have another social worker, and we'll see we can deal with this, this individual. Sometimes we’ve got to go back to the bare basics and say, tough love sometimes is the best love. And even though we'd like to put everybody in a program, and we don't want to see people, you know, on the streets begging for money, there's a city ordinance already in place, you shall not operate a business on city property. So, the only way you can do that is, you'd have to go through a permitting process and get a permit to be allowed for that usage. And at that time, they're basically denying the usage. And so, I think that’s been more blown out of proportion than anything, because I think there's a simple way to handle that. And the panhandling is a business, they are operating a business. It’s the same faces every day, and everybody's says, why don’t you get a job? Well, they're not looking to get a job, because they're making some pretty good money doing what they're doing right now. So, it's- In a roundabout way, we got to have some tough love, and who's going to be that person, whether it's to enforce people moving on- And it’s not a job that I would want to have, you know, basically someone, hey, whether you're on a sidewalk or you're on a median strip, you know, who that person is, because no matter who that person is, there's going to going to be a lot of remorse, hostility. And again, I think moving forward with that, it's a strong ordinance that you have to have, whether it's a separate department administrating that- I can't see taking an officer and an officer's time from the police department dealing with panhandlers. So, I think that's something again, that's going to need a full city council hopefully working together to find resolutions and move forward with some of the more serious issues that we have. And some of those issues, again- Crime, drugs. On a daily basis when I drive down Dan Casey Memorial Road and we see children and we see families fishing and enjoying nature- I'm looking down and I'm seeing hypodermic needles on the side of the road. Empty alcohol bottles on a daily basis. And then for over a month I'm calling the Park Department to say, why isn't there trash barrels there? Someone's stole them. Well, we got to start looking at- I think we have a duty and obligation for what we have to offer the public as far as our natural resources.
