On January 2nd, Pittsfield, Massachusetts will swear-in its first new mayor in almost a decade. City Council President Peter Marchetti won November’s election over former councilor John Krol in the race to succeed outgoing two-term Mayor Linda Tyer. It was Marchetti’s second bid for mayor after falling just short in 2011. Tyer chose to not seek a third four-year term. The dismal voter turnout of just 31% followed a campaign plagued with controversy. Marchetti was named in a federal lawsuit for workplace harassment and discrimination at Pittsfield Cooperative Bank, and Krol was accused of embezzling money from a nonprofit cat rescue. Both deny the allegations. With the race behind him, Marchetti is assembling his staff. Catherine VanBramer will continue on as Director of Administrative Services, and Brittany Walsh – currently the Administrative Assistant to the Police Chief – will serve as the Executive Assistant to the Mayor. The mayor-elect sat down with WAMC Berkshire Bureau Chief Josh Landes to explain his appointments and his early goals.
MARCHETTI: I think Catherine has done a great job. Catherine knows the mayor's office in and out. Catherine has seen a transition in the mayor's office as going from the executive assistant to the Director of Administrative Services, and my thing is, if it's not broke, don't fix it. I think that Catherine and Brittany both will have to learn a new management style and a new person, and so I'm more of a- I think I'm a little bit more of a people person and might be out in the public more than they would think I would be.
WAMC: And walk us through other administrative appointments you're going to be making- You obviously campaigned on a lot of continuity in city hall, but spell that out for us. What does that look like?
So ironically, based on the fact that if I choose to keep a department head, there's no appointments coming. They just continue to serve. I am in the process right now of meeting with all the department heads, and having conversations with them about what to expect to see over the next three, six, 12 months. And we're in agreement that they stay until we see that things change, right? We've heard a lot in the campaign about the status quo, and I said that I would not be the status quo. I think just because you have the same people doesn't necessarily mean that you have the status quo, and you can do good things with existing people or new things with existing people that you don't have to go changing your whole team.
When you think about the function of city hall today, if there was an area that you feel like you would bring attention to either encouraging or supporting or pushing from an existing program going on right now, what comes to mind?
So, I think two. One is housing. And we've already made some inroads on housing, and with the governor's recent Affordable Homes Act, it provides some more momentum to keep going. I think the other is, for me, it's communication. I think that was another theme during the campaign, that I can't sit behind my desk for the next four years and think that people know what I'm doing. And so, we're going to change that starting day one.
There's always been a lot of conversation in Pittsfield about the Department of Public Works and the different programs that it's following. We're coming off of a year where there's a lot of debate and discussion about the department under Ricardo Morales, its current commissioner. Talk to me about that- When you think about the vision for public works in the face of a lot of that public conversation, what does that look like under the Marchetti administration?
Well, we're already exploring the concept- You know, many, many years ago, we merged Department of Public Services and Department of Public Utilities together. So, public works and utilities together. And I think that we see a track record – it doesn't matter if we're talking about Commissioner Morales or we talked about Commissioner [David] Turocy, or we talked about Commissioner [Bruce] Collingwood – I think the workload there is way too much for one person to do. And so, I'm going to explore either separating the departments back into two separate departments, or providing some deputy superintendents in both public services and public utilities to help Ricardo do the job.
Now, one of the newest appointments for sure will be the new police chief. Where are you in conversations with outgoing Mayor Linda Tyer in this process, and give us a sense of what 2024 will hold for that search.
So, the mayor and I have had several conversations. We're days away from a meeting with the gentleman who will help us run the assessment center for the site selection piece for the chief or run our assessment testing piece. So, we're in the process of that, and hopefully, we can have that starting early in 2024 to begin that process. It would be my hope that before I present my budget in 2024, I'm presenting a police chief first.
Now, with your inauguration coming in just a few weeks, what should folks expect in the first month of the Marchetti administration? As we get into the new year and into January, what do you think the most visible signs of your leadership will be?
Well, we're going to work on a couple of housing proposals, and so I think you'll see one of those coming forward rather quickly. You're going to see- I'm going to do a complete review of boards and commissions. We have a lot of vacancies and we have a lot of boards that don't meet. Do they need to be meeting and should we be really re-engaging some of those boards? I think you'll also see me out and about a lot more, just trying to take it all in and getting, meeting with organizations and people that want to offer their two cents, in a sense, of what's going to make a better Pittsfield.
One board that sort of had a dramatic rise and fall during the Tyer administration was the Police Advisory and Review Board, which sort of, as critics predicted early on, it ultimately petered out due to its membership feeling like it had a lack of agency or authority. Any thoughts on the fate of the Tyer version of that board, which I believe was the third or fourth in the city's history, and will there be a Marchetti incarnation of a similar body?
So, as we talked about in the campaign a lot, we are talking about a mental health and substance use disorder taskforce. I think that comes first, and I've been already meeting with some of the folks that are heavily involved in that kind of work. I think we're all closer than we think of when we talk about the issue. It's clearly a really complex issue to solve, and it's going to take a lot of stuff. I think it would be unfair to come forward with another police advisory iteration of whatever without having a permanent police chief in place first. And once that happens, we can have a conversation about what that means. I think the commission has always had some pushback from some folks that are no longer there, and we'll spend some time to look at what may need to happen.
Turning into North Street for a minute, Pittsfield’s downtown as a perennial topic of discussion in municipal politics. We've heard a lot about empty storefronts, we're now seeing through programs like Vibe North Street through the Berkshire Black Economic Council, some of those storefronts will be full of life again, come the new year in January. Can you tell us other things the city is up to you to try to address this, given how much airtime it got both in council and on the campaign trail?
Well, so, I think in some cases, we've heard a lot about bike lanes. And so, you'll see that proposal coming forward pretty quickly. I think we've all talked about sidewalk, bike lane, curb, parking, one lane of traffic. From my perspective, the task force, I think, is going to help clean up some of the unwanted activity that we see in the downtown. I will have a push for, if you are doing something illegal, then we will kind of take some action and kind of try to push it along or get you the help that you need. So, when we talked on the campaign trail an awful lot about aggressive panhandling, and I've actually had conversations with folks and I'm like, okay, so what do you want me to do? So, let's just talk about it. A guy comes up and says, hey, can I have $5? You say, no, man, I don't have any money, and the person leaves. Do you want me to have that person arrested? Because if I do, tomorrow morning, they’re going to be back on the street doing the exact same thing because we have no reason to hold them. You know, if there's an aggressive behavior, we talked on the campaign trail about police and social worker combination together, and we'll get to that pretty early on in the first quarter to start to make that presence seen.
When you reflect on this campaign, and it was a boisterous one, certainly with a lot of twists and turns, what do you take away from that a month or so removed from the actual vote?
I think in some senses, there were two people who believed in Pittsfield, who actually believed in Pittsfield a lot more than and believed in what the future of Pittsfield should look like, a lot more than either one would give the other. And so, I think at the end of the day, it was a very loud campaign, it was a very exhausting campaign for both of us, I would believe. It came down to the person who is better known and has been involved longer, I think, as the campaign ended.
Any last message to Pittsfield heading into 2024?
I have a really big one is as I watch social media- And social media is one of the things that I'm not particularly fond of. As we enter the new year, we talked about change. I've promised to deliver change. Give me 90 days to begin that change before we're critiquing. And then after that, I'm fair game. And in the meantime, between now and then, there's many different holiday seasons approaching us and let's focus on that and have a happy and safe new year.
