Northampton, Massachusetts is set to hold a preliminary election this September – slimming down the fields for several races. That includes the mayoral race and its four candidates – among them: political newcomer Dan Breindel. Looking to unseat current-Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra, he spoke with WAMC about his candidacy, his campaign and a wave of candidates that, if elected, could reshape city hall.
It was late-July when a couple dozen residents and candidates packed the Amber Lane Café & Pub – gathering to talk city issues and elections, as well as mark the campaign kickoff for Breindel – a local artist and activist who recently became the fourth candidate to seek the mayor’s office.
“… we're that close to being able to really bring change,” he said to a room of supporters. “I think without it, we're really facing some real economic and environmental hardship.”
If you tuned in for a recent city council or planning board meeting, there’s a good chance you may have heard Breindel already. The Ward 3 resident tells WAMC that while he’s kept tabs on the city’s politics while raising his family, the past year has featured him getting more involved and speaking out.
Part of it had to do with a housing development off of Hawley Street – a proposed five-story, 54-unit apartment building that went before the planning board earlier this year. Breindel was one of the neighbors calling on the planning board to opt against it amid concerns over factors like privacy and road capacity.
Plans and permits would ultimately be approved, and while resistance and criticism of the project continues the candidate says it was part of an eye-opening experience.
“When I got into this, I knew about problems in the city that I think a lot of other people didn't necessarily have on their radar and I saw a lot of the problems with how our current administration works and how the government that they've set up fails to work for people,” he told WAMC in a phone interview.
The mayor’s office and other parts of city hall come off as insular, he argues, with some members of the city council allegedly resistant to various proposals put before it. This, amid over a dozen storefronts in the city appearing empty, the city spending about $3.2 million on a former church off of Main Street with plans to turn into a “community resilience hub” and what critics consider inadequate funding for Northampton Public Schools, he posits.
There’s also the manner in which it’s tackling housing in a city with a population of just under 30,000 – a number that’s remained relatively the same for the better part of 50 years.
“This city has these crazy ideas. In large part, the way in which they ostensibly serve the public is through very outdated, conservative fiscal theory, so a lot of it is ‘Well, if we build enough luxury apartments, then every apartment's rent will go down, because we'll be flooding the supply,’ so then the demand will go down,” he said. “Things don't actually work that way - that kind of like supply-side, deregulatory free-market thing has been disproven so many times. But even if there was any truth or logic to that, it would be in a true urban environment.”
Breindel claims projects such as “Picture Main Street,” an upcoming overhaul of a downtown artery, are plans more befitting of a city like Cambridge, Mass., where living car-free is more feasible.
He tells WAMC he opposes the $29 million Main Street project largely funded by the state – one that’s a multi-year effort that would refit the city’s downtown artery, improving bike and pedestrian infrastructure while reducing lanes – a move likely to gum up traffic and lead to new problems, the candidate says, given it’s happening on part of the frequently-travelled Route 9.
As his campaign continues, Breindel says that, given the number of candidates running for city council, voters have an option to elect a new batch of councilors who would be open to exploring new solutions to old problems in the city.
Combined with sitting councilors who share similar values, particularly around further funding NPS, Breindel says there’s a real hope to change how the council and mayor’s office functions.
“There's all this positive potential on the other side of this city right now that's just waiting to take off and get a footing and just go, go, go,” he says.
Breindel is currently up against incumbent Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra, as well as former Northampton police officer David Dombrowski and local business advocate, Jillian Duclos.
The preliminary election that will narrow the field to two candidates will be held Sept. 16.
