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North Adams Mayor John Barrett III
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"School lawsuit weighed: Mayors irate over cuts to funding"
By Scott Stafford, Berkshire Eagle Staff
Sunday, June 01, 2008
NORTH ADAMS — The mayors of at least three cities are considering suing the Massachusetts Board of Education over net cuts in state funding for their public schools.
According to Mayor John Barrett III and Holyoke Mayor Michael J. Sullivan, cuts in funding have resulted in fewer teacher positions and bigger obstacles to quality education. They maintain that the state is not living up to its constitutional responsibility to fund public education.
They also point to money they are losing when students opt to attend charter schools, saying that the funding formula is unfairly weighted in those schools' favor.
"It's atrocious," Barrett said. "And if the Legislature and the governor don't correct this problem in the next year, I and several other cities are going to join a lawsuit. We're going to have to seek our recourse in the courts. I imagine we should know something by next January, and if not, we're going in."
"Yes, we have been discussing that," Sullivan said, adding that Somerville Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone is participating in the ongoing discussion.
"Everything depends on what the final budget numbers look like later this year," Sullivan said.
In North Adams, where there are 1,691 students in the public schools, budget constraints resulted in the elimination of 7.5 teacher positions and 28 teacher aide positions.
"I don't see the light at the end of the tunnel," Barrett said.
"We received a net negative of $161,000 in state aid from last year. That has an impact. We have been funding the school system very heavily at the local level, while the state has been taking a walk."
In Holyoke, Sullivan said, state funding was up 2 percent from last year but was eaten up by increases in the cost of health insurance for retired teachers.
At the same time, there were negotiated teacher salary increases. The net effect resulted in the elimination of 30 teaching positions — a total layoff of 68 employees. In addition, three of 12 schools were closed. There are about 6,300 students in Holyoke public schools.
"It's clear in the constitution of the commonwealth that the education of our children is the responsibility of the state," Sullivan said. "Over time, some of that responsibility has gotten shifted to the municipalities, and the municipalities have been happy to share some of that investment. But the state has ... for the most part walked away from that responsibility."
Both Sullivan and Barrett say that state funding is just half of the problem. The other half is the lack of action on reforming the formula by which charter schools are funded with local money.
"The most absurd thing is that this charter school" — the Berkshire Arts & Technology Public Charter School in Adams — "is taking roughly $1.5 million next year, and that's up about $400,000 from this year," Barrett said. "What's angering myself and other mayors is the failure of the Patrick administration and the Legislature to address this problem."
He said that, when a North Adams student chooses to attend the BArT school, the North Adams schools pay the charter school $13,500, but that the latter spends only $6,300 in teaching its own students. And when a student chooses to go to a different public school system in Berkshire County, the cost to the North Adams schools is only $5,000.
Barrett said he does not want to close charter schools, "but just don't continue to hurt the public school system."
State Rep. Daniel E. Bosley, D-North Adams, agreed that the funding and charter school compensation formulas are in desperate need of re-evaluation.
"The problem is that we have schools that are losing population out here, but whether you have 12 students or 15 students in a classroom, you still have to heat the classroom and light the classroom, put a teacher in there, and yet you've lost three students' worth of funding," he said. "It's a lousy way to fund it."
J.C. Considine, spokesman for the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, said that the release of a study commissioned by Gov. Deval L. Patrick's administration, slated for June, probably will call for an evaluation of the needs of the state's public school systems. He was unaware of any effort to evaluate the charter school funding formula.
"Our legislators are really going to have to pay attention to this," Barrett said. "There should be a public outcry."
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www.sullivanforholyoke.com
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June 2, 2008
I am in 100% agreement with North Adams Mayor John Barrett III about the INEQUITY in state education funding in Massachusetts!
In Truth!
Jonathan Melle
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www.jonathanmelleonpolitics.blogspot.com/2008/06/north-adams-mayor-john-barrett-iii.html
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NOTE:
Jonathan Melle is a former resident of North Adams, Massachusetts from July 1, 1997 through August 31, 1998.
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www.jonathanmelleonpolitics.blogspot.com
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"State Initiative Targets High Smoking Rates"
By Jen Thomas - June 08, 2008 - iBerkshires Staff
NORTH ADAMS — With an exceptionally high smoking rate in the county, both local and state officials are coming together to help residents kick the habit.
At a Friday morning press conference in the lobby of North Adams Regional Hospital, members of the Berkshire legislative delegation joined Mayor John Barrett III and officials from the state Department of Public Health to announce the launch of the "Fight 4 Your Life" initiative, a nicotine patch giveaway that will work in cooperation with local smoking cessation programs.
"What does it take to give up the addiction? There are two things together that are likely to be the most successful. One is using a nicotine patch or some other form of nicotine replacement together with individualized counseling or support from other people. If you have those two things in your life than you have a much greater chance of beating tobacco," said John Auerbach, the commissioner of public health.
An estimated 3,454 smokers live in the city. The smoking rate is 30.3 percent, 68 percent higher than the statewide rate of 18.1 percent. Additionally, the rate of smoking during pregnancy is the city is 33.3 percent.
The Fight 4 Your Life campaign will provide two weeks of nicotine patches to smokers who want to quit throughout the month of June. When callers contact the state "Quitline," they will not only receive the patches but also a list of local hospital programs that offer smoking counseling.
Barrett, a reformed smoker, said he was eager to see changes in the smoking habits of city residents.
"I commend the state and our local hospitals for really stepping up and doing something about this because nothing angers me more than seeing some of our young people walking out of school lighting up a cigarette on their way home. Some of them haven't even reached the age of 15 years old. We've got to start doing more," the mayor said.
Past pilot programs in other municipalities — including Lowell, New Bedford, Fall River and Worcester — have proven successful, said Auerbach, with a "high percentage" reporting they are smoke free six months after beginning the program.
"We think this could work," Auerbach said. "We are not going to let the economics of purchasing the nicotine patch be an obstacle to somebody moving ahead with their efforts to give up tobacco."
Local legislators were also on hand to celebrate the initiative's launch.
"Out here, we have gone through some really tough times. We're still fighting some vestiges of losing the manufacturing economy here and people are still struggling for jobs. What's happened is we've seen battles in teen pregnancy, battles in teen smoking, battles with cancer," said Rep. Daniel Bosley, D-North Adams. "We need to change the habits and it's very important for us to take this step."
Jennifer Ciello, the tobacco treatment program coordinator for the Reach Community Health Foundation, said providing the first two weeks of nicotine-patch treatment (typically a 10- to 12-week program) will help put smokers on the right path to beating addiction.
"The idea is to get more and more people to local programs," said Civello. "Quitlines across the state have seen huge jumps using this program."
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Public Health Commissioner John Auerbach, left, speaks with Richard Palmisano of NARH.
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Katrina Bergman, spokeswoman for the initiative, was inspired to stop smoking by her children Jack, 12, and Emily Banagis, 15 (in orange). Emily's best friend Stacey O'Leary, 13, is at left.
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www.iberkshires.com/story/27368/State-Initiative-Targets-High-Smoking-Rates.html
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"No new charter schools for Western Massachusetts"
The Associated Press, Monday, September 29, 2008
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) — The state Department of Education has rejected all three proposals for new charter schools in Western Massachusetts.
The Republican newspaper of Springfield reported yesterday that authorities have invited those proposing two charter schools in central and eastern Massachusetts and one statewide charter school to submit final applications.
Backers of three western Massachusetts charter schools were not invited, and will not be considered for approval this year.
They had proposed charter schools in Springfield, Chicopee and Franklin County. Currently, there are 63 charter schools statewide.
The education department's decision was announced last week. The agency invites initial applications and meets with some of the founders before narrowing the list to those asked to submit final applications.
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"Where the cutbacks might hurt the most"
By Matt Viser, Boston Globe Staff, October 17, 2008
FITCHBURG - Almost every day, Laura Frost comes to a public housing project in the center of this tired city to make sure that 69-year-old Ernestina Ortiz takes her pills. She prepares meals for Ortiz. She protects her from falling in the shower. She bends to her knees and pulls on Ortiz's shoes.
Asked what would happen without her home care provider, Ortiz just paused and shook her head.
"I'd be lost," she said.
Home care is the kind of crucial social service, viewed up close, that is jeopardized by the $1 billion in budget cuts Governor Deval Patrick announced Wednesday afternoon.
Patrick's cuts targeted services for troubled teenagers, the mentally ill, and the disabled, as well as to local police grants and much, much more. People who could be affected by the cuts can be found all over this economically troubled city, from the elderly strolling past the boarded-up storefronts downtown to the students trying to build careers at local colleges.
"Fitchburg, like all cities and towns, is affected," Patrick said in a brief news conference in the city yesterday after he met with city officials for an hour to discuss the cuts. "The reason I'm here today is to convey to Fitchburg, and the good people who work here - the mayor and her team - that we are in this together."
Calling the cuts painful, he added, "There is a human being behind every one of those dollars."
In the first 24 hours after the governor announced the reductions on Wednesday night, Fitchburg residents began to digest just how painful it could be.
Consider, for one, Katia Figueroa. She is a 17-year-old high school senior who several months ago started coming to an after-school program at Cleghorn Neighborhood Center, which was buzzing yesterday with children and teenagers molding clay, drawing on posters, and doing their homework. Figueroa comes to the center almost every weekday for math tutoring.
"I had a C or D average," Figueroa said yesterday. "This helped me bring it up to a B, which, for me, is a big deal."
A cut to the after-school program would add to the burdens already inflicted on the Cleghorn Center by the faltering economy. The food pantry is virtually under siege by residents; about 80 families came last month, four times more than normal. Staff members are no longer reimbursed for gas mileage as they travel to help families around the community, according to Dolores Thibault-Munoz, the center's executive director.
The impacts of the 1,000 layoffs and $1 billion in budget reductions Patrick announced were still being tallied around the state yesterday. City and town officials were relieved that the governor and Legislature have not yet cut local aid payments to municipal governments.
The biggest cuts statewide, nearly $300 million, will be to Medicaid payments made to healthcare providers, possibly including the 150-bed HealthAlliance Hospital in Leominster that serves Central Massachusetts. Counseling programs, homelessness support services, and adult education courses all will see cuts.
More than $1.6 million is being subtracted from services for the blind. Nearly $1 million is being eliminated from emergency assistance funds for family shelters. More than $1.5 million in HIV/AIDS prevention funds will be cut, along with at least $8.1 million in substance abuse programs. More than $15.2 million will be cut from the Department of Social Services alone.
Communities like Fitchburg, a former manufacturing city that has higher poverty rates and unemployment than state averages, could be hit hard.
The downtown contains multiple consignment shops and boarded-up buildings, but it also has a new bookstore and a martini bar called Destaré. Yesterday, there were well-dressed women pushing strollers and also scraggly men carrying cigarettes.
"We seem to be on the brink of breaking through," said Lisa Wong, who took office in January as the city's first minority mayor. "Here we are, pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps. But there's a lot of uncertainty. We just can't afford any more cuts."
The city's budget was cut 13 percent this year. The library is open only three days a week, and the police and fire forces have thinned.
"Our city lacks structure," said a barber inside Juice Cuts, who declined to give his name. "If it wasn't for the state colleges, we would be in really bad shape."
But those schools, too, will struggle. Despite increased enrollments, they will have to cut budgets by 5 percent.
Mount Wachusett Community College will lose $642,000, out of $12.8 million it had planned to spend. Fitchburg State College will cut $1.4 million out of its $27.8 million budget, instituting a hiring freeze and eliminating overtime. No tuition increases are planned, according to the college president, Robert V. Antonucci, but there may be some layoffs and unfilled positions.
"The last thing we want to do is raise fees," Antonucci said. "We'll reduce student activities."
Margaret Woovis, who runs Montachusett Home Care, a Leominster-based program that provides home care for Ernestina Ortiz and other senior citizens in 21 towns in north-central Massachusetts, said indications are that her budget will be cut by several hundred thousand dollars.
She's contemplating layoffs to her staff of nearly 100, and said the 1,500 seniors in the home care program will have to be reduced by about 60 people per month. That means not taking any new cases and may require cutting back on current ones.
"Epidemic is probably the word," Woovis said. "This is happening to everyone, everywhere."
At the Montachusett Opportunity Council - a Fitchburg-based agency that provides job training, youth programs, and support for the homeless - nearly one-third of the $17 million budget comes from state funding. The council's executive director, Kathleen McDermott, is still trying to figure out how the governor's budget cuts will affect her agency, which serves 20,000 residents. "The thing I worry about is, is this just the beginning?" she asked.
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Matt Viser can be reached at maviser@globe.com.
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North Adams, Massachusetts
"Gas prices dip below $2 per gallon"
By Ryan Hutton, (The Berkshire Eagle), New England Newspapers, Friday, November 21, 2008
NORTH ADAMS — Gas prices may be dropping faster than a lead zeppelin, but Mayor John Barrett III says more needs to be done to keep North Berkshire on par with everywhere else.
"Well, they're falling, but we're still 15 cents behind other areas in Western Mass., like Westfield, Williamsburg — and we're much closer to prices in the Boston area," he said. "The lowest price I saw was $1.84."
Barrett said the constant competition from lower prices in places in Adams has brought local prices down — with Xtra-Mart on Ashland Street selling unleaded regular for $1.97 per gallon Thursday and Cumberland Farms just down the street selling it for $1.99. He pointed out that there is a big difference just between the two Cumberland Farms stores in North Adams and the one in Williamstown, where gas is selling at $2.05 per gallon.
"I'm thrilled that they're down, but it was slow coming, and it should still be at least 15 cents a gallon less than it is," he said.
"We're not talking places that are far away. The old excuse is it costs more for places that are far away. Then how come Charlemont, in the middle of the Mohawk Trail, as isolated as you can get, no competition, and it was 14 cents a gallon cheaper than North Adams?"
He also said the sudden, overnight drop in North Adams, from roughly $2.13 to $1.99, shows vendors do not operate on a gradual scale based on supply and demand.
"It's great, but how long it's going to last, I don't know," he said of the prices dropping. "What I'm really concerned about is that home heating oil has not followed the same path. I did talk to the attorney general's office two weeks ago, even though the prices were going down, because I believe they have to do what the governor of Connecticut did — they have to subpoena the records of the Cumberland Farms and Citgos because while North Adams was at $2.13 earlier this week, the one gas station in Charlemont was at $2."
Oil is currently selling for less than $50 per barrel. Barrett said the last time that happened, home heating oil was priced at $1.75 per gallon. Now it sits at anywhere from $2.84 to $3.05.
"Why hasn't that dropped, too?" the mayor asked. "A step further than that is, why haven't the food prices gone back down? They went up because of the fuel and transportation costs.
"Maybe the new (Barack Obama) administration can change this, but right now, everyone is so concerned about bailing out the big banks, there's no bailout for Middle America. All we want is a fair shake with these prices because it's going to get bad out there."
He said the problem lies in Washington, D.C., and politicians need to "get off their duffs" and concentrate on helping the average person.
"We as local officials can rant and rave all we want, but that's the problem, right in Washington, D.C." he said.
"I believe in the free enterprise system, but you know what? When things aren't regulated and watched closely, you end up with the mess we have on Wall Street. If they want to regulate the banks better, they have to start looking at some of these other things, too."
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"Barrett bites the budget: In a tough economy, the Mayor of North Adams prepares for funding cuts and eyes school revenues"
By Scott Stafford, Berkshire Eagle Staff, Tuesday, December 02, 2008
NORTH ADAMS — Budget time doesn't come for another six months, but North Adams Mayor John Barrett III is already driving city employees crazy by reminding them to turn off the lights and reduce the amount of salt used during storms, he said, in anticipation of a $500,000 to $1 million loss in revenue for the coming budget year.
"The state depends on certain areas of revenue, but their sales tax is down, their income tax revenues are down, and the capital gains tax — I don't know anyone that made money on the stock market this year," Barrett said. "So that's going to take a serious hit. And (Gov. Deval L. Patrick) has already made significant cuts."
Locally, Barrett is already anticipating significantly less revenue from the hotel/motel tax, the excise tax and overall property taxes.
"And North Adams is already receiving $1 million less in state aid than we did four years ago," he said. "We've had to make cuts because of it."
A local legislator and a spokesperson for the governor said these budgetary concerns are being worked on.
Having been in a budget reduction mode for six years now, Barrett says there is not much left to cut anywhere but in the school department.
"I've had discussions with the superintendent, and the school department is the only place that has been relatively untouched," he said. "What else have I got left?"
He said the city is down to about 20 firefighters, 15 or 16 workers in the city yard, about 22 police officers, "and look around city hall — it's like a bowling alley sometimes, there's just not many people left here."
In addition, the firefighters and teachers unions are looking for increases
In Barrett's view, three factors must be addressed to resolve the ongoing budget crisis: resolving disparity in the charter school funding formula, finding new sources of income and pension funding reform.
"Until a few cities and towns in the commonwealth file bankruptcy or go into receivership, and its coming, then maybe the legislature will get the message — there have to be new sources of revenue," he said.
He mentioned a tax on utility poles and an increase in the hotel/motel tax.
Rep. Daniel E. Bosley, D-North Adams, said that with a $40 million fund recently passed to aid the construction of infrastructure for broadband Internet service in Western Massachusetts, a tax on utility poles and switches would be hard to justify.
"I'm loathe to say we're giving it to you with one hand and taking it away with the other hand, but by the same token, pretty much every other state does that and we need to take a look at it," he said.
The major hurdle, Barrett noted, is the funding of charter schools using city revenue.
"The only way it's going to get done, at number one, is charter school reimbursement," Barrett said. "It is totally absurd when we have charter schools sitting on surpluses and we're making cuts. And for whatever reason, legislators and the executive branch refuse to address the issue of charter school funding. Unless they address that, I see nothing on the horizon."
Bosley said political realities preclude quick action on the funding formula for charter schools.
"I understand his frustration," Bosley said, "but I don't know that it is going to change any time soon. That's something that we work on every year. It's not about whether the charter schools are doing a good job; it's about how we fund them. You shouldn't ask the cities and towns to do that."
He added that revenue streams for the state have been decreasing, but that more solid estimates would be ascertained in January and February as the new budget process gets started.
"In October, Governor Patrick outlined a Fiscal Action Plan to responsibly address a $1.4 billion budget deficit created in large part by the national economic downturn," said Kimberly A. Haberlin, deputy press secretary for Gov. Patrick. "Throughout this budget reduction process, Governor Patrick worked to ensure cities and towns were held harmless and, as a result, local aid and Chapter 70 funding were protected. As we continue to prepare for the Fiscal Year 2010 budget, the Governor remains mindful of the economic pressures on cities and towns and will make every effort during these difficult times to protect them."
"I just don't know what's going to happen," Barrett said, "but the last thing I'm going to do is cut teaching positions. Down the road, though, we may have to close a school."
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To reach Scott Stafford: sstafford@berkshireeagle.com or (413) 664-4995.
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North Adams, Massachusetts
"Cancer patients offered 'new hope': Oncology practice is first in area with technology"
By Jennifer Huberdeau, Berkshire Eagle, New England Newspapers, Friday, January 09, 2009
NORTH ADAMS - With less than an ounce of blood, doctors at Berkshire Hematology Oncology now will be able to track the success of a cancer patient's treatment and progress — and eliminate unnecessary treatments.
The private practice is the first in New England and New York to acquire the CellSearch Circulating Tumor Cell Test, which was unveiled Thursday by Drs. Spyros Triantos and Paul Rosenthaul at the Eileen Barrett Cancer Center.
"This technology presents new hope for cancer patients," Rosenthaul said. "Up until now, we have relied on physical examination, blood tests and biomarkers to determine if a patient is responding to treatment. It would take several months to tell if a treatment was working — this procedure will regulate that time period to mere weeks. It detects actual cancer cells and can be done rapidly and often. We receive a real-time snapshot of what is happening, which gives us many more choices."
The test can be used for the three most common cancers — colorectal, breast and prostate - detecting if the cancer cells are metastasizing to other parts of the body.
"The addition of this cutting-edge technology will allow us a true advantage in the fight to prevent and treat cancer," he said.
Until now, doctors would have to wait up to three months to see changes in the radiological scans of patients with metastasizing cancers.
"A majority of our patients require treatment such as radiation and chemotherapy, which can cause serious side effects and are costly procedures," Rosenthaul said. "This technology can detect one cancer tumor cell among millions of blood cells. We can accurately predict the state of a patient's cancer by the number of cancer cells in the samples and whether or not a patient is benefiting from treatment."
To complete the testing, which has a turn-around time of three hours, a 7.5 milliliter sample of blood is injected with reagents and stains to determine the difference between a white blood cell and a cancerous cell.
"The tumor cells are marked with iron," said Lauren Wick, the practice's lab manager. "The blood than goes through a wash cycle that strips away the majority of white blood cells. It's then put into a magnetized cartridge that is read by microscope and camera in the analyzer."
Digital images of the cells are transferred to a nearby computer, where Wick is then able to determine if the cells are cancerous.
"They're labeled by anti-bodies and the iron marker," she said.
Wick, a medical technician, spent an intensive week training to read the difference between the four different projected wavelength signatures — cytoplasm, nucleus, white blood cells and "junk" — displayed on the screen.
"All of this was done manually before," she said. "By doing it that way, you lose a lot of precision and accuracy."
Triantos said there is hope that as the technology receives further review by the federal government, that it will eventually be used for other forms of cancers and perhaps screenings. But having the technology is huge advantage in fighting cancer, he said.
"One question that always stands out as the most important is, 'Is this treatment working? Do we need to stop, continue or make changes?" Triantos said. "The CellSearch technology will now allow us to make informed decisions in terms of treatment for those patients — and much earlier than was previously possible."
Mayor John Barrett III, who lost his wife, Eileen, to breast cancer 19 years ago, said he was happy to know such advanced technology would be available at North Adams Regional Hospital, and in the unit named for his wife.
"She said to me, if I don't survive this, make sure afterward that you make it better for others," he said. "If this technology had been available at that time, maybe Eileen would still be here today."
Rosenthaul said the practice is leasing the equipment, which retails for $205,000. Berkshire Hematology Oncology has offices in North Adams, Pittsfield and Great Barrington.
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Reforming Education
"Concerns raised on charter changes: Gov. Patrick's proposal draws mixed reviews from supporters and opponents of the schools."
By Jennifer Huberdeau, New England Newspapers, Thursday, January 29, 2009
NORTH ADAMS — Gov. Deval Patrick's proposals to raise the cap on charter schools in underperforming districts, impose quotas on student demographics and move a key portion of charter school funding into a budget line item was met with mixed reviews by both advocates and proponents on Wednesday.
"I'm very disappointed the governor failed to address the issue of charter school funding formulas," Mayor John Barrett III said. "We cannot continue to ignore this growing problem during financial hardship. It has to be dealt with."
Currently, charter school funding from the state is incorporated into Chapter 70 education aid to local public school districts. The districts then pay charter schools at the beginning of the school year, based on projected charter enrollments. Should enrollments at the charter schools not be as high as anticipated, the school districts are reimbursed later in the year. For the first three years, local school districts receive Chapter 70 reimbursement from the state — 100 percent in the first year, 60 percent in the second year and 40 percent in the third year.
Patrick's proposal, which is aimed at bringing more transparency to charter school budgets, would make the funding, which has been insulated in Chapter 70 aid, a line item in the state budget. The line item could then be reduced by the state Legislature or the governor, in the same way Chapter 70 funds for local districts are cut. The move would require approval by the Legislature.
"We all understand that the charter schools are here," Barrett said. "But they have to be put in the budget as a line item. I have to cut $1.5 million from my school budget, but they don't have to cut a dime. They have to be treated in the same manner — dollar for dollar."
He said the current funding structure, which requires local districts to send the same amount they spend per pupil to the charter schools, actually penalizes municipalities that fund their schools above their mandated minimum school spending, called foundation levels.
"If they want to fund them through Chapter 70, then it should be based on foundation levels," Barrett said.
According to Marc Kenen, executive director of the Massachusetts Charter Public Schools Association, the proposal to make the funding a line item would make the schools vulnerable to the will of the state Legislature.
"It could cause a serious negative impact," he said. "Right now, the formula is set up so the same amount of money is spent on every child coming from the same school district pool. If the Legislature is able to reduce the amount of funding going to a charter school, then it will lessen the amount of money being spent on the pupil's education."
Julia Bowen, executive director of the Berkshire Arts and Technology Charter Public School in Adams, said she finds the idea of placing a portion of charter school funding at the mercy of the Legislature a "scary thing."
"It's when we are in tight budget times that line items begin to get cut," she said. "I couldn't support that. It would put a lot of programming in jeopardy."
Patrick also called for the lifting the cap on net school spending on charter schools from 9 percent to 12 percent, which would encourage existing school to expand or new charter schools to be started with the promise of state funding. The new cap would only apply to the bottom 15 percent of lowest performing school systems in the state, including districts in Worcester, Fall River, Boston and Lowell and North Adams.
"North Adams might have been one of the places this could be put into place, but in reality I don't think we need another charter school in Berkshire County," Bowen said. "The community isn't large enough to sustain another school. However, I think urban areas across the state could benefit from the cap being lifted.
"A recent study by the Boston Foundation showed the success of charters in urban areas is indisputable, but we don't have the same population in number or demographics as Boston, Lawrence or Lowell. I don't see the concept of raising the cap having an impact on regional charter schools like us."
Barrett also said he didn't think raising the cap would have a major impact in the area.
"They haven't met their quota at the charter school yet," he said. "I'm just bitterly disappointed with the governor and the secretary of education for buying into this propaganda."
Kenen said he did not know of anyone looking to start a second charter school in the Berkshires, but believes South County could support one.
"Certainly, the Berkshires could sustain another charter school," he said. "Charter schools can do extremely well in a region that is not focused on drawing students from a particular district."
He did acknowledge that the Berkshire Arts and Technology Charter Public School had just slightly under 200 open slots available.
Another sticking point for charter school advocates is Patrick's push to close the achievement gap among low-income and special needs students.
"Our concern is that he wants to mandate that 80 percent of our students are a combination of low-income (receive free or reduced lunch), special education or speak English as a second language," Kenen said. "He also wants to mandate that our student population contain 5 percent more special education students than the local districts. Certainly we share his goal, but our enrollments are done by a lottery system to ensure every student who applies has an equal chance at enrollment."
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www.topix.net/forum/source/berkshire-eagle/T73F0LGRI22TPK7GF
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"Mayor calls on community"
By Jennifer Huberdeau, North Adams Transcript, Wednesday, February 11, 2009
NORTH ADAMS -- While Pittsfield's city fathers approved a number of spending cuts to close a $1 million budget shortfall on Tuesday night, Mayor John Barrett III announced during Tuesday night's City Council meeting that he'll seek input from both his employees and residents before slashing departmental budgets any further.
"I was lying in bed awake at 3:30 this morning worrying about how I was going to afford to cut the grass at Alcombright field this summer," Barrett said. "I was thinking that we could put together a volunteer group -- a weedwhacker brigade -- to take care of the fields. It's going take a community effort to get through this."
Meetings with city employees for suggestions on how to cut costs without cutting positions are scheduled for Thursday morning, he said, in addition to a series of "City Hall" meetings that will take place in local neighborhoods to discuss cost saving measures and plans to restructure the school district by closing Silvio O. Conte Middle School and converting to a K to 7 and 8 to 12 school model.
"If people want to keep their jobs, I'm willing to listen to their suggestions on how best to save money," Barrett said. "It's also not a question of if a school will close, but which one."
The city faces a shortfall of $2.4 million, which was created last month when Gov. Deval L. Patrick slashed the state's budget by $128 million and cut local aid by 9.7 percent.
"When I was here a few months ago, in October, to cut $300,000 from the budget because of the warning signs I was seeing, a lot of people thought I was being an alarmist," Barrett said. "At that time, we were preparing for a cut of about 10 percent, but we didn't think that would happen for another year. We didn't anticipate the cuts happening in the last two quarters of this year as well."
The cut in state aid stripped an additional $550,000 from this fiscal year, he said. Another $1.3 million has also been cut from fiscal 2010.
"When you add the $850,000 from this year and $1.3 million from next year, we're seeing a loss of $2 million from July to July," he said. "And there's more to come. The governor has figured in a 2 percent hotel/motel tax and a 1 percent meals tax on the state side for revenue. He's not going to get that. We'll see it on the city and town side, but not on that end. The Legislature will most likely approve a raise to the sales tax as well."
But Barrett said he isn't banking on unapproved tax revenues to balance his budget.
"We're doing an inventory of available property that we own in the city to see what might sell," he said. "I think we'll make it. I don't want to be an alarmist, but I have to be the bearer of bad news.
"I will say one way we are not going to do this is by cutting programs, raising fees or raising property taxes. Any community that thinks it can go and raise fees and taxes isn't going to make it. This is a recession and I think it's very quickly moving towards becoming a depression. What we need to do is figure out how to provide programs as more and more of our neighbors get laid off and still be able to provide city services."
Last week, the city's School Committee announced it was considering closing the middle school as part of a plan to strip between $1.2 million to $1.4 million from its annual budget, which was about $16 million for fiscal 2009.
"The closing of the middle school has been in the works for about 18 months, but the preferred plans were a K to 6 model or a K to 8 model," Barrett said. "We wish we had more time to figure this out. We don't know exactly how many teaching jobs will be affected just yet, but if we leave the system the way it is, we'd lose 25 to 30 teachers system wide."
He said there are some bright patches in the future -- the continued development of the Lowe's home improvement store on Curran Highway and the adjacent gravel pit property and the refurbishment of the downtown, which will be done with money committed by state and federal grants several years ago.
"We're not going to stop living because of this," he said.
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To reach Jennifer Huberdeau, e-mail jhuberdeau@thetranscript.com.
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www.topix.net/forum/source/north-adams-transcript/TJ3PN0CLH0G29F6S2
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"Audit: Massachusetts charter schools flush with cash"
By Steve LeBlanc, Associated Press Writer, boston.com, February 19, 2009
BOSTON --Most charter schools in Massachusetts are in strong fiscal shape, with the majority reporting cash surpluses at the end of each fiscal year, according to a report released Thursday by state Auditor Joseph DeNucci.
The audit found that in the 2006 fiscal year, 46 of 57 charter schools, which rely in large part on tax dollars, reported surpluses ranging from $398 to $2.3 million -- an average of $365,000 per school, or 8 percent of their revenue.
The report also found that as of June 30, 2007, charter schools in Massachusetts had combined net assets -- not including buildings, durable equipment and other assets that could not easily be turned into cash -- of $91.5 million, an average of $1.6 million per school.
DeNucci's office is still compiling information for the 2008 fiscal year.
Critics of charter schools -- public schools that operate independently of local school committees -- seized on the report.
Glenn Koocher, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, said the report shows charter schools are "stockpiling large reserves" when other public schools are struggling to make ends meet.
"It cries out for reform of the charter school funding system," Koocher said. "If they've got money to give back, why don't they give it back to the people they took it from."
But defenders of charter schools say it's misleading to suggest they are rolling in cash. They say that, unlike traditional public schools, charter schools are barred from accepting money from the state's School Building Assistance fund.
Since they have to rent or lease their buildings, charter schools operators say they need to keep extra money in the bank from year to year.
"It's almost a necessity for a successful charter school to run a surplus," said Marc Kenen, executive director of the Massachusetts Charter Public School Association. "We took this report as a very favorable report about how charter schools are managing their finances."
While about 80 percent of funding for charter schools comes from the taxpayers, they can also accept private donations and grants.
According to DeNucci's report, charter schools have been steadily increasing their assets.
In the 2003 fiscal year, charter schools reported average cumulative net assets (including buildings and durable equipment) of $1.2 million each. Four years later, those average cumulative net assets had increased to $2.3 million each.
The wrangling over charter schools is heating up as the state's economy sinks.
Gov. Deval Patrick decided against cutting funding for public schools in the current year's budget, but has proposed level funding school spending in the fiscal year that begins July 1 -- a move that would likely force some cuts.
Patrick has also proposed a series of changes to the charter school system, including a plan to revise the way the schools receive state funds.
Currently, money for charter schools is funneled through local school districts based on a charter school's projected enrollment. If that enrollment falls short, the additional money isn't reimbursed to the districts until near the end of the fiscal year.
Under Patrick's proposal, the state would create a separate budget line item for charter schools to insulate school districts from the fiscal uncertainty.
Patrick also wants to allow the state's lowest performing school districts to add more charter schools, provided the schools agree to meet certain enrollment levels for limited English and learning disabled students.
Kenen said the association opposes both proposals. He said the first would create "a separate and unequal system" of funding charter schools. He said a separate line item would be more vulnerable than the state's main budget for public schools -- known as "Chapter 70" funds.
And while the association would welcome Patrick's proposal to allow more charter schools, Kenen said they are opposed to any effort to create "quotas."
Kenen said the charter schools are less concerned about a third Patrick proposal that would require the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to collect financial information about charter schools, including where they raised their money and what they plan to do with any surpluses.
DeNucci's audit also found that charter schools also have improved their financial reporting and bidding practices. Those changes came after an earlier audit found the state had trouble comparing charter schools because they used different reporting methods.
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The Uphams Corner Charter School in Boston serves grades 5 through 8, and has an enrollment of about 160 students. (Wendy Maeda/ Globe Staff)
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MICHAEL K. MAYO, Op-Ed, The Boston Globe
"Lessons from a 'failed' charter school"
By Michael K. Mayo, February 22, 2009
AT THE State House late last month, Governor Patrick outlined a plan to lift the cap on charter schools, so long as those new schools served students most at risk. They'd have to serve at least 5 percent more special-education students, students who don't speak English at home, or children from low-income families than the regular schools in the local district. People in the charter movement, when they heard the news, were ecstatic - more charters, extending their excellent programs to students who are currently underrepresented among charters.
At the Uphams Corner Charter School, though, we were dumbstruck. The same day Patrick made his announcement, the state revoked our charter. At Uphams Corner, the reaction to Patrick's plan, from our board's president to our fifth-graders, was heated but proud: A charter school that serves those kids? Great idea. Somebody get on that.
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Intent doesn't count
I co-founded the school and have worked here since the day we opened. In a report provided to state officials, an evaluation panel characterized our school as an apathetic, confused, chaotic place. But the school described in the document is one that I don't recognize. We have no major discipline events, no graffiti, no noise in the hallways, a fully documented curriculum, and excellent teachers doing very good work.
We have never disagreed with valid criticisms of our school. We're not located in the area that gives us our name. And more to the point, the MCAS scores at our school have been abysmally low for years. We open the Globe with dread in September to find our school ranked among the lowest in the state. The stomach-punch is real, the almost existential gap between effort and outcome causing us, for years, to question and improve our methods.
And while this is where you might expect me to rail against the MCAS, I won't. If I had children, I'd want them to pass that test, and there's no reason why the children in my care can't do the same. They're brilliant, weird, astonishing, and (though they'd never say so) starving to learn. I agree: For schools, intent and effort don't count. So when we testified before the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, arguing against the revocation, there were no bleeding-heart arguments. No throngs of angry parents and students with picket signs and tears. Just a story more complex - and far more essential to filling the gaps identified by Patrick's new charter plan - than anyone beyond our walls might have imagined.
In charters across the country, there's a movement toward "paternalistic schools," a term used favorably by David Whitman of the Fordham Institute. Their argument is that "urban" students need schools with the highest levels of student compliance and routine. In some of these schools, children don't speak from the moment they get off the bus until they get back on again. Others have disobedient students wear a certain-colored shirt and order other students to "shun" them. When we were starting our school, some of these schools were saying, "We're not for everyone." These schools continue to get enormously positive attention and deep private funding.
At Uphams Corner, we knew other approaches were valid, too, and we believed in the charter movement's philosophy of diversity and choice. Research and experience told us that the conditions for long-lasting achievement were the same for all people, young and old, "urban" and otherwise. We knew from our own teaching in city schools that compliance and routine are nowhere near as powerful at addressing the needs of all children than the cultivation of robust relationships, strong but nurturing boundaries, and enormous support for all aspects of a child's life.
This isn't touchy-feely. A fellow school founder, the psychologist Peter Martin, put it this way: "A rigid program is great for reaching a fraction of the population, maybe a large fraction. But that's great only if you buy into the concept of acceptable casualties." We would be for everyone.
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The progress we made
One of our board members said, "We do our job too well." To meet the needs of the students who showed up, many of whom couldn't read, we beefed up our remediation program, and we got quite good at it. Our special-education coordinator, who'd been in the field for more than 15 years, said at the time, "I've never seen cases like these before." We invested in our special-education program until it became one I'd challenge anyone to beat. And we invested in an excellent school adjustment program - not to be a social service agency, but get students bouncing back to algebra and Shakespeare as soon as possible.
Did it work? The students learned to read and do math. On national standardized tests such as the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, our students made huge jumps from September to June. Last year, our percentile ranks soared - 15.6 points in reading, 17.3 points in math. (On these tests, an increase of zero still means you've done a year's work in a year's time.) Our program brought some students from kindergarten reading levels to third grade in just a year. They didn't pass the MCAS; they still weren't at that level. But they were on track to succeed. Some of our former students attend Boston's best high schools, and you'd never know that five years ago, they couldn't read a word.
But families most at risk are families most likely to move. More than 13 percent of our families move out of the city every year - almost always a good decison for them. Another 9 percent find spots in METCO or in charter or private schools with high school programs, ensuring a good education from now until college. Good for them. Another fraction, usually around a third, graduate from our program each year. At Uphams Corner, we believe that it might take our students more than the typical amount of time to be ready for high school, so we keep them here until they're ready to move on; 18 percent of our students withdraw rather than be held back, and go enroll in the Boston Public Schools.
So every year, students succeed on standardized tests, and before they're strong enough to register on the MCAS, they move on. And when we replace these students, we get people attracted to our brand - not as a charter school of choice for the many (our MCAS scores pale in comparison with almost all others), but as a place that has solid remediation, excellent special education, and school adjustment services that turn school-phobic children into students for life. Dozens of students in the school right now were oppositional, even violent, at their previous schools. At paternalistic schools, these are the students who'd be most likely to drop out or be thrown out. Here, you couldn't pick them out of a crowd.
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Did we fail?
Today, our special-education population hovers around 40 percent. Low-income families represent 93 percent of our population. These levels are far beyond what the governor has proposed, far beyond what the Boston Public Schools serves.
Is this failure? Was this "brand" a mistake? We didn't set out to specialize in serving these populations; it just turned out that way. Catering to transient and extremely needy students, even if you teach them to read, write, and compute, wrecks your MCAS scores. Other schools - such as the Berkshire Arts and Technology Charter Public School, which serves populations like ours and has its own unique, non-paternalistic mission - are facing the same "failure."
We need that school, and schools like Uphams Corner. We need schools as diverse as our children and the needs and gifts they present.
Using MCAS as the sole measure of success, without taking into account transiency, learning disabilities, poverty, and English language proficiency, will choke the diversity of charter schools in Massachusetts. As the 2013 deadline for No Child Left Behind approaches - a date when every child in the state must be proficient in reading or math, or their schools will be punished - the pressure toward "paternalism," attrition, and test-driven routines intensifies.
As for the students who don't fit into that paradigm, no one's figured out how to deal with them yet.
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Michael K. Mayo is interim executive director of the Uphams Corner Charter School.
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MEASURES OF CHARTER SCHOOL SUCCESS
"State must broaden its set of indicators"
The Boston Globe, Op Ed, March 1, 2009
MICHAEL MAYO'S "failed" charter school underscores the troubling effect of indicators like MCAS on educational equity. If charter schools are to become the market-driven, competition-based answer to educational inequity that its proponents suggest, there must be several blueprints, not just that of the "paternalistic school," for achieving student success. First, however, the state must judge charter schools through a more holistic set of indicators.
As Mayo highlights, it is all too often assumed that the "paternalistic" model - one of strict compliance and enforced daily regimen - is the best method of bridging the achievement gap among urban students. While effective for many, this model can alienate those whose learning styles would be better met in a flexible, though still academically rigorous, environment.
As a former public school teacher, I recall a handful of students who came to my classroom because their learning and behavioral needs were not satisfactorily accounted for by the strictly regimented charter schools they had previously attended.
Promoting charter schools that take a range of approaches to education would not mean lowering performance expectations. It would mean stretching the yardstick by which we measure success so that more students are able to meet state standards.
Rachel Brown
Somerville, Massachusetts
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"BArT to hold Conte meeting"
By Ryan Hutton, North Adams Transcript, Wednesday, February 25, 2009
ADAMS -- The Berkshire Arts and Technology Charter Public School is holding an informational meeting for parents of students at the soon-to-be-closed Silvio. O. Conte Middle School to let them know the option that BArT provides. However, North Adams Mayor John Barrett III said BArT's attempt to recruit new students may be premature.
On the heels of the announcement that Conte will probably be closing due to budget cuts, BArT has organized a public arts and technology showcase at 6 p.m. Tuesday, March 3 and scheduled the informational meeting to follow at 8 p.m.
"We're a school of choice for any family in North Berkshire," said BArT Executive Director Julia Bowen "And at this time, we've heard from a number of families in North Adams that they are really weighing their options, and they really don't know much about us. It's a difficult times for parents in North Adams weighing all of their options, and we want to be sure we're being as supportive as possible so that they can learn about us and decide if they want a school for their kids to get them on track for college."
While no decisions are final yet in North Adams, preliminary plans call for the sixth and seventh grades to be relocated to the city's three elementary schools and for the eighth grade to go to Drury High School.
"Rather than being presumptuous about what's going on in our district before decisions have been made and before attempting to recruit more kids, I'd concentrate on getting my MCAS scores up if I were them," said Barrett. "It's going to be a rather hard sell for them. What can a school that has the lowest MCAS scores in the county really offer that we don't?"
Bowen said she did not think BArT was capitalizing on the closing of North Adams' middle school.
"I don't think of the concept of poaching in this environment," she said. "I think our goal is and has always been to offer families a choice. I think it's really inappropriate to think of this as poaching. This is our attempt to make sure families are armed with the information they should have. For many families, the right answer is going back to the elementary schools but for others, that's not the right answer. Thinking of it as poaching is a pretty paternalistic view point on what is ultimately the parent's choice."
Bowen said she thought BArT's curriculum and "small, safe environment" was an appealing option for students that could be stuck in the middle of the redistribution of North Adams schools.
"I definitely think we can and do offer something different than is being offered in the district schools," she said. "I think in this case, what I'm hearing from parents is that their kids don't necessarily want to go back to the elementary schools but some parents are concerned about their kids going to high school in 8th grade. I think we can provide a middle school experience that is also tied to a high school and one that is also a college preparatory experience starting in 6th grade."
Barrett said it was clear BArT was attempting to recruit additional North Adams students and added that he wasn't surprised.
"I think they're nervous and they should be nervous. They haven't done what they said they were going to do," he said. "They reduced the school year and the length of the school day. Our middle schoolers had laptops long before theirs did. If I were them I would be nervous because I think this is actually going to strengthen the district.
"Of all the school districts, we have the largest number of students returning from BArT. We're going to be able to offer more in the way of music and technology and theater and athletics and intramural that are far superior to anything BArT can and does offer."
Bowen reiterated that she saw this meeting as a chance for parents to see al the options available for their children and that, in the end, that's all that matters.
"I don't know how parents are going to react to this," she said. "I want parents to make the right choice for their children and have the right information to make that choice. I we lose kids from BArT because they're attracted to having their kids back in the elementary schools, then I am happy that the parents have that option."
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To reach Ryan Hutton, e-mail rhutton@thetranscript.com.
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www.topix.net/forum/source/north-adams-transcript/T5HTK6O21G126SHEC
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Joe Bazzano teaches math at Mount Greylock Regional High School in Williamstown. Mount Greylock Regional School District is among only four in the region showing gains in enrollment.
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Sizing up enrollment
"Districts doing the math: Officials aiming to match resources to shifting student rolls"
By Jenn Smith, Berkshire Eagle Staff, Thursday, March 05, 2009
As the economy continues to waver, local public school districts are looking at student enrollment as they try to shape their schools for an uncertain future.
Overall, the county's enrollment dropped from 18,492 students last school year to 18,138 this year, a decline of 1.9 percent.
Only four of the Berkshires' 15 school districts and unions showed modest increases. Farmington River Regional School District, Lenox Public Schools, Mount Greylock Regional School District and Williamstown Elementary School (now part of School Union 71) each gained between 1 and 24 students, according to the latest data from the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
"We absolutely need to look at enrollment," said Howard "Jake" Eberwein III, superintendent of the Pittsfield Public Schools, where enrollment fell 1.8 percent. "The allocation of resources should really follow students."
As school districts confront the likelihood of shrinking budgets during the continuing recession, some are analyzing their enrollment as they seek ways to save.
Berkshire Hills Regional School District is hiring a consultant to look at a possible consolidation with Southern Berkshire Regional School District as a way to save money and resources. This could include the possibility of merging into a larger "super district."
North Adams Public Schools is looking to downsize by closing Conte Middle School and implementing a kindergarten through Grade 7 model within its elementary school buildings, and a Grade 8 through 12 model at Drury High School.
North Adams Mayor John Barrett III, who also serves as School Committee chairman, cited a deteriorating school building and declining enrollment as motives for the reconfiguration.
"Enrollments are way down all over the place. It's just the times," said Barrett. The mayor said the district decided that closing a building would be better than cutting programs.
"We're projecting out, and the big thing is we haven't cut anything out of the curriculum," he said.
These downsizing districts are not alone: Consolidation has become a frequent topic on a school and state legislative level.
In September, the Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy sponsored a conference in Boston titled, "School District Consolidation in Massachusetts: Opportunities and Challenges."
In one presentation, a Rennie representative showed data from the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education that half of the 327 school districts in the commonwealth enrolled fewer than 2,000 students during fiscal year 2007.
Research into economies of scale has shown that by spreading costs over a larger student population, schools can realize a reduction of average costs. In Massachusetts, 3,000 students appears to be the magic number where schools begin to save, according to a Rennie report.
At North Adams' Conte, Barrett said the restructuring will make the district more competitive.
"I think our (student population decline) has bottomed out to a certain degree, and the new model will right off the bat stabilize things," he said.
Despite an unexpected increase in enrollment at the beginning of the school year, William Travis, superintendent of Mount Greylock Regional School District in Williamstown, said that next year's enrollment figures will be affected by the economy and Berkshire County's population in general.
"It's hard to predict what may impact us next year. The economy throws us the possibility of getting more private school students," Travis said. "But at the nearby elementary schools, the current fifth grades have four classrooms, but in fourth grade, they're down to three classrooms."
In response, he said, the middle school grades may have to reconfigure their staffing.
Lenox Public Schools have contracted with the New England School Development Council to do its enrollment projections, which, over the next five years, will waiver between 800 and 820 students. This year, the district reported an enrollment of 816 children.
"Holding steady is fairly positive for the community as a whole, not just the school district," said Lenox Superintendent Marianne Young. "It does speak to trends in the community as well."
But generally speaking, between the economy, enrollment, state policy and student needs, Young said, school districts are finding themselves reviewing and restructuring schools in a different manner.
"I've never sat at a budget meeting that had an economic stimulus package on the table. It's a different kind of dance than we've done before," Young said. "But bottom line, we need to look at what we're doing for kids and how we're doing it."
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At a glance ...
Public school enrollments over the past two years in Berkshire County:
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ACRSD
2007-08: 1,596
2008-09: 1,585
Actual decrease: 11 students
Percent change: - 0.7
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BArT
2007-08: 246
2008-09: 245
Actual decrease: 1 student
Percent change: - 0.4
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BHRSD
2007-08: 1,421
2008-09: 1,376
Actual decrease: 45 students
Percent change: - 3.2
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CBRSD
2007-08: 2,104
2008-09: 2,039
Actual decrease: 65 students
Percent change: - 3.1
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FRRSD
2007-08: 144
2008-09: 145
Actual increase: 1 student
Percent change: + 0.7
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HANCOCK
2007-08: 39
2008-09: 33
Actual decrease: 6 students
Percent change: - 15.4
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LANESBOROUGH
2007-08: 295
2008-09: 280
Actual decrease: 15 students
Percent change: - 5.1
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LEE
2007-08: 899
2008-09: 864
Actual decrease: 35 students
Percent change: - 3.9
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LENOX
2007-08: 813
2008-09: 816
Actual increase: 3 students
Percent change: + 0.4
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MCCANN (Northern Berkshire Voc.)
2007-08: 511
2008-09: 500
Actual decrease: 11 students
Percent change: - 2.2
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MGRSD
2007-08: 627
2008-09: 651
Actual increase: 24 students
Percent change: + 3.8
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NAPS
2007-08: 1,684
2008-09: 1,592
Actual decrease: 92 students
Percent change: - 5.5
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N. BERKSHIRE (Abbott Memorial, Clarksburg, Savoy combined)
2007-08: 366
2008-09: 363
Actual decrease: 3 students
Percent change: - 0.8
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PPS
2007-08: 6,234
2008-09: 6,120
Actual decrease: 114 students
Percent change: - 1.8
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RICHMOND
2007-08: 188
2008-09: 188
Actual change: 0 students
Percent change: 0.0
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SBRSD
2007-08: 887
2008-09: 886
Actual decrease: 1 student
Percent change: - 0.1
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WILLIAMSTOWN
2007-08: 438
2008-09: 455
Actual increase: 17 students
Percent change: + 3.9
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www.berkshireeagle.com/ci_11841090
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www.topix.net/forum/source/berkshire-eagle/THIK6AMUNHDLDU2EI
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"BArT student speaks out"
The North Adams Transcript, Letters, 3/11/2009
To the editor:
I'm a BArT junior from Pittsfield. I am appalled by the recent article about Berkshire Arts & Technology Charter Public School being an option for Conte students, and by the comments made by Mayor Barrett and the others who seem so negative towards BArT.
I feel personally attacked and also very disappointed in the sheer ignorance and inaccuracy that is being displayed both in the article and in the comments written by other Berkshire County citizens. I'd like to set some things straight. Please, read on and inform yourself, no matter your opinion.
For three years, I suffered at Reid middle School. I was bullied, shut out by teachers and shoved aside. I was treated as if I had no real significance by most teachers and students. I saw harassment, attempted suicide, knives and alcohol in the school. It was a horrible experience. I was losing myself, becoming nothing more than a shadow. To quote a book I read in my Advanced ELA class, "I encountered my own soul less and less." ["The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver, page 200)
My younger sister was making bad choices, meeting bad people, sneaking around. I was terrified to endure such a life for another four years in the Pittsfield Schools. So my mother looked into BArT, and that is where I ended up on the first day of my freshman year.
It was a mess at first. There were behavior and academic issues. My classmates were constantly arguing. I hated the uniforms. I missed my friends. And yet ... it grew better. Slowly but surely, we became a small and dysfunctional family. We actually learned, once we got over the power struggle. I was one of the few students that had no problems with learning or behavior. I would do my extra credit work while my classmates struggled. That was ninth grade.
I am in eleventh grade now. Our class consists of seven students, all at different levels. Within the last year and a half, we have become re-motivated, and we want to learn. We are succeeding, as a whole. We are starting to plan for college. Quite a few of us passed our MCAS last year. It's strange to think that a year ago, we were all still arguing and struggling with the content of our classes.
These beautiful, amazing kids in my class are excellent examples of what BArT can do. Most kids in district schools float through, doing only what they have to. If they are unmotivated, they remain so, and only the truly motivated thrive. At BArT, they took my highly unmotivated classmates and helped them find a way to learn and be satisfied with their accomplishments.
It is almost humorous how Mayor Barrett has targeted our MCAS scores as our big weakness. Yet, while speaking to a parent from North Adams at our open house a few nights ago, she said that the state had been threatening to take control of North Adams schools for a long time, because they do not meet the MCAS standards, either. In recent benchmark testing at BArT, our students have gone up an overall average of about seven points in this year alone. And BArT doesn't enjoy teaching to the test. We prefer to take it to a college level, doing essays and art projects. This is a huge improvement.
The MCAS is not the best way to measure our success as a school. Look at our academic, artistic, and technological achievements. In past years, we have competed in science fairs and the Junior Solar Sprint. We started a recycling program for our school. All of our graduates apply to college, and the only one who did not attend is training for the National Guard.
All of our students complete college courses and internships to graduate. We have our work in county-wide art shows and galleries. We have students on advisory boards. Just last weekend, a group of students participated in Model United Nations. One student came home with an award for Best Position Paper. You cannot look at our school, our students, and say that we offer nothing.
I would also like to point out that school choice is supposed to be about the students. I don't imagine that many of the Conte sixth- and seventh-graders are too happy about being returned to an elementary school. They will feel like they are being treated like babies. The eighth-graders will be forced into a high school environment long before they are ready. They will be either scared of the situation, or they will be eager to act like the rest of the high schoolers.
As a high schooler, I can say that I would not want an eighth-grader to be picking up bad habits so early. Freshman year is hard enough at the age of 14 or 15. I can hardly imagine suffering through it as a newly-turned teenager. BArT integrates the two levels so that high school is not so frightening when freshman year comes, but keeps them separate enough that the stupid things we do in the high school do not rub off on the younger students. If somebody fears these kinds of treatments in district schools, then BArT would be a good option for middle school.
I can't sit here and tell you that I don't hear the words "I hate this school" on a frequent basis. I can't say that I love every teacher and every student and every aspect of the school. I hate the uniform, and the discipline sometimes leave a lot to be desired. Some people get on my nerves. But I love this place as a whole. I know most, if not all, of the high schoolers by name. My teachers are some of my best friends. Ms. Bowen and Mr. Klompus are the most supportive people I have ever met, and I also consider them friends.
I am not a statistic or a test score. I am not an idiot. I am not a behavioral problem. I am not a rich kid. I am a concerned student who is willing to defend this school. Upon reading the article, I joked out loud, "We should change BArT to BAT and hit Mayor Barrett with the truth; we can succeed." It's true. This school does not deserve all the abuse it gets.
It's a good choice. If you are interested in more information about BArT, or its students, feel free to e-mail me at shadowfairy55@aol.com. It's time that people realized the truth about BArT. Conte students welcome.
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"Charters win a big fan"
By Boston Herald Editorial staff, Wednesday, March 11, 2009, www.bostonherald.com, Editorials
Yesterday President Barack Obama was as clear as he could possibly be about his support for charter schools and for their expansion in states where they already exist.
Now if only his BFF Deval Patrick would get the message!
Obama detailed his education reform plan in a major address to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Much of it was in keeping with his campaign themes, but still, speaking from the bully pulpit of the presidency is different.
And so it was encouraging to hear President Obama support merit pay for teachers, especially those in the hard-to-recruit fields of math and science.
He is committed, he said, “to ensure that anyone entrusted with educating our children is doing the job as well as it can be done.”
That means rewarding the good, mentoring them and tossing out those who don’t measure up.
“I reject a system that rewards failure and protects a person from its consequences,” he added.
That ought to get the attention of union leaders.
So too Obama’s call for innovation and his belief that “One of the places where much of that innovation occurs is in our most effective charter schools” - yes, the bete noir of teachers union educrats here and everywhere.
“Right now, there are caps on how many charter schools are allowed in some states [Massachusetts among them], no matter how well they are preparing our students. That isn’t good for our children, our economy or our country.”
Well, memo to Gov. Patrick - who has supported lifting the cap only in under-performing districts - it’s time to get with the program.
“I call on states to reform their charter rules, and lift caps on the number of allowable charter schools, wherever such caps are in place,” Obama said.
So how about it?
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Article URL: www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/editorials/view.bg?articleid=1157789
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"A challenge for Mayor Barrett"
The Berkshire Eagle, Editorial, Wednesday, April 8, 2009
North Adams Mayor John Barrett III, sometimes referred to as "the mayor for life," will face a real challenge this November from City Councilor Richard J. Alcombright, who announced his candidacy Tuesday. We look forward to a lively campaign that will be to the benefit of the city and its residents.
Mr. Barrett's past opponents have tended to be underqualified and overly motivated by antipathy toward the mayor, but Mr. Alcombright is well-respected and has generally been supportive of the mayor's initiatives. A four-term city councilor, veteran member of the McCann School Committee and vice president of retail banking at Hoosac Bank, Mr. Alcombright has a solid résumé but faces a challenge in making the argument that Mr. Barrett, the longest-serving mayor in Massachusetts, should be turned out of office after completing his 13th two-year term.
Mr. Alcombright sounded like Barack Obama in calling for change at Tuesday's press conference announcing his candidacy, but it remains to be seen if North Adams is as ready for change this November as America certainly was last November. Mayor Barrett's style is more of an issue that his substance, as he is a micro-manager who doesn't suffer dissent gladly, and makes no apology for either. He has inevitably made enemies over the years, but the city has enjoyed a revival under his guidance, and his name, reputation and tenure give North Adams a voice in far-off Boston.
Mr. Alcombright, who serves on the boards of a wide variety of Northern Berkshire community organizations, and has chaired several of them, will certainly have no difficulty persuading residents of his love for and knowledge of the city. His challenge will be to convince them that he can do better what Mr. Barrett has proven he can do well.
That said, there is nothing like a good mayoral race to initiate discussion of the many issues facing a city and explore ways to resolve problems, build on strengths and make the community a better place. The Barrett-Alcombright race in North Adams has the potential to be that kind of mayoral campaign.
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North Adams, Massachusetts
"Alcombright shares vision"
By Jennifer Huberdeau, New England Newspapers: The Berkshire Eagle & The North Adams Transcript, Wednesday, April 8, 2009
NORTH ADAMS — City Councilor Richard J. Alcombright formally announced his candidacy for mayor on Tuesday, touting a vision of community and regional collaboration, transparent government, re-energized boards, and citizen engagement.
"I believe we are at a very important crossroad with respect to the future of North Adams," he said, flanked by his wife, Michelle, along with family, friends and supporters. "New leadership is necessary as we move into this next decade, a time that promises recovery and growth. By engaging the largely untapped abundance of human energy and creativity in the city, we will not only weather the current economic crisis, but we will also position the city to move continually forward."
Alcombright, vice president of retail banking at Hoosac Bank, said he has been a strong supporter of Mayor John Barrett III and his vision for the city, but it is time for new leadership to carry the city into the future. Barrett, the longest-serving mayor in Massachusetts, is completing his 13th two-year term.
"I believe, as many residents do, that there is a need for change and the time for that change is now," Alcombright said.
He later added, "We've ridden the Mass MoCA wave for years now. It's time that we need to decide who we are as a community. Are we an arts-based community? Are we a creative-economy community? We need to ask how much industry we need in the city and how much technology we can carry. We need to get our business leaders involved and work with our neighboring communities on figuring out what businesses we need and can bring to our region. We need to grow as a region as we grow as a community."
He said his campaign will offer "new ideas and innovative strategies" centered on three categories: housing, education and the economy and economic development.
A member of the McCann School Committee for the past 16 years, he said that experience would lend itself to the mayor's other duty of being in charge of the School Committee.
"I think whether or not the mayor should be head of the School Committee is a conversation that needs to be explored in itself," Alcombright said. "I also think that we need to fully utilize our very intelligent and talented School Committee, giving them more responsibility through various subcommittees. I think we need to utilize the talents of all of our boards and committee members."
Barrett said he welcomed a challenge from a worthy opponent.
"I think what it will all boil down to is who the people think will be the best leader during these economic times," he said by phone from his office. "The city is facing a $2.5 million budget gap, and that is where my time has been consumed of late. I'm trying to keep taxes in the city low, which has been the hallmark of my administration."
The mayor added, "I fully realize this will be a race. Dick Alcombright is a well-liked man, and he is running against a mayor who has been in office for 26 years and who has had to make the tough decisions throughout those years. I have always made decisions with the best of intentions of the community in mind."
Barrett said he will make a formal announcement in the coming months, after he has completed the city budget, crafted a financial strategy "to get the city through the next two years," and worked to bring "millions of dollars of stimulus money" to the city.
"I have no problem with anyone calling for change, but I do take issue with his statements about Mass MoCA," he said of Alcombright. "Mass MoCA has been a catalyst for economic development, not only in this city, but throughout Northern Berkshire. The LeWitt retrospective, which opened less than six months ago, has brought national recognition and new business inquiries to the city every day."
Alcombright was joined at his announcement by former City Administrator Mary Katherine Eade, who works as an assistant attorney general in Springfield, along with former City Councilor Keith Bona and Councilor Robert Moulton Jr.
"Over the last few years, people have discussed who could win an election against the mayor and who would be a good mayor," Bona said. "Those are two different qualities. Dick has always and clearly been at the top of both those lists. I think you can see that when you look at the votes he has received over the last few elections."
Moulton said he also believes the city needs a new leader.
"The mayor has done a fine job over the years, but I think there comes a time when change is needed and a new leader needs to be chosen," he said. "Dick is that man. He has a lot of experience with budgets and on the school committee. He's a fine choice. It's going to be an interesting seven to eight months."
Alcombright, who joined the council in 2000 after he was appointed to fill the unexpired term of his late father, Daniel F. Alcombright Jr., is also a member of the board of directors of several community boards, including the Northern Berkshire YMCA, Holy Family Housing Terrace, and Berkshire Community Action Council's Individual Development Account Committee. He has also served as a corporator of Northern Berkshire Healthcare. He has served as chairman of several boards, including the Northern Berkshire United Way Campaign, North Adams Catholic Community Tri-Parish Finance Council, and Transportation Association of Northern Berkshire.
Alcombright also announced a Web site for his candidacy: www.alcombrightformayor.com.
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www.topix.net/forum/source/berkshire-eagle/TCTM7N1U09LIO2GS2
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A Reader's Comment - by "Retired Farmer" - 4/8/2009:
The time has passed when North Adams needs a Mayor who screams at subordinates and shouts obscenities at business and professional people. No one needs to micro- manage the affairs of the city, intimidating all in the way.
The present Mayor always requests re-election because he "...needs to finish the job." If you had a carpenter working on that basis, for that length of time, you would probably say it was indeed time for a change.
Dick Alcombright would be a unifying force for the entire community, and not at all prone to declare himself a "benevolent dictator."
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"BArT’s budget could take hit of $300K"
By Ryan Hutton, North Adams Transcript, 4/8/2009
ADAMS -- It seems that even the Berkshire Arts and Technology Charter Public School is not immune to the state’s financial downturn as it’s budget is down over $300,000 this year.
BArT Executive Director Julia Bowen said that 2010 projected budget cuts will mean losing the equivalent of five full-time positions next year. She said she did not want to go into details because the staff being effected have not been notified, but added that the schools is trying everything to avoid layoffs.
"We’re actually delaying some positions," she said. "For people going off to grad school or leaving for personal or family reasons, we’re trying to fill those positions with qualified people here to reduce layoffs."
The school’s projected 2010 budget is $3,086,481, down roughly nine percent or $302,000 from last year. In addition to the five positions, BArT has no planned capital expenditures and is scrapping plans to buy a set of classroom laptop computers. There will also be a reduction in field trips, and the board of trustees has voted to freeze all salaries for the next year.
Bowen said the cuts will not impact class size or the number of classes that are offered. In fact, she said, they are planning to add two advanced placement courses next year.
"We want to show that BArT can still provide a rigorous college prepitory curriculum through smaller classes as well as the actual classes," she said. "Fortunately a lot of that has been built over the last five years, so it’s not like we have to build it all during the next few years."
Bowen said she wanted to explain how BArT is funded compared to the district schools.
"Our budget is driven by what the districts are spending," she said. "Right now we’re predicting a 10 percent decrease. It’s per-pupil funding, but when I look at their overall their budgets, there isn’t any district that’s projecting a 10 percent decrease. North Adams is the largest and they’re looking at an eight percent decrease and they make up the majority of our students."
Of BArT’s roughly 250 students, 37 percent come from North Adams, 26 percent from Adams and Cheshire, 25 percent come from Pittsfield and 12 percent are from other towns.
Bowen said despite what the projections for the school’s budget are, actual funding is based on the number of days students spend at BArT. If a student stays for a year, the school receives a year of tuition. If a student stays for a month, the funding is prorated to the number of days the student was actually in school.
"We have to project to the state so the districts have some information from us," she said. "In March we have to project how many students we’ll have for the next year. If we have more students than we projected, we don’t get paid for them, but if we have less than projected, we get paid for the number we have.
"When other people in the community say that our funding is secure, while district funding isn’t, all I can think is ‘It’s not secure! We just heard in December that our funding was going to be cut by over $100,000 this school year’. So we’re taking all that into account for next year’s budget so we don’t have to take any actions in the middle of next year."
With the middle schools in both North Adams and Adams-Cheshire closing next fall, Bowen said she has received a lot of questions about whether BArT could handle an influx of students from those schools. She said BArT is committed to providing the same level of attention and intense curriculum it provides now. She said a lot of people may consider BArT an option because they are concerned about having their seventh and eighth graders mixed with high schoolers.
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To reach Ryan Hutton, e-mail rhutton@thetranscript.com.
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www.topix.net/forum/source/north-adams-transcript/T8F27UV4MDEJLOGBF
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"'No layoffs this time': Mayor Barrett cuts $220,200 from the city budget through attrition and unfilled positions."
By Jennifer Huberdeau, New England Newspapers: The Berkshire Eagle & The North Adams Transcript, Wednesday, April 15, 2009
NORTH ADAMS — Although $220,200 was slashed from the city's current budget during Tuesday night's City Council meeting, nobody will lose their job.
"There are no layoffs this time around — it's all being done through attrition and salaries for positions that have gone unfilled," according to Mayor John Barrett III. "We're going to be creative in the way we make up for these positions. (Highway Superintendent) Leo Senecal is out the door on May 1 and another city yard worker is going to be leaving as well. We'll have to make do without them."
The mayor said he is still looking for another $338,000 in cuts that need to be made to the fiscal 2009 budget to make up for the loss of $538,000 that was removed from the budget following Gov. Deval L. Patrick's emergency cuts to local aid in October.
In anticipation of those cuts, Barrett had already stripped $310,000 from the budget, eliminating salaries for unfilled positions in several and making reductions in departmental expenses, employee training, computerized systems and the litigation account.
The cuts made Tuesday night eliminated unfilled positions in the offices of the administrative officer, City Clerk, treasurer and collector, tourism and cultural development, health inspection services, public properties and buildings, wire and alarm, veterans services, engineering, and the highway department. Departmental expense accounts were cut in information services and the water works department, while funds for youth programs, community development, the historical society, historical commission, the employee assistance program and for the audit were all reduced.
"This is the third budget you've had before you for fiscal 2008 and I'm going to be back at least one or two more times before this fiscal year is closed out," Barrett said. "The budget I bring to you in June, for fiscal 2009, is going to be about $2 million less than the one I brought you for this year. If I don't make these cuts now, I'll be making them later. I want to end this budget on the plus side and not have to use our free cash to end in the black."
He said the city will have to use about $100,000 from free cash to pay for snow and ice removal costs that went over budget, along with $100,000 for veterans benefits.
"These are things we can pay for from free cash because they are one-time expenses," Barrett said.
He said no cuts were made to the school department budget because "cuts cannot be made to their budget in the middle of the year."
"They also had their budget reduced at the beginning of the year when the state reduced its aid packages," the mayor said. "With these cuts and the other cuts I'll be coming to you with in the coming weeks, we'll hopefully only have to cut $1.4 million from the fiscal 2010 budget."
He has asked the North Adams Public Schools to cut $1.2 million from its fiscal 2010 budget, a portion of which should be covered by the closing of Silvio O. Conte Middle School and the restructuring of the school district. Superintendent James E. Montepare said another 10 to 12 positions — a mix of teachers, teaching assistants, custodians and other staff — would be shed, in addition to those cuts caused by the consolidation. He has yet to say how many jobs will be lost because of the reconfiguration.
"I'm hoping they'll be able to find $1.2 million," Barrett said. "I don't know if they will. I'm also waiting to see how much more will need to be cut from next year's budget. The (state) House (of Representatives) is expected to release their budget (today) and cut another $1 billion from the budget. How that will affect us, we don't know yet. It could be another $500,000."
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www.topix.net/forum/source/berkshire-eagle/TEU23M4498QS3JOO0
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"House budget would make steep trims: Local aid cuts decried; critics urge tax hike"
By Matt Viser, Boston Globe Staff, April 16, 2009
Cities and towns would have less money to fight crime and plow streets. The working poor would lose assistance needed to stay in their homes. And fewer seniors would be able to afford home care.
The $27.4 billion budget proposed yesterday by Massachusetts House leaders includes steep cuts in nearly every area touched by state government and would impose the greatest reduction in year-to-year spending in recent memory. The announcement, which comes at a time of steadily declining tax revenues, immediately triggered vocal protests and calls for a tax increase to preserve services.
Cities and towns, which are still reeling from emergency cuts Governor Deval Patrick made earlier this year, would see their funds decline even further under the House budget proposal. While education aid would remain at this year's level, the portion of state aid dedicated to public safety, road maintenance, and other local services would be slashed an additional 25 percent.
Funding for Shannon grants - an antigang and outreach program - and the Quinn Bill - a police benefit fiercely protected by the unions - would both be eliminated. Commonwealth Corps, a program created by Patrick that asks volunteers to dedicate a year of service to communities, would also be scrapped.
The cuts are so severe, and so targeted at programs that have widespread support, that some questioned whether the House was resorting to scare tactics to pave the way for broad-based tax increases. But House leaders said these proposals are a real, sober assessment of cuts that are necessary to keep pace with falling state revenues.
"We're not playing any games," Representative Charles A. Murphy, chairman of the House Ways and Means Com mittee, said in a briefing with the Globe. "We're trying to illustrate the fiscal reality."
House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo called the budget "a portrait of the economy."
The cuts prompted immediate protests from mayors, particularly in cities that are most reliant on state grant programs that supply funds for community policing and homelessness prevention programs.
"The cities of Massachusetts have taken a shot right between the eyes," said Mayor Thomas M. Menino of Boston, which would see a $53 million cut in local aid under the plan. "All the things that are important to making a city work, they're just gone."
"I just don't understand how a budget can be put together like this and taken seriously," he added. "This is a budget that was ill-conceived. This budget has no heart - and it has no brains."
The House proposal includes no new taxes and avoids using any state reserves to balance the budget, although some lawmakers have started to make the case that tax increases need to be seriously considered, including a sales tax increase.
DeLeo and Murphy have avoided any talk of tax hikes, but a group of lawmakers plans to meet today to discuss possible revenue options. All Democrats were invited to the meeting.
"This is going to devastate families and communities across the state," said Representative Carl Sciortino, a Somerville Democrat and vice chairman of the House Committee on Revenue. "If we want to protect a decent quality of life, we have to look at a budget that looks at both cuts and expenditures."
House lawmakers have until Friday to file amendments, which could include broad-based tax proposals. The House will begin debating April 27 and then send the budget on to the Senate, which will craft its own version. The two chambers will then be charged with ironing out their differences and sending a final proposal to Patrick before the July 1 start of the fiscal year.
The $27.4 billion House proposal is $532 million less than the budget proposal the governor submitted three months ago and about $730 million less than the budget that lawmakers initially agreed to for this year.
The cut to local aid would be the largest in state history, according to Geoff Beckwith, executive director of the Massachusetts Municipal Association.
"It's been eight years of hell. We're beyond hell now," said Mayor John Barrett of North Adams, where local aid would be cut by $1.2 million. "It's absurd and it's crazy. This is Draconian. People aren't angry about what's going on at the local level, they're angry about what's going on at the state level."
Local officials have been lobbying for the ability to raise meals and hotel taxes in their communities, but so far have been rebuffed by the Legislature.
Cutting the Quinn bill is also drawing fire from police unions that were caught completely off guard by the elimination of the program. "There's a part of me that feels betrayed and insulted," said Thomas Nee, president of the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association. "Without any dialogue? No discussion?"
The Quinn bill, which was passed in 1970, supplies salary boosts to police officers who earn a college degree. Depending on local contracts, the elimination of the state program would either mean that police officers will take pay cuts or local officials will have to make up the difference.
Patrick has proposed a range of new revenue possibilities, including sales taxes on alcohol and candy and raising the statewide tax on meals and hotel rooms, but the House has not acted. The House budget does, however, include Patrick's proposal to raise a host of fees at the Registry of Motor Vehicles.
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Matt Viser can be reached at maviser@globe.com.
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"Other cuts in House proposal"
. Would require nonprofits to drop nearly 4,400 seniors from home care and drop caseloads to the lowest level since 1980, according to estimates compiled by Massachusetts Home Care, which represents 30 nonprofits.
. Would slash funding for a rental voucher program that helps keep low-income residents in their homes. The funding for the $33 million program would be cut by 45 percent, eliminating about 2,300 of the 5,000 families.
. Would eliminate $10 million in rate relief for Massachusetts Water Resource Authority users.
. Could increase state employee healthcare contributions to 30 percent, saving $135 million.
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"BArT posts high scores"
The North Adams Transcript, By Ryan Hutton, 6/6/2009
ADAMS -- As the school year winds down, things are looking up for the Berkshire Arts and Technology Charter Public School as the school’s Stanford Achievement Test scores have come in high.
BArT Executive Director Julia Bowen said the school’s recent scores, especially the middle school scores, showed that the students were capable of performing math and reading far above their grade level.
"Historically, MCAS have not been a good indicator of how much a student has grown over the years," Bowen said. "It’s been hard for us to only use the MCAS data because we get our kids in sixth grade or later so the MCAS scores are often an indicator of the previous years of schooling before they ever showed up in our building. So early on, we adopted an additional form of testing in the form of the SAT 10."
BArT tests its students in both math and reading with the SAT 10 to measure the year-to-year performance of its students both by themselves and against the national average.
"The exciting part about this is that we test every student every spring and we can always look at their performance that day," Bowen said. "But we can also look at the 180 students that have taken it two years in a row and see how much they grew. It’s also not just on the student level but also on the aggregate of how we’re doing as a school."
Bowen said the Norm Curve Equivalency (NEC) uses a score of zero to show that a school is progressing on par with the national average.
"What we saw this year was, basically, proving how elements of our model work and changes we’ve made to the model," Bowen said. "In math, as a school, we grew by 6.4 points which is incredibly significant. We also grew by 4.4 points in reading. So we tripled our goals in math and doubled them in reading."
The school also progressed well in the grade level equivalency which measures the school’s progress based on national averages of how much a student should advance in one year. In math, the middle school grades advanced 1.8 grade levels and the high school advanced 1.5.
"In one year, when you’d expect them to grow by one grade level, they grew by almost two for the middle school," Bowen said. "Š They’re growing a lot more in a year than one would expect. And the same is true in reading."
In reading, the middle school grew 1.5 grade levels and the high school progressed by 1.0.
Bowen attributes this success to a number of factors in the school’s model that have remained over the years and a few that have been altered.
"One of the things we’ve pushed from the beginning is the integration of arts and technology," she said. "Early on we thought about doing that in the core classes. One of the changes we’ve made over the years, and this year more so than any other, is balancing that more by brining the core content into the arts and technology classes."
She cited examples of math and writing being integrated into music, art and gym classes. Bowen said the SAT 10 is a good, objective indicator to show that the school offers a strong, educational experience.
"This is very exciting, especially for us because when people say ‘your MCAS scores are low’ those test scores are, again, reflective of the learning of our students for years before they show up," she said. "At this point, 40 percent of the kids are new to us. We’ve had them for nine months, but their MCAS scores are reflective of ten years of schooling."
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To reach Ryan Hutton, e-mail rhutton@thetranscript.com.
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www.topix.net/forum/source/north-adams-transcript/TBN269FSU7QMEG2I3
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"Year of accomplishments at BArT"
The Berkshire Eagle, Letters, Wednesday, June 10, 2009
At this time of the school year, high school seniors are being celebrated for their academic accomplishments at graduation exercises, awards ceremonies, and in the local papers. It certainly is important to acknowledge all of the work that these seniors have done to reach this important milestone in their academic careers. We (the Berkshire Arts & Technology Charter School) look forward to celebrating our seniors at their graduation ceremony this Saturday and reading about their accomplishments in the paper, as well.
It is also important, however, to celebrate the academic accomplishments of all students, and for that reason, I write this letter to share the results of our recently administered SAT 10 tests (Stanford Achievement Test, 10th Edition). This test is administered each spring to all of our students in grades 6 through 11. This year, our students demonstrated significant academic gains through their performance on the SAT 10.
In particular, I would like to highlight what our students' test results show:
. Students in grades 6 through 8, on average, are capable of performing at the 9th grade level in math and reading.
. Students in BArT's middle school grew by just under two grade levels in math (and now perform at one and a half grade levels higher than expected for their grade).
Students in BArT's middle school grew by just under 1.5 grade levels in reading (and now perform at one grade level higher than expected for their grade).
Students in 9th grade at BArT grew by over two grade levels during the 2008-2009 school year, ending the year performing at 11th grade levels.
At the end of the 2008-2009 school year, 50 percent of BArT's grade 9-11 students are performing at the "Post High School" level in math; 48 percent are performing at the "Post High School" level in reading.
Congratulations to all BArT students for their hard work during the 2008-2009 school year! Thank you to the faculty, staff and parents who support these students' academic programs throughout the school year.
BENJAMIN KLOMPUS
Adams, Massachusetts
The writer is principal of BArT.
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A BOSTON GLOBE EDITORIAL
"Take caps off charter schools"
June 10, 2009
CONTINUED resistance to lifting the cap on charter schools in Massachusetts leaves more than 20,000 children on waiting lists and the potential for millions of federal stimulus dollars on the table. Sensible politicians and policy makers can’t abide such waste, regardless of how much fuss arises from the ranks of teachers unions and school committees.
US Education Secretary Arne Duncan warned state and local officials on Monday that they will miss out on a share of the $4.4 billion in competitive education grants if they undermine the spread of charter schools. Duncan, the former head of Chicago's public schools, is a strong backer of charter schools, known for their longer school days, flexible scheduling, and ability to hire and assign teachers without interference from teachers unions and downtown bureaucrats. And he is no fan of the artificial caps that limit the ability of new charter schools to open in urban areas where they are most needed.
Some elected officials are responding. Yesterday, Mayor Menino told a group of business leaders at the CEO Club that he will call for lifting the cap on charter schools if he fails to win legislative approval for "a new form of in-district charter school." Boston already operates so-called pilot schools that feature many of the advantages of charter schools. But their formation requires approval from a recalcitrant Boston Teachers Union. Menino said he wants to "quicken the pace of reform" by giving his appointed school board sole authority to create in-district charter schools.
It's a half-measure, leaving Menino with only the bully pulpit should state lawmakers reject his bid. Mayoral challenger Michael Flaherty takes a more straightforward approach by simply urging state lawmakers to raise the current cap, which mandates that no school district be required to transfer more than 9 percent of net school spending to support charter schools. Mayoral challenger Sam Yoon takes a more nuanced approach, calling for a "smart cap" that would allow charter schools with a proven record of success to float above the spending cap. Both the proposals by Flaherty and Yoon seem more in keeping with Duncan's call for decisive action on charter school caps.
The Patrick administration is also dancing around the charter cap issue, offering small reforms and then doing little to guide them through the Legislature. Meanwhile, thousands of students in Cambridge, Lawrence, Lowell, Springfield, and other cities at or near the cap for charter school spending are trapped in underperforming schools. Tight caps on charter schools are a sign of restrictive thinking.
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"BArT builds on its success"
By Charlie Toomajian and Pamela Johnson, Op-Ed, The Berkshire Eagle, Wednesday, August 19, 2009
ADAMS, Massachusetts
Governor Patrick's and Boston's Mayor Menino's proposals to lift the cap on charter public schools have led to discussion, including an editorial (August 13) and a column by Martin Rudolph (August 16) in this newspaper, about the achievements of charter schools and whether those showing superior results have "cherry-picked" their students. Charter schools' greatest potential lies in their ability to serve as nimble learning laboratories where new ideas can be tried and where the best can then be replicated on larger scale.
Berkshire Arts and Technology Charter Public School (BArT) is an example of one that has grown quickly through its most formative years and has embraced "best practices" from charter schools working with a wide variety of students. This openness to good ideas has resulted in dramatic results with a student population that, in terms of numbers of students requiring special education services, more than matches the sending districts.
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After four years of hard work, BArT's founders were pleased with the school's accomplishments as we eyed our first graduating class. These accomplishments included a warm and welcoming atmosphere, a strong sense of community and a terrific faculty supporting our students so well that their self-confidence increased and they learned to present themselves and their work professionally.
Our graduating students, many of whom had started as ninth graders with us, were leaving with a rich education in the arts and technology that is very much in line with the strategic plan for the Berkshires. Despite these accomplishments, we were disappointed with standardized test results that did not reflect the hard work and skill of the stakeholders.
Puzzled by the shortfall in these standardized tests, the trustees asked a resource center for charter schools to facilitate a review by faculty, administration, staff and trustees to answer the question, "What needs to change for our students to achieve the highest levels of academic achievement?" We declared that there were no "sacred cows"; everything was up for discussion other than the core mission of offering a college preparatory curriculum.
Galvanized by the feedback from this honest self-appraisal, administrators and faculty visited selected, high-performing charter schools for focused learning of proven methodologies. In business, this is known as "best-in-class benchmarking" and of course it only works if you are willing to take the lessons to heart, make changes, test the results, modify as needed and be prepared to do what is needed for continuous improvement.
We adjusted the school's mission statement to emphasize college preparation and we focused the whole school -- faculty, students and administration on a clear goal of dramatically improving each student's academic performance. We continuously reinforced the message throughout the year.
The essence of what has led to the performance improvements is as follows:
* Frequent assessments. State test (MCAS) results are received only once a year, in September, after the new school year is underway and weeks after our teachers' intensive summer professional development and preparation period. Much more frequent feedback on student progress was essential and was achieved through investments in software applications and testing services.
* Frequent feedback to staff and students: we couldn't tell anyone how they were doing if school leaders weren't in teachers' classrooms and teachers weren't informing students how they were doing.
* Frequent course corrections to achieve the results we knew were possible. As an organization, we had to be willing to embrace change and do "whatever it takes," including modifying curriculum, implementing a rigorous assessment schedule, giving up some autonomy as teachers and administrators, providing lagging students with additional time in core subjects and after school coaching, grouping students by the level of the curriculum they had mastered and making time for all the conversations about how to achieve desired results.
Contrary to the opinion voiced by columnist Martin Rudolph (August 16), we found that students were motivated by seeing how well they progressed. Our staff rewarded and recognized individuals or groups making the most progress. And that progress has been remarkable. The external Stanford Achievement Test (SAT 10) results show that on average our students gain about two grades worth of progress in one year and outperform their peers across the U.S. taking this test. From the MCAS benchmark tests, other internal tests and preliminary MCAS results, we can see that we have dramatically improved overall academic performance.
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Central to BArT's success has been its ongoing commitment to hard work, a rich, inquiry based curriculum, a comprehensive portfolio review process, and a culture where attention and support are provided to all students. Our teachers receive over 100 hours per year of professional development, including two to three weeks of professional development in August to collaborate with each other and learn from experts how to better support their students. Our students will return a week before their peers and attend classes for 30 percent more time than in the surrounding districts in order to succeed academically.
In short, we know that there are no shortcuts. In order to change outcomes, all stakeholders must put in extraordinary time and effort to see success. At BArT we are proud that this is the rule rather than the exception and we look forward to continuing the amazing improvement in academic success of last year while maintaining our commitment to preparing all students for college in a safe and welcoming environment.
BArT is always open to visitors. Come by and see what we are doing and why we are so proud! There will be an open house tomorrow (Thursday) from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. that is open to the public.
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Charlie Toomajian is founding trustee and first chair, BArT. Pamela Johnson is founding trustee, BArT.
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"Private sector investing in charter schools"
By David Twiddy, Associated Press Writer, Monday, September 7, 2009
KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Charter schools, already seeing a surge in students, are getting attention from another group — private investors.
Entertainment Properties Inc., known mostly for sinking its money into movie theaters and wineries, recently bought 22 locations from charter school operator Imagine Schools for about $170 million. The real estate investment trust acts as landlord, while Imagine operates the schools and is using the investment to expand its chain of 74 locations.
"They really are an effective source of long-term financing that we can rely on and enables us to do what we're best at, which is running schools, and do what they're best at, which is long-term real estate ownership," said Barry Sharp, chief financial officer for Arlington, Va.-based Imagine. "It's a good fit."
Charter school supporters hope the move by Kansas City-based Entertainment Properties is the first of many such partnerships as they deal with increased interest from parents but not more money to build or expand their facilities.
In the past decade, the number of U.S. charter schools has tripled to 4,618, while the number of students enrolled has almost quadrupled to more than 1.4 million, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
While charter schools are publicly funded, they often don't have the same access to bonds and other financing available to mainstream public schools. That forces many to operate in places like storefronts or church basements, said Todd Ziebarth, vice president of policy for the alliance.
"I think it's probably the biggest challenge facing charters, not only finding space but once you find it how do you pay for it, particularly if you're going to buy it," Ziebarth said. "I think it's limiting their growth and it's limiting the expansion of existing schools."
Charter school supporters say the need for construction funding is high, and the entry of a for-profit player like Entertainment Properties signals that they've gone from being an educational curiosity to being seen as a future significant part of the educational landscape.
David Brain, chief executive of Entertainment Properties, said he initially was skeptical of investing in charter schools. But he said he looked deeper and determined that most of the charter school operations that had failed either never opened or were independent operations with little experience.
Focusing on large players who know how to operate schools, hire teachers and develop a curriculum, he said, provides the company a more dependable return.
"We're not speculators, we're investors, so I have to invest in property making money for me and my customers today," said Brain, whose trust oversees a $2.6 billion portfolio. "The charter public schools offer lenders/leaseholders a dependable revenue stream backed by a government payer. It's a very desirable equation."
Enrollment at Imagine Renaissance Academy of Environmental Science and Math, Kensington Campus — among the schools sold — was near capacity by its second year, with 515 students in kindergarten through fifth grade.
While the renovated 19th-century school in Kansas City looks like any other public school, there are subtle differences: the color-coded polo shirts the students wear to signify their grade, smaller class sizes and an added emphasis on science.
Sharp said Imagine could have used a combination of mortgage financing and other funding to fuel its growth. But he said that would have forced the company to keep relying on rental properties it had little control over.
"We would have had to go out and use some of the money to maintain our investment in our existing buildings and therefore it wouldn't have made it into the new ones the same way," he said.
While charter advocates welcome the interest of private investors, they wish the focus was less on the larger networks and more on the vast majority of independent schools that could use help.
Jeanne Allen, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Education Reform, said states and individual school districts ultimately must change how they allocate funds, either allowing charters to use bonds and other public construction funds or give them more money to build their own facilities.
"It's unfair to require a public school, regardless what kind, to have to rely only on philanthropy or alternative financing to create a building that is adequate for kids," Allen said.
But that shouldn't be at the cost of established schools that need repairs or new buildings, said Kay Brilliant, director of policy and practice at the National Education Association, which represents public school teachers.
"The whole issue around distribution of funds has to do with a lack of funds overall," she said via e-mail.
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"Massachusetts lawmakers consider school overhaul bills"
By Associated Press, Sunday, September 13, 2009, www.bostonherald.com - Local Politics
BOSTON — Massachusetts lawmakers are planning to hear from the public on two major school overhaul bills proposed by Gov. Deval Patrick.
One of the bills is aimed at creating high-quality charter schools to serve students in the state’s lowest-performing districts. The bill would allow the creation of more than 27,000 new charter school seats and require the schools to make an effort to seek out low-income, limited English and special education students.
The second bill would let the state education commissioner step in to turn around chronically underperforming schools, in part by helping close the state’s racial and ethnic performance gap.
Both bills are scheduled to be heard Thursday before the Committee on Education at the Statehouse.
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"Mayor insisting he will be needed during tough times"
By Jennifer Huberdeau: The North Adams Transcript & The Berkshire Eagle, Saturday, October 31, 2009
NORTH ADAMS -- A year ago, Mayor John Barrett III was contemplating a different future -- one that involved teaching college students about politics rather than being a politician.
But all that changed last October when Gov. Deval L. Patrick began cutting the state budget and talks of devastating emergency 9c cuts in local aid loomed on the horizon for the new year.
"I asked myself last fall why I would stay for a 14th term," Barrett said during an interview on Wednesday. "I thought about the detrimental impact the cuts would have and all I could see was the hard work and progress we've made over the last 26 years go for naught."
Speaking without ego
He continued, "I felt, and I say this very humbly, that the community would need me and my relationships. The community needs someone who is experienced with budget reductions and cuts to make it through the next two years. That's why I decided to run again -- I never expected a battle like this. I've never worked this hard for this office, except for maybe during my first bid."
A victory on Tuesday will mean an unprecedented 14th two-year term in office, both at the local and state levels -- but for Barrett it will mean more than hanging on to the prestige of being the state's longest-serving mayor.
"The state will have to continue to pay attention to us," he said. "I've had more than one mayor from the other end of the state tell me, ‘If North Adams loses your voice, you'll never know that North Adams is in this state.' I have a seat at the table, one that I earned about 15 years ago."
While some question his hands-on management style, Barrett says that it allows him to have all the information he needs when making tough decisions.
Learning on the job
"Nothing can prepare you for the role of mayor," he said. "The most important quality of being a mayor is being a leader. You can't run a city with roundtable discussions. One of the most prominent criticisms at the state and federal levels right now is that the person in charge needs to make the hard decisions. You can have as many people as you want give you input, but at the end of the day, only one person makes the decisions."
He also stands by his philosophy on economic development, one that formed 35 years ago during his time as a county commissioner.
"Economic development plans and directors are a huge waste of tax payer money," he said. "A few years ago, I was criticized for not supporting the studies done by the Berkshire Economic Development Corp. Where are those studies now? On a shelf with all of the other plans that have been paid for over the years. I believe I've proven the image of a community makes a huge difference when it comes to economic development. Mass MoCA has been our economic development director."
Instead of investing hundreds of thousands of tax-payer and private-sector money into plans and development directors, Barrett said he's invested it in the downtown, neighborhood streets and the airport.
"I believe we've created new types of jobs along the way and attracted businesses to the city as well," he said. "We've just scratched the surface. The companies are small, but the economy has changed. The factories left the Northeast to go to the south. They've left the south to go to India and other countries. The future is in light manufacturers and other small businesses."
Over the years, Barrett has made enemies, but just as many connections, he says. He's proud of the city, which has risen from the ashes of the desolated mill town he took over in 1984.
"The Boston Globe once said I was ‘sturdy, feisty and resilient, just like his city.' We'll all have to be just that -- sturdy, feisty and resilient over the next two years," Barrett said. "Not everyone is going to like your decisions. You can't be everything to everyone."
He added, "We've had more stories printed about us than any city in the state outside of Boston. We've been featured world wide and yet in this election you'd thing we were the poorest community you could find in Appalachia. It bothers me this picture that's been painted by my opponent. We had the first middle school in the state to have a laptop computer for every student and we just added a school-wide fine arts program. I just don't get it. He talks about all the things he's going to do and establish -- most of these things exist. We just don't talk about them on a regular basis."
Unlike other elections, this campaign has brought the challenge of reaching out to a new population -- a younger Internet-savvy generation of voters.
"Technology has changed things -- I used television, a Web site and even FaceBook for the first time," Barrett said. "I had a group of young people who came to me and said that I needed to be on the Internet and I used their talent."
But the Internet has it's downside as well, he said.
"There's a meanness to this campaign that I've never seen before -- it's out there on the Internet." Barrett said.
Perhaps his biggest challenge in the final stretch of the campaign is reaching out to those voters who moved to the area after Mass MoCA opened.
"They have no memory of what the city was like 25 years ago," Barrett said.
"They don't know about the poverty and the desolation after Sprague pulled out. They don't know what it all looked like. There was a letter in the paper the other day that thanked me for all my hard work, but then the author said it was time for change."
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www.topix.net/forum/source/berkshire-eagle/TSJR25E7LUSR6SU3Q
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"The post-Barrett era"
The Berkshire Eagle, Editorials, November 5, 2009
When John Barrett III began his 26-year career as mayor of North Adams, Ronald Reagan was president, Michael Dukakis was beginning his second term as governor of Massachusetts and Carl Yastrzemski was wrapping up his Hall of Fame career with the mayor's beloved Boston Red Sox. That provides context for how long Mr. Barrett has been the city's dominant figure, and a sense of the dramatically new era North Adams will embark upon next January with a new mayor.
Every mayor gets to set a city's agenda, but Mr. Barrett's sharp-edged personality and uncompromising management style enabled him to dominate his city's agenda. Whether it was wrestling with skeptics to make Mass MoCA a reality, leaning on Beacon Hill to get funding for city projects or taking on Yankee Magazine and any others who dared mock his beloved community, John Barrett hit the opposition head on. To return to baseball, the bunt wasn't in the mayor's arsenal. He swung for the fences, and from the heels.
That style enabled him to accomplish a great deal for his city economically, culturally and educationally. The big successes, like the museum of modern art and its spin-off businesses, drew headlines, but the mayor sweated the small stuff too, as if he were a councilman. The challenges of a small city tucked in the Berkshire hills are many and Mayor Barrett has met them.
The mayor's style, however, was guaranteed to make him enemies, and he made plenty over the years. Many would never forgive slights real or perceived no matter his accomplishments.
The nature of Dick Alcombright's decisive victory Tuesday, however, indicates that North Adams voters didn't just vote against Mr. Barrett, they voted for his opponent. Unlike many of the mayor's past opponents, he gave voters someone to vote for rather than simply target Mr. Barrett as someone to vote against. Mr. Alcombright's credentials are solid, his popularity among residents well-earned.
Mr. Alcombright's management style will be dramatically different from Mr. Barrett's, which is not to say it is either right or wrong. In fact, his conciliatory nature should enable him to ease the transition from a long-dominant predecessor, and while loyal Barrett supporters will not be easily appeased, we are confident the new mayor will reach out to them.
North Adams will be losing Mr. Barrett's statewide political savvy and years of experience, but he entered office in North Adams with neither and Mr. Alcombright has the potential to gain both. The new mayor also has the opportunity to build a legacy in North Adams. Mr. Barrett has already built us, and it provides a platform for Mr. Alcombright and North Adams to build a bright future upon.
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www.topix.net/forum/source/berkshire-eagle/T8430JC5NTEE2AUA5
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"Reflective Barrett mulls his future"
By Jennifer Huberdeau, North Adams Transcript, 11/07/2009
NORTH ADAMS - Mayor John Barrett III's office is full of memories from his 26-years at the helm of the city - a pair of cufflinks from the late U.S. Rep. Silvio O. Conte, a hard-hat from the ground-breaking ceremony of Brayton Elementary School, a hockey puck from the local skating rink, along with countless photos, buttons and cards from well-wishers.
"I have a lot of obituaries on that table - they're all people who've made a difference in my political life," Barrett said Friday, pointing to a table in his office overflowing with odds and ends given to him over the years. "There's also pictures of my wife [the late Eileen Barrett] all throughout there. To some people it looks like a pile of junk, but it helps keep me grounded."
"Just three days after the election in which he lost to challenger Richard J. Alcombright by 880 votes, Barrett, the state's longest-serving mayor with 13 two-year terms under his belt, wore a mask of calm as he attempted to hide a tide of emotions - a mix of disappointment, sorrow and relief - that bubbled to the surface as he talked about leaving the corner office.
""I'm going to ask the historical society to come in and see what they want," he quipped. "They're not going to get my autographs from Ted Williams or Joe DiMaggio, but I am part of the city's history now. What some people will find amazing is the fact that we've saved every letter and every news clipping since day one. It's been an exiting period in the city's history.
""It's going to be sad to pack up, but nothing lasts forever," he added. "My only regret is that I didn't get to go out on my own terms. But I'm looking to the future as the next chapter of my life. I know that politics will play some part in my future, but running for office is already in my rearview mirror."
"Over the last few days, he said, he has received numerous job offers - interim town manager, interim school superintendent, political consultant and a position with a think tank.
""I'm looking forward to getting out of this fish bowl and having a little privacy," he said. "I want to stay in the city, but I don't know if I'll be able to. That's the hard part."
"Barrett is also being sought out for lectures, he said.
""I have a lot of opportunities presenting themselves. A few are in politics. I'd really like to teach part-time - that interests me strongly. I'm not ready to make a decision yet though - I'll do that in December It's amazing how very relaxed I am, knowing that all I have left to do is really clean up this place and hand things over."
"The mayor said he was severely disappointed at first by Tuesday's outcome - he had hoped to finish the Mohawk Theater before he left office and to lead the city through the impending fiscal crisis.
""Then I stepped back and realized that the job of mayor is one that is never finished," he said. "The real jewel of this city is the Mohawk Theater, and I hope that it will be finished. I'm walking out with my head held high, though. I'm leaving the mayor-elect with a city that's better than the one I inherited. We've rebuilt the economy with Mass MoCA. The city is in good financial shape with a good educational system and he'll even have a little money in the bank. He'll also have $15 million in projects that I'm leaving him."
"Looking back over the last 26 years, Barrett remembered a time when the Holiday Inn, then simply the North Adams Inn, was in and out of bankruptcy, Sprague Electric Co. was on its way out and the Transcript was running a daily tally box of the businesses that were leaving and the number of lost jobs.
""For the first 1 1/2 years I was in office, I was working 18 hours a day and never left the city," he said. "I worked seven day a week. The first time I took a vacation was on Nov. 29, 1986, when I got married."
"Even after the city turned around, Barrett has kept up the hard work.
""I've come in here every day for the past 26 years [except for brief vacations]," he said. "The hardest part is going to find someplace to go. I'm going to have to find an office."
"While he plans to set the city's tax rate as his last official act in office before Alcombright takes over on Jan. 1, Barrett said he believes he'll also have the skating rink renamed - an act that must be signed by the state Legislature - before he leaves.
""It will be the Peter W. Foote Vietnam Veterans Memorial Skating Rink," he said. "He's the only man in North Adams to give his life during that war. People might not like it, but that rink is in North Adams."
"As for his advice for Alcombright, he said, it's no different than what he would tell any new mayor:
""Never let yourself believe that you're mayor for one minute. You've just been selected by your friends and neighbors to lead them for a little while. You must remember that you're not special and that you're not any different than them."
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www.topix.net/forum/source/north-adams-transcript/TGM3L895SFJ2A9TL9
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"A View From Adams: Gone but not forgotten"
By BILL DONOVAN, The Advocate Weekly - advocateweekly.com - Op-Ed Column, December 3, 2009
Many people were sincerely surprised by the results of the recent North Adams mayoral race. I was one of them.
North Adams has made tremendous progress fighting the same long, slow uphill battle facing cities and towns all over New England. From Bangor to Pittsfield, they're struggling to find a way forward after their factories closed down. Yet the voters of North Adams chose not to re-elect the man who has successfully led them on that journey for 26 years, Mayor John Barrett III.
And right now, it looks as if Massachusetts will be facing a rock 'em, sock 'em budget year as Gov. Patrick and the Legislature wrestle with a grim revenue forecast. Yet the voters of North Adams chose not to re-elect a mayor who is widely regarded by other public officials throughout the state as a top-notch municipal financial manager.
Apparently, the same desire for a quick fix that has swept over the entire country's political landscape for the past few years has made its way to North Adams. Millions of Americans are out of work. Millions more have watched an unpredictable stock market pummel their retirement accounts. All over the country, Americans are understandably confused and hungry for any change that sounds good.
But campaign pledges are rarely all that they're cracked up to be. And crack up is exactly what they usually do when they crash headlong into the unsentimental reality of the bottom line. Time will tell what the results will be from this dramatic change in North Adams leadership.
One thing is absolutely certain. North Adams will not be the same place without the passionate, plain-speaking man most residents simply call "The Mayor."
I served on the North Adams City Council for a total of 10 years between 1991 and 2005. During my time on the council, I attended many meetings, subcommittee meetings and public hearings where I had the opportunity to watch and listen as Barrett fought to move the city forward.
The crowning achievement of the Barrett years will of course be the establishment and roaring start of Mass MoCA. When it was finally a going concern, it was clear to any honest observer that the transformation of the former Sprague mill complex into a world-class contemporary art museum would never have survived and succeeded without the dogged determination and follow-through of Barrett. MoCA never would have negotiated the rapids of local politics without his uncompromising leadership.
During most of my tenure on the council, my main area of interest was the North Adams school system. The councilors had a liaison responsibility to different community boards and organizations. I was the liaison from the council to the school department several times.
As I saw it then, and still do, elected officials on the local level have few responsibilities as important as making sure the kids in their city or town have an honest opportunity to receive a good education. And that's where I think the mayor made his greatest contribution.
In an era when school systems all over the state were and still are forced to cut back and cut corners, Barrett fought endlessly to make sure that all of the pupils in the North Adams public schools, regardless of their family's economic situation, would have that honest opportunity.
One particular effort of the mayor's, which I believe still functions today, highlighted his priorities. It was a program that provided hot lunches for kids who needed them all summer long, not just during the school year. It ran into some momentary opposition, but the mayor, as always, wouldn't back down. And it passed and was put into effect, and because of John Barrett, kids in North Adams who depended mightily on the school lunch program had healthier summers.
All things change. But it will be a long time before anyone has a conversation about the city of North Adams without also talking about Mayor John Barrett III.
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Bill Donovan contributes regularly to The Advocate. Feedback is welcome at news@advocateweekly.com.
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A grim Mayor Barrett predicts massive layoffs at Sprague Electric Co. during a television press conference on Sept. 19, 1984. Despite company denials, two weeks later, Sprague announced 600 layoffs over two years, in what was the beginning of the end for they city’s largest employer. (Transcript file photo)
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"Barrett looks back on 26 years in office"
By Jennifer Huberdeau, North Adams Transcript, December 30, 2009
NORTH ADAMS -- After nearly three decades in the city’s corner office, Mayor John Barrett III is ready to move on later this week.
"I’ve been here through five presidents and five governors," he said Tuesday, thinking back on his 26 years in office. "I have a lot of good memories as I leave office. There are always a few things you wish you could do differently. I think we’ve been able to do a lot of creative things over the years."
The mayor pointed to Brayton Elementary School as an example of one of his administrations most creative endeavors.
"The Northern Berkshire YMCA was bankrupt at the time," he said. "We needed a new elementary school as well. I went to the state building assistance bureau with the idea of building onto the YMCA building. We saved the YMCA, a vital organization to this city, with that move.
"I’m also proud of the addition to the library and the addition to Drury High School. I like to call it the new Drury High School. It was one of my goals when I took office to put walls in that school -- that open school concept just didn’t work."
He added, "We were able to do so much over the years and I’m not leaving any substantial debt as I leave."
However times weren’t always so wonderful for Barrett.
"My first month in office was just terrible," he said. "We received something like 35 inches of snow that month. We had 12 pieces of equipment in the city yard and 11 of them broke down. Neighborhood streets had nearly two feet of snow on them. It was just an awful month."
Just days after he took office in January 1984, the new mayor would receive a report from state auditors indicating "serious mismanagement" of the city’s books by the previous administration’s treasurer, David DeLuca, who allegedly kept the city’s receipts in shoe boxes.
"It was also during that first month in office that John Sprague came to pay me a visit," Barrett said. "He told me not to be alarmed, but that Sprague Electric Co. was going to be moving its corporate office out of the city. The move was only going to impact 12 people. I did what all the other mayors before me did, I believed what Sprague was telling me."
A few months later he would learn from a friend working in a Greenwich, Conn., that Sprague wasn’t merely moving its corporate offices -- it had a plan in place to move out of the city entirely over a five-year period.
"I hit the roof," Barrett said. "I was so angry they lied to me. The headlines reflected that the next day."
In September, he would address the citizens of Northern Berkshire by television, telling them of Sprague’s intended plans. The company would not announce its plan to layoff hundreds of workers until the following month.
"The worst part was that it just wasn’t Sprague that left," he said.
Over the course of 1984, the city would lose nearly 1,000 jobs as the former Xytal Mill shut down, along with the Berkshire Tannery, Mohawk Industries and the Adams Print Works.
"An editorial in the Transcript said it wouldn’t blame me it I shut the blinds and turned out the lights," Barrett said. "Joe Grande, who was a reporter for the Transcript at the time, recently paid me the greatest compliment of my career in a column in the Berkshire Eagle. He wrote that I wouldn’t let North Adams die. I think that’s what I’m most proud of -- my greatest accomplishment is that I roused the spirits of the community despite an 18 percent unemployment rate and all the layoffs."
In 1988, Barrett decreed the city would no longer be known as the Tunnel City in his annual State of the City address.
"Every time I see the phrase ‘Tunnel City,’ it reminds me of a dark hole with no light, and today, North Adams is not a tunnel city, but a gateway city -- the gateway to the future -- the gateway to hope -- the gateway to opportunity, and as our city seal states, we hold the Western Gateway," he said at the time. "Today we officially shed the tunnel vision connotation. Today we truly are a great city well on our way to further greatness."
Although his vision of recreating the city’s economy with the idea of Mass MoCA didn’t become a reality until the contemporary arts museum opened in 1999, Barrett says he was always a true believer.
"I chuckled during this election when it was said that I didn’t support MoCA until it became an accepted idea," he said. "That would make me a supporter around 1995. I was on board way before that -- I remember when Thomas Krens first brought me the idea. He wanted the Windsor Mill and he later brought me renderings for the Eclipse Mill. All I knew was that it was a form of economic development, which they call the creative economy today."
When Gov. Michael Dukakis got on board and the idea of using the former Sprague building on Marshall Street was sold on Krens, the project quickly went from a few million dollars to well over $35 million.
"I remember the night the Legislature shot it down," Barrett said. "I called Tom at 1:30 in the morning and told him not to worry. I then called Fred Oakley, then president of Williams College. He said that it was over, that Williams had done all it could, but a few days later we were all back together. A few months later we had the approval."
Perhaps his greatest disappointment is leaving the Mohawk Theater unfinished -- a project that has kept his attention over the years.
"We’ve done $2.1 million in work in there," Barrett said. "The entire inside has been gutted. Phase one is complete. It’s ready for restoration work, and there’s about $2 million in tax credits waiting for the new mayor. I’ve set the table, now he has to serve dinner. It’s going to be a great economic development tool in the future, with the ability to host movies, concerts, digital feeds and events. It could be quite the venue, especially with 900 seats."
One thing the mayor doesn’t regret is the controversial stances he’s taken over the years.
"When you make decisions, you make enemies, and if you make enemies, then you’re doing you’re job right," he said. "Is it controversial for a mayor to take on the price of gas? I guess it is. Is it controversial to say the charter school is taking money away from the city’s school budget? Yes, but I’d say it all over again without batting an eyelash. Those statements played an important role in my defeat. Did anyone question why the charter school supporters and its executive director were raising money for my opponent?
"The important thing is that I know I made the right decisions over the years, and I don’t regret it. Most recently it was the state Group Insurance Commission. A year ago, the unions picketed outside my office, demanding access to the GIC. They weren’t taking about the higher co-pays and the higher deductibles. Would it have saved the city money? Yes, but it also would have hurt the employees in the long run."
Many have sought out his advice over the years, but most recently, he said he’s lent an ear and advice to Pittsfield Mayor James Ruberto, who like Barrett, lost his wife, to cancer while in office. Barrett lost his wife, Eileen, whom he married in 1986, to cancer not long after the couple married.
"When I heard Ellen’s [Ruberto] diagnosis was terminal, I called him," Barrett said. "No one wants to hear the word terminal. He told me he wasn’t going to run. I told him that he had to come to terms with the fact that she most likely wasn’t going to make it, and that he would need this job to survive after such a loss. If I hadn’t been mayor, I would have crawled into bed for six months and done nothing."
A short while later, Ruberto called Barrett, saying that Ellen wanted him to run. She died before November’s election.
"He’ll be a better mayor because of it," Barrett said. "She’s up there watching over him. I like to believe I’m a better mayor because of Eileen."
While he has no firm plans for the future, Barrett has rented out space at MoCA and plans to think over his options carefully over the next few months.
"I want to do some consulting, do some speaking tours and teach," he said. "I made all the wrong decisions after Eileen died. I want to do this right. I also want to do some fundraising for the Eileen Barrett Cancer Foundation, which gives all its money to helping cancer patients and their families."
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To reach Jennifer Huberdeau, e-mail jhuberdeau@thetranscript.com
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www.topix.net/forum/source/north-adams-transcript/T7UMR4V2V1P9VVRKO
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Outgoing Mayor John Barrett III said he was contemplating a new position and an announcement would be forthcoming. (Caroline Bonnivier Snyder / Berkshire Eagle Staff)
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"Reflections on 26-year reign: Outgoing North Adams mayor looks back proudly on his accomplishments"
By Benning W. De La Mater, Berkshire Eagle Staff, January 1, 2009
NORTH ADAMS -- Don't ask Toni Vitali to talk about the highlights from the last 22 years of her professional life.
She doesn't want to cry
"Too much to talk about," the secretary said, fighting back tears. "It's tough."
Her emotions made the tough guy cry, too. That's her boss, Mayor John Barrett III, the man who she said "will always be the mayor of the North Adams."
The two spent Thursday afternoon going through the final remnants inside an office that for 26 years was home to one of the most legendary political figures in Berkshire County history.
Barrett, 62, the state's longest-serving mayor, lost his bid for a 14th consecutive two-year term in November when City Councilor and banker Richard Alcombright beat him by 880 votes. Alcombright will be sworn in today.
On Thursday, there were a lot of emotions and memories shared in the corner office. In between the typical daily calls -- Barrett fielded one concerning a dispute over a cemetery plot and another from a resident complaining about ice build-up -- Barrett and Vitali finished housekeeping duties.
Barrett and all of his stuff have to be out by Monday at 10 a.m. And for those who don't know, Barrett was famous for all of his stuff.
"I kept everything," he said. "Every letter ever written to me. And every newspaper article I was quoted in. I even found my Ted Williams autograph."
And a few thousand other things.
Two bottles of homemade grappa sit on a shelf.
A small American flag stands on an empty desk.
Above three weathered, leather briefcases sits a small, silver frame holding a photo of his late wife, Eileen.
"She was the one who taught me compassion, the human side of politics" he said. "She smoothed my edges."
Barrett was known to be a bit, um, stubborn. His motto was "Be reasonable. Do it my way."
He was known for a shoot-from-the-hip, dictatorial style and his many clashes with city departments and unions were viewed as extreme by some.
When he came into office, he inherited a city that was about to lose its biggest employer, Sprague Electric Co. North Adams' alcoholism and unemployment rates were among the highest in the state. Yankee magazine called the city "a sorry gateway to anywhere."
The self-titled "urban mechanic" is credited with stopping the slide. He was the leading advocate for establishing the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, which brings in 120,000 annual visitors. But Barrett said his proudest accomplishments are focusing on the neighborhoods and restoring pride.
"In order to rebuild the city I had to start in the neighborhoods, rebuilding the streets, sidewalks and playgrounds," he said. "And I was able to keep services intact and the tax rate low."
He didn't do it alone. He had strong, passionate school committees, and "12 of my 13 City Councils were great."
And he had Vitali.
"I couldn't have done it without her," he said. "She wasn't just a secretary, she was my secretary. She presented a good image for this office. She was a great editor and made me rethink things when I was a bit brash."
Vitali can't help but feel a bit bitter over the election results.
"He did remarkable things for this city, and I don't think people ever really knew what he was trying to do," she said. "They didn't know how much he cared. I hope I helped him. I know I annoyed him."
Barrett said he didn't take the election loss personally. He believes he lost because he didn't use the Internet to reach out to the younger voters. "It was time for a change," he said.
Barrett has rented an office at MASS MoCA, where he will run the Eileen Barrett Foundation, which gives financial relief to families who are dealing with cancer. He's hinted at a desire to teach government and policy and to enter the consulting field.
He said he's had a few offers and is contemplating a position. "There will be an announcement in the coming days," he said.
He plans on golfing as much as he can -- maybe dropping his 7 handicap back down to a 5, where it was when he first took office -- and speaking about creative economies.
He's not scared about this new chapter in his life, but there is one thing that's a bit unnerving.
"The hardest part is going to be when I wake up Monday morning," he said. "It's going to be hard not going into the office. With the exception of vacations, I came into this office every morning for the last 26 years.
"Maybe I'll just get in my car and drive."
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"Barrett to lead at jobs agency"
By Scott Stafford, Berkshire Eagle Staff, May 7, 2011
PITTSFIELD -- John Barrett III has been appointed the interim executive director at BerkshireWorks, the quasi-public agency that provides job training and placement assistance for county residents.
The former North Adams Mayor replaces Michael Herrick, who retired as executive director on Monday after 16 years on the job.
Until April 30, Barrett had been working as interim public services commissioner at the Pittsfield public works department.
Barrett said Pittsfield Mayor James M. Ruberto asked him to take the position on an interim basis until a permanent replacement can be found. He expects the search for a new director could take three months or more. The Pittsfield mayor is the appointing authority for the position.
Ruberto "asked me to make some changes in the administration and operation of the agency," Barrett said. "The staff has been helpful, and there are a lot of programs I have to get up to speed on."
According to the BerkshireWorks website, the agency is a partnership between the Berkshire Training & Employment Program and the Massachusetts Division of Career Services, and is chartered by the Berkshire County Regional Employment Board Inc.
Funded through the federal and state government, BerkshireWorks provides access to employment-focused programs and services for businesses, job seekers, workers, and employers.
Heather P. Boulger, executive director of the Berkshire County Regional Employment Board, said her agency sets policy and oversees performance at BerkshireWorks.
BerkshireWorks has about 20 employees.
"I really enjoyed working with [Herrick] during the past 16 years and wish him luck with his retirement," she said. "BerkshireWorks does a tremendous job, and I’m sure there won’t be any hiccups with job seekers or employers during the transition."
"I’m enjoying it, and hopefully I can be helpful to the mayor the same way I was in Pittsfield," Barrett said.
Ruberto was unavailable to comment Friday.
To reach Scott Stafford: sstafford@berkshireeagle.com or (413) 496-6241.
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"Barrett's service will be missed"
By Bill Donovan, The North Adams Transcript, Op-Ed, 9/13/2013
Former Mayor John Barrett's decision not to run for re-election to the North Adams City Council surprised many people in North Adams as well as Northern Berkshire.
For the first time in nearly 40 years his name won't appear on the ballot in this year's city election. During this span of time, he served eight years on the McCann School Committee, four years as a Berkshire County Commissioner, 26 years as mayor, two years on theCity Council and several years on the Airport Commission.
Clearly, Barrett's record of public service was extraordinary and more than likely will never be matched again in the City of North Adams.
I was very disappointed by the comments of Mayor Richard Alcombright when asked to comment on those councilors who were not running for re-election. He praised City Councilors Alan Marden, Michael Bloom and Marie Harpin for their service and commitment to the city over the years, yet failed to mention the fourth councilor, John Barrett. It would seem obvious to most that this would have been a perfect opportunity to thank Barrett publicly for his many years of service to the citizens of North Adams. Instead, Alcombright took the opportunity to send the former mayor off with a cheap snub.
John Barrett is a leader in every since of the word. No matter how difficult the issue, he always seemed to find a creative and positive solution in solving it. Who else would have found a way to save the YMCA from bankruptcy by building a new school around it and, at the same time, have the state pay 88 percent of the cost?
No other mayor would have been successful in leading the charge to secure $35,000,000 from the state to convert an 800,000-square-foot empty factory into a museum of contemporary art and call it economic development.
He convinced the state that North Adams could run the skating rink and then got a grant of $1.2 million from it to renovate the facility!
At a time when many had given up on Massachusetts' smallest city, Barrett oversaw the construction of one new school and the $22 million renovation of Drury High School.
Through his vision, he secured millions of dollars in federal and state money to renovate downtown North Adams, built the beautiful Veterans Memorial to honor the city's veterans, spearheaded the new addition at the library, saved the Mohawk Theater from the wrecking ball and spent millions in saving the theater for future use, brought new and innovative programs to the schools, and saved the historic Armory Building. While all this was going on, he somehow managed to keep North Adams an affordable community.
As a North Adams City Councilor for 10 years I was part of the amazing transformation that was taking place in North Adams. I saw first-hand how bad things were in North Adams as over 2,500 manufacturing jobs were lost in the mid 1980s. John Barrett had the courage to tell the people that Sprague would no longer be part of North Adams' future long before the company would acknowledge it publicly. He realized that North Adams had to restructure its economy and put in place an economic development strategy which would have many small businesses and no longer would the city's economy be centered around one company.
What I remember best is his refusal to sell out the regular working citizens of North Adams for the special interest groups. To him, these were the most vulnerable and the ones he cared about the most. From the meanest slumlord to the wealthiest commercial property owner, to the toughest union president, Barrett built up a long list of enemies because he would say "no" to those who didn't have the best interests of the community in mind.
After hearing about John Barrett's decision, I called him up and asked why he didn't run for mayor. He laughed and said, "The reason, I was afraid I would win." He told me about a group who had a poll done that showed him with an eight-point lead. He was even more excited by his favorable ratings as they were pretty high. "I know some people were disappointed by my decision, but it was just not the right time for a lot of reasons".
I, like many others, am disappointed that he didn't run this year, but I'm sure we will hear from John Barrett again. He certainly deserves the thanks of so many people for his long and distinguished years of public service. I sincerely thank him for all he has done and continues to do for North Adams.
Bill Donovan, of Adams, is a former North Adams City Councilor.
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"Bianchi seeks replacement for Barrett at BerkshireWorks"
By Jim Therrien, New England Newspapers: The Berkshire Eagle and North Adams Transcript, 10/04/2013
PITTSFIELD -- Mayor Daniel L. Bianchi has reopened his search for a new BerkshireWorks Career Center executive director after rejecting an initial round of applicants, including the current director, John Barrett III.
However, Bianchi also stopped short of ruling out Barrett in the next round. A former longtime North Adams mayor, Barrett was appointed executive director in 2011 by former Pittsfield Mayor James Ruberto.
Barrett's contract expired in September, but he continues to serve in the state-funded position under the same contract terms.
Bianchi said Thursday he is hoping to attract someone with extensive experience in a workforce development, state employment system or similar position, preferably with a background in information technology as well.
The job is expected to be posted online again today, with a salary range of $86,000 to $94,000.
Resumes are requested by Oct. 24, according to the advertisement.
BerkshireWorks is a partnership between Berkshire Training and Employment Program and the state Division of Career Services, chartered by the Berkshire County Regional Employment Board. It provides access to programs and services for businesses, job seekers, workers and employers.
Bianchi said Barrett has done a good job as director, "but I'm really looking for someone with a workforce development background and experience." He added, "But we will have to see where this search goes. Oftentimes we have to go out [for resumes] two or three times."
Appointing authority is Bianchi's as the lead public official in the county's largest municipality.
Contacted Thursday, Barrett said, "I can't worry about that. I understand that the mayor has the right to select his own person. I'm still working under the terms I was hired under two and a half years ago ... What will be, will be."
Barrett added that he still enjoys the position and believes he's been successful in what he sees as primarily an administrative job. Audit findings before he began noted serious financial issues, he said, "but those findings have all been cleared. That's what I'm most pleased with."
He added, "Employee morale is high, and I think I have done the job I was hired to do."
In his time in the post, Barrett said, he also was asked to be an advocate for the profession by the Massachusetts Workforce Professional Association and has built a number of relationships and partnerships in the field.
City Personnel Director John DeAngelo said the first search for applicants didn't produce as many resumes as expected.
One change this time, he said, is the inclusion of the salary range in the ad.
DeAngelo said a review committee consisting of himself, another city department head, a member of the Berkshire County Regional Employment Board and a career center official reviewed eight of the applications received. He said they chose two finalists for submission to Bianchi, including Barrett.
The advertisement notes that the BerkshireWorks Career Center, located on North Street, is a quasi-public city agency with a mission to strengthen the Berkshire economy by advancing the skill development of youth and adults for careers in the knowledge and innovation economy.
Among requirements listed are a bachelor's degree in business administration, communication or business management; at least five years of experience as a senior manager in employment and training/workforce; a working knowledge of employment and training programs funded through [state and federal agencies], as well as state and federal laws and regulations pertaining to grant management, managed information systems data collection requirements and procedures; knowledge of regulatory procurement policy of grants; knowledge of computers and application programs; strong writing, presentation and interpersonal skills.
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"Budget pact may leave unemployed without benefits at end of year"
By Nathan Mayberg, Berkshire Eagle, 12/12/2013
PITTSFIELD -- A budget deal announced this week by House Republicans and Democratic Senate leaders may help keep the government funded for the next two years -- but it also may take a toll on the long-term unemployed.
The deal, which both houses are expected to vote on Friday before leaving on holiday break, did not include an extension for unemployment benefits to those who have been receiving them longer than 26 weeks.
"This will cause irreparable harm to people," said John Barrett III, director of Berkshire Works Career Center in Pittsfield, which helps people sign up for unemployment benefits. "It's going to hurt a lot of people."
Unless further action is taken, an estimated 1.3 million people will lose their unemployment insurance after Dec. 28, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. That figure would climb to more than 2 million by March.
The agreement has been billed as a way to avoid future federal budget crises by cutting Medicare, raising pension contributions for federal employees, limiting cost of living increases to military retirees under 62 and doubling airplane ticket security fees. U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. and U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., made the announcement Tuesday.
There were 4,722 people officially listed as unemployed in Berkshire County by the state Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development for the month of October. The number of those receiving benefits for more than 26 weeks was not immediately available. The unemployment rate doesn't include those who have exhausted their unemployment benefits or who have dropped out of the labor pool.
"We think it is heartless and craven for Congress to go on vacation" without extending unemployment insurance, said Judy Conti, federal advocacy coordinator of the National Unemployment Law Project. "The economy is hurting these people the hardest," she said.
The average weekly unemployment benefit in Massachusetts is $431, according to state provided figures. Last month, Congress reduced food stamp benefits.
In a prepared statement, U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., described the failure by Congress to extend unemployment benefits as "unfortunate," while "corporate tax loopholes and billions in subsidies for oil companies remain on the books. These jobless benefits make an important difference to unemployed workers and their families in Massachusetts and around the country."
However, Markey also said the budget agreement was a "a good first step by limiting devastating sequestration cuts and putting in place a more reasonable level of funding."
U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, D-Springfield, signed onto a letter urging House Speaker John Boehner to extend un employment benefits, but was unavailable for comment on Wednesday.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren could not be reached for comment.
"The economy is not in the position where a lot of those people will be able to find jobs," Barrett said. "It's going to cause some problems."
The economy has picked up, but "there hasn't been a lot of movement in the county," Barrett said. There have been layoffs in the manufacturing center, though he said there are a lot of job openings out there, depending on one's skills.
Presently, those out of work receive unemployment insurance benefits up to 63 weeks in Massachusetts.
Without new legislation, 30 weeks will be the limit.
"Think of all of the people who will be cut off and won't have money for their heating bills," Conti said. "It's brutal."
"Now, to be hit right after Christmas," Barrett said. "It's going to cause havoc."
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“Taconic Grad To Lead BerkshireWorks”
Staff Reports
iBerkshires.com - January 7, 2014
PITTSFIELD, Massachusetts — BerkshireWorks will have a new leader.
Mayor Daniel Bianchi is appointing William Monterosso as its new executive director.
"I was really looking for someone who is living and breathing workforce development," Bianchi said on Tuesday. "Any one of our three finalists could do the job but what stood out was his experience running statewide agencies."
Monterosso is a Pittsfield native who graduated from Taconic High School. He then went on to earn his bachelors' degree in business administration from Greenville State College in West Virginia and enlisted in the Marine Corps.
He was certified as a workforce development professional in 2003 and has more than 15 years experience in the workforce development field. Most recently, he was the executive director of the West Virginia Association of Rehabilitation Facilities.
His responsibilities have included leading and managing approximately 700 employees, leveraging millions of dollars in grant funding, developing and managing budgets, and cultivating relationships between the organizations and communities in which he served in West Virginia.
Bianchi says he sees Monterosso leading BerkshireWorks to become much more of a resource for businesses and nonprofits through partnerships. BerkshireWorks is a partnership between the Berkshire Training and Employment Program and the state's Division of Career Services.
"You are going to see them cultivating a culture of success," Bianchi said. "I think it can be a critical role."
Former North Adams Mayor John Barrett III was serving in that position for the last two years. Bianchi said Barrett was considered in the first round of resumes but ultimately, Bianchi wanted someone with more experience in the workforce development field rather than administrative.
Barrett was appointed to the position by former Mayor James Ruberto at a time when the agency was facing questions from the state about its operations and reporting practices. A call placed to Barrett's office was not immediately returned.
"John did a wonderful job righting things," Bianchi. "We are thankful of that."
Barrett has continued to stay on as the director and will until Tuesday, Jan. 21 (2014), when Monterosso takes over.
Monterosso was considered the best candidate to fill the position after Barrett's contract expired in September. The city posted the job in the summer but only received a few resumes. The city sent out another request and a committee consisting of the personnel department, director of finance and another department head interviewed eight candidates and narrowed it down to three finalists.
"It was a very involved process," Bianchi said.
From there, a team of county officials was invited by Bianchi to aid in interviewing final candidates: current North Adams Mayor Richard Alcombright, a volunteer from the Berkshire Town Managers Associations, and Richmond Town Administrator Matthew Kerwood. They unanimously picked Monterosso.
While the appointment could have been done administratively, Bianchi said the job is important for the entire county and that is why he asked Alcombright and Kerwood to help.
"This is an important function for such a critical agency for all of Berkshire County and not just the city of Pittsfield," Bianchi said. "I think it is really important to recognize our strengths in operation as a larger community."
Bianchi said Montrosso won't be under a two-year contract but rather operate and be reviewed the same as other department heads.
"I am looking forward to his tenure," the mayor said.
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"Massachusetts online unemployment help still ponderous"
By Clarence Fanto, Special to The Berkshire Eagle, 1/26/2014
PITTSFIELD -- Last week, winding up his tenure as interim executive director of BerkshireWorks, John Barrett III was on the front lines at the career center, helping unemployment-benefits seekers navigate the still problem-plagued state website, UI Online, and TeleCert, the automated phone system for filing and updating claims.
This week, Barrett, 66, is preparing to file for jobless benefits himself and remains deeply distressed by how many hoops newly unemployed workers have to jump through in order to start receiving checks while they seek new positions.
Barrett, the former North Adams mayor who lost his re-election bid to Richard Alcombright on Nov. 3, 2009, after 26 years in the post, then served Pittsfield Mayor James Ruberto as a consultant. In June 2011, Ruberto appointed him as executive director of BerkshireWorks, the career center with offices in Pittsfield and North Adams, under a two-year contract.
While Mayor Daniel L. Bianchi kept him on as an interim head, he chose not to consider Barrett for the permanent post. Instead, he appointed William Monterosso, who began his assignment on Tuesday as the new director. The former Pittsfield resident was most recently executive director of the West Virginia Association of Rehabilitation Facilities.
Barrett had taken heat from the state Labor Department as the first official to sound an alert last June that the Department of Unemployment Assistance's new website about to be launched was in big trouble.
"It wasn't a gut feeling, it was just my years in politics dealing with the public and the facts," he said during a conversation at a local cafe. He contended that state officials from Secretary of Labor Joanne Goldstein on down didn't want him or anyone else to discuss potential problems with the rollout of the website last July 1.
"They just wanted to spring it on the public," Barrett recalled. "And I said, ‘You can't do that.' I said it was wrong." After The Eagle reported his concerns, Barrett received a dressing-down phone call from Alice Sweeney, director of the state Department of Career Services, reprimanding him for talking to the news media.
That department oversees one-stop career service centers such as BerkshireWorks, which is operated by the Berkshire Training and Employment Program. Although BTEP partners with the state Department of Career Services, the executive director and the BerkshireWorks staff are not state employees, and the career center is funded primarily by the federal government. However, the executive director is appointed by the mayor of Pittsfield.
"They went bonkers," said Barrett, referring to state officials who lambasted him for "inappropriate and wrong" statements to The Eagle.
Ironically, on Barrett's last day of work last Friday, Goldstein announced her resignation to take an administrative position at Northeastern University in Boston.
Last summer's launch of the $46 million website crafted by Deloitte Consulting to handle claims and manage benefits caused prolonged delays and frustrating glitches for thousands of jobless applicants. The site's unveiling was nearly two years late and came in $6 million over budget.
The state's automated phone center was overwhelmed by anxious claims-seekers unable to navigate the online system.
"The numbers skyrocketed we were averaging over 400 people a week, most of them with unemployment insurance problems they couldn't get solved," said Barrett.
Before the state added staff to its call-in center, some applicants were kept on hold for hours, Barrett noted. Others had to wait eight weeks or even 15 weeks to begin receiving checks.
"These are people who lost jobs through no fault of their own," said Barrett. "People were coming in saying their lives have been ruined. I've seen people break down because they can't pay their mortgage, their medical bills, their insurance."
State officials had been warned by a number of local job-center leaders to straighten out the phone system because of a likely deluge of callers, Barrett said.
While the problems appeared to ease last fall after local career centers were given more authority by the state Department of Unemployment Assistance (DUA) to handle claims, Barrett maintained that delays in resolving problems with benefits-seekers have persisted, and even worsened.
According to state Rep. William "Smitty" Pignatelli's office, eight new complaints were received just last week from applicants unable to resolve issues with the DUA. The Lenox Democrat and the rest of the Berkshire delegation opened a public campaign last September urging Labor Secretary Goldstein to double down on efforts to ease the logjam by adding staff at call centers.
"They were leaders," Barrett said. "Without them, it would be even worse for people because they did step up to the plate." The legislators signed a strongly worded letter of complaint to Goldstein.
"The secretary was feeling the heat," Barrett said.
Goldstein, who leaves the post at the end of this month, will be replaced by Rachel Kaprielian, current chief of the Registry of Motor Vehicles.
In a brief interview with The Boston Globe, Goldstein said that the online unemployment benefits system is working fine, and that its troubles were caused by bugs common to new software and systems.
But the state Senate's Post-Audit and Oversight Committee continues to investigate the problems that required thousands of overtime hours by state employees.
As for the former North Adams mayor, he plans to write a book about the creation of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, which he strongly advocated despite a tide of skepticism.
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"New Secretary of Labor Kaprielian expected to fix online system"
By Clarence Fanto, Special to The Berkshire Eagle, 1/26/2014
PITTSFIELD -- When Rachel Kaprielian, current head of the state Registry of Motor Vehicles, succeeds Joanne Goldstein as Secretary of Labor on Feb. 1, she’ll have a mandate to straighten out the state’s still problem-plagued online system for filing and renewing unemployment benefit claims.
"I’m very optimistic about Kaprielian," said John Barrett III, the former executive director at BerkshireWorks, the one-stop career center. "She’s an administrator. She hopefully will take care of it, but she’s got to get out into the vineyards to talk to the people at the career centers and hear from the claims-takers. If she will listen to them, a lot of this will be cleaned up."
While downplaying issues with the claims system as the reason for Goldstein’s departure, Gov. Deval Patrick told reporters at the Statehouse last Friday that Kaprielian would "continue the team’s insistence that those issues get resolved quickly for people who rely on this assistance."
"I think Gov. Patrick is a pretty smart guy," said Barrett. "He knows there’s a problem, and he’d hate to see his legacy determined by the failure of this UI Online system." Patrick has less than a year to serve in office.
The state’s new online system was installed by Deloitte Consulting under a contract Goldstein took over from former Labor Secretary Suzanne Bump of Great Barrington, the current state auditor.
According to contracting specialists cited by The Boston Globe, the contract with Deloitte negotiated by Bump offered few protections for taxpayers and limited oversight. Last year, Goldstein acknowledged that the project had gone so far off track by the time she became secretary that she considered firing Deloitte, which has encountered similar problems with its sites in Florida and California.
Patrick gave Goldstein credit for tightening the contract with Deloitte "to hold them accountable for any fixes or improvements that need to be made."
Last year, the Registry of Motor Vehicles awarded a $77 million contract to Deloitte to modernize its computer system, even though the state Department of Revenue had fired the firm midway through its own $114 million contract because of technical problems that caused officials to lose confidence in the consultant.
Information from The Boston Globe was included in this report.
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Our Opinion: "Truth-teller joins line"
The Berkshire Eagle, Editorial, 1/28/2014
Like the typical whistle-blower, John Barrett III got in trouble not for telling falsehoods but for revealing the truth. The former interim executive director of BerkshireWorks, Mr. Barrett drew public attention to the problematic state website designed to help the unemployed get the benefits due them, and if and when the site ever becomes fully functional, he will deserve a share of the credit.
The former North Adams mayor was the first public official to sound the alarm last June that the Department of Unemployment Assistance's new website was not prepared for the onslaught triggered by its launch on July 1. He says he was told by Labor Department officials, from Secretary of Labor Joanne Goldstein on down, to keep his concerns to himself, and when he shared them with The Eagle, received a phone call from Alice Sweeney, director of the state Department of Career Services, chastising him for going to the media. (See Clarence Fanto article in the Sunday, January 26 Eagle.)
Mr. Barrett was proven correct, as the glitch-plagued website was indeed overwhelmed, and at the one-stop career center he directed he saw first-hand the anguish of unemployed Berkshire residents who couldn't pay mortgages or medical bills while they waited for weeks to get their checks from the state. He credits the Berkshire legislative delegation for its public campaign to persuade Secretary Goldstein to increase her efforts to address the problem, in part by adding staff.
Appointed to the BerkshireWorks executive directorship by former Pittsfield Mayor James Ruberto, Mr. Barrett, the mayor of North Adams for 26 years, was kept on as an interim head by Mayor Daniel Bianchi, who chose not to consider him for the permanent directorship and instead named former Pittsfield resident William Monterosso. That is the mayor's prerogative, and the new director has a solid résumé, but as the career center position is not political in nature it would be unfortunate if the capable Mr. Barrett was penalized for his appointment by the current mayor's former rival or for whistle-blowing.
Last Friday, when Ms. Goldstein announced that she would be leaving at the end of the month to take an administrative position at Boston's Northeastern University, Mr. Barrett finished up at BerkshireWorks and will now get to test the state's unemployment system personally. Taxpayers should not only be concerned about the DUA's troubled, $46 million website, they should be offended that state officials were evidently determined to keep what they knew to be the truth about that website hidden, to the extent of unsuccessfully trying to keep Mr. Barrett silent.
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"Massachusetts labor chief ‘obviously tried to neutralize me,’ official says: Pittsfield official who spoke out about issues with the state’s jobless benefits system says he was targeted"
By Megan Woolhouse, Boston Globe Staff, February 5, 2014
Labor Secretary Joanne Goldstein (right) has defended the new online system. (Dina Rudick/Boston Globe Staff)
John Barrett III, who ran the career center in Pittsfield for nearly three years, said he warned state officials that the new online system for managing unemployment benefits was not ready to be rolled out on its July 1 launch date, anticipating problems that would overwhelm phone lines and career centers.
Several weeks later, when his warnings proved prescient, he spoke publicly about the difficulties the new system had caused jobless workers trying to get benefits. Labor department officials chastised him for his comments to the local newspaper, he said, while an “infuriated” Secretary Joanne Goldstein contacted the head of the board that oversees the center and the mayor of Pittsfield to complain about him.
“She obviously tried to neutralize me,” said Barrett, who served as mayor of North Adams for 26 years until 2010. “But I saw something was wrong and I saw the faces of these people who couldn’t get benefits, and that’s why I did it.”
Barrett’s experiences are indicative of what career center staff and legislators said were state labor department officials who at times seemed more interested in managing public perceptions than addressing problems that were keeping hundreds, if not thousands, of unemployed workers from collecting benefits. Career centers, many run by nonprofits contracting with the state, are on the front lines for the unemployed, providing a variety of services, including help with claims.
Many centers were overwhelmed by jobless people facing claims issues after using the new claims system. State officials grossly underplayed the scale of the problems, career center officials said, discouraging them from referring to “glitches” in the system or speaking to the media about the problems. Labor department officials visiting the Pittsfield career center even demanded that photocopied information with legislators’ phone numbers be taken off walls and desks in an effort to keep the problems quiet, Barrett said.
State labor officials focused more on public perceptions than addressing system woes, many lawmakers say.
Yet the volume of claimants who contacted legislators helped prompt the Senate Post Audit and Oversight Committee to open an investigation into the system last fall. Among other issues, claimants said they often waited for hours when they contacted the state help line only to be disconnected.
In Holyoke, so many angry claimants flooded the career center that executive director David Gadaire hired a security firm. Gadaire said he and other career center directors told Goldstein or her staff on many occasions that the system was flawed, and career center workers were frustrated because they were often powerless to fix the problems.
After Gadaire was quoted in an Aug. 19 Globe story saying the transition to the new system was “very very difficult,” a top labor department official contacted him and told him he “needed to take a more positive approach,” “back up what the state’s trying to do” and that he “shouldn’t be going to the press.”
“I think they were trying to get control of a story that was growing,” Gadaire said in a recent interview.
Goldstein, who will leave the labor department Friday to become associate vice president of workforce development at Northeastern University, declined to be interviewed. Robert Oftring, an interim spokesman for the department, said in a statement that the state offered career centers extra staffing and support to handle claims issues.
“Career center directors were encouraged to voice their concerns and offer suggestions about how to best structure the launch,” Oftring wrote. Career center directors, he said, were “encouraged to coordinate their public statements” with the Department of Career Services.
Barrett was not reappointed as executive director of the Pittsfield career center, known as BerkshireWorks, when his contract ended Jan. 17.
Barrett said he and other career center employees were invited to test drive the system just a few months before the rollout.
Barrett said he was concerned that the new system would confuse users and ultimately overwhelm both the phone lines for filing claims and providing assistance.
After the rollout, the number of people visiting the Pittsfield career center more than doubled to about 400 people a week because of claims issues, he said. People who had waited for help on phone lines for hours were coming in angry and frustrated, worried about how they would pay their mortgages and other bills.
Barrett said one man received about 70 letters about his unemployment claim in a single week. In another instance, an 85-year-old woman received a letter from the state demanding reimbursement for a $63 overpayment by the state from 22 years ago.
In August, Barrett said he visited Pittsfield Mayor Daniel L. Bianchi to discuss the end of his contract. Bianchi told him that he had been contacted by state labor department officials and if “some things didn’t change . . . there was a possibility that BerkshireWorks would close or funding would be taken away,” Barrett said.
Oftring denied that Goldstein threatened to withdraw career center funding for BerkshireWorks in Pittsfield or any other career center.
Bianchi, who under the law appoints the career center director, said in an interview last week that he couldn’t recall whether Goldstein had contacted him. He said he never discussed Barrett with her, although he said they discussed the resumes of the candidates for Barrett’s job and Goldstein offered suggestions.
“I wanted to make sure we were getting the right person or looking at the right candidate,” he said.
On Sept. 15, Barrett was quoted in the Berkshire Eagle newspaper saying the new system had caused so many problems that “some people have gone eight or nine weeks without a check, some even longer.”
Barrett received a text message the next day from Heather P. Boulger, executive director of the Berkshire County Regional Employment Board, which oversees the career center. The text said Goldstein was “infuriated” by Barrett’s comments.
Boulger said in an interview that she sent the text because Goldstein was concerned about avoiding miscommunication and had asked career center staff to forward unemployment insurance questions directly to the department.
State Representative William “Smitty” Pignatelli, a Democrat representing the Lenox area, said he and the Berkshire delegation have written Goldstein and Governor Deval Patrick because of the problems. And he said his office continues to field a steady stream of complaints from claimants.
“It’s flawed,” he said of the system. “And it’s time for someone in state government to recognize it and fix it.”
Megan Woolhouse can be reached at megan.woolhouse@globe.com.
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"JB III still mad at Coakley"
A Sunday Boston Globe article on the likelihood that many supporters of state Treasurer Steve Grossman will defect to the camp of Republican gubernatorial candidate Charles Baker should Grossman be defeated by Attorney General Martha Coakley in the Democratic gubernatorial primary noted that former North Adams Mayor John Barrett III is already in the Baker camp.
The article reported that JB III, a prominent Democrat statewide when he was the state’s longest-tenured mayor, flirted with supporting Grossman before deciding to back Baker because of the latter’s performance as a top economic aide to former Republican governors William Weld and Paul Cellucci back when Barrett was chief executive of North Adams.
Former allies Barrett and Coakley, who has family connections to North Adams, had a falling out when Coakley endorsed Richard Alcombright in the election that ended Barrett’s tenure as mayor. Plainly, those wounds have not healed. Bill Everhart, Berkshire Eagle editorial page editor, 8/19/14.
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"‘Torpedoed for telling the truth’"
By Clarence Fanto, Special to The Berkshire Eagle, 9/21/2014
LENOX -- He was the chief whistleblower, the canary in the coal mine.
Fortunately, unlike the proverbial canary, former North Adams Mayor (almost) for Life John Barrett III did not succumb, except professionally, after he alerted the public in a June 2013 Eagle article that the state’s new website for unemployment benefits was a technological train wreck.
Hundreds of internal emails between state labor department leaders, recently revealed through a public records request from The Boston Globe finally granted after eight months of delay, showed that they were dissembling when they insisted publicly that the UI Online site was a success, with minor glitches affecting relatively few claimants.
Instead, as we now know, the unemployment division was "mired in chaos for months, as thousands of people and businesses struggled with late benefits, missed hearings, and botched mailings," The Globe reported earlier this month.
Labor Secretary Rachel Kaprielian was appointed in January to succeed Joanne Goldstein, who presided over the system breakdown. Goldstein had insisted there were no serious problems and, according to Barrett, helped get him dismissed as the director of BerkshireWorks, the Pittsfield-based career center that aids job seekers.
Barrett, who had the support of his employees, was torpedoed for telling the truth.
Last January, Goldstein resigned to take a position at Northeastern University’s College of Professional Studies as associate vice president of Workforce Development and Employer Engagement. It appears she landed on her feet, unscathed.
Now Secretary Kaprielian, who has a successful track record in state government, has confirmed that the unemployment division was strained by the "relentless nature" of complaints about the $46 million website lemon designed and built by Deloitte Consulting of New York.
She acknowledged that the agency called many people to apologize for delayed payments and some bogus demands for alleged overpayments of claims.
One person received a faulty "bill" for $45,000 in overpayments, while another was denied benefits while trying to pay for health insurance coverage to treat a brain tumor. Another was deluged with 100 mailings in a single day. The exact number of unemployed affected remains unrevealed, but it is believed to be in the tens of thousands.
On the other side of the coin, state officials claim some clients did receive overpayments -- the agency supposedly paid out $800,000 in benefits that were not legitimate.
"We made sure people were given an explanation," Kaprielian told The Globe. "Things went wrong through no fault of their own."
By all accounts, including her own, the system is working well now. But Kaprielian’s true confession of how flawed the new website was for many months after its July 1, 2013, launch contrasts with Goldstein’s public statements -- including her phone interview when I was covering this story -- and her testimony before a committee of state lawmakers. (She has not commented on the release of the emails.)
The documents reveal that Michelle Amante, then the director of the unemployment division, was sending alarmed emails to Deloitte and to her staff, declaring that "this isn’t acceptable."
Amante, interviewed recently, said Deloitte, her previous employer, responded to her complaints but admitted: "I was very stern in my emails. I had to hold them accountable."
Kaprelian has fired Deloitte from further involvement in the system, denying the company a maintenance contract and comparing the separation to a divorce -- "nobody comes out completely happy."
In a follow-up letter to The Globe, she wrote: "I am proud to say that UI Online is working well. The average amount of time it takes to process a claimant’s first check is now 14 days, down three weeks from 37 days prior to the launch -- three weeks that can mean all the difference to someone in need."
I believe her. Previously, Kaprelian, as head of the Registry of Motor Vehicles, oversaw the development of its website. A few days ago, I easily renewed my driver’s license online -- it took 10 minutes, no muss, no fuss.
We can only hope the state has successfully revamped its hapless Health Connector website by the time it’s rolled out in November to begin processing applications for 2015 insurance coverage. As is well-known, that site broke down completely early this year and had to be taken offline for major surgery.
Barrett, the feisty North Adams mayor who served 26 years until defeated by Richard Alcombright in November 2008, remains understandably angered by the loss of his BerkshireWorks position.
"Those emails prove that Goldstein was not telling the truth," he told me this past week.
As he put it, "I got penalized, I was killed professionally, they took away my job and put BerkshireWorks in turmoil for 10 months."
The center now has its second new director since Barrett was shoved out -- Ken Demers of Adams, whose appointment was announced by Mayor Daniel L. Bianchi on Thursday, comes with strong credentials and a positive reputation.
Barrett, who receives a pension for his long service in North Adams but would prefer to be employed, acknowledged feeling satisfaction following the release of the email trail, proving that he wasn’t whistling Dixie.
His experience serves as a cautionary tale for anyone in government or private industry who tries to warn the public about incompetence, misdeeds or blatant obfuscation.
Nevertheless, eventually "the truth will out," as Shakespeare wrote in "The Merchant of Venice." That provides not-so-cold comfort to those with the courage to, as the Quakers wrote in a 1950s pamphlet, "speak truth to power."
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Al Bashevkin, retiring executive director of the Northern Berkshire Community Coalition, was awarded the 11th annual Gerard D. Downing Service to Children Award last year. (Eagle File)
“Outgoing NBCC leader Al Bashevkin reflects on challenges met”
By Edward Damon, The Berkshire Eagle, July 12, 2015
NORTH ADAMS — As Al Bashevkin prepares to depart the Northern Berkshire Community Coalition, he says he'll always remember working in a close-knit community.
The longtime executive director officially retired in June after 29 years with the organization, but is assisting the board and employees during the transition.
"It will probably take me a year to be secure in my decision to leave," Bashevkin, 64, said in an interview recently at the newly dedicated UNO neighborhood center. He said he still loves working at the coalition and added, "It's time for someone else to do this work and for me to find other things to do, to find people who can use my skills and talents."
Currently underway is a search for a new executive director to lead the organization, and the goal is "to improve the quality of life for people in Northern Berkshire by organizing, supporting, and empowering the community."
Bashevkin, of Bennington, Vt., said his future is open and he isn't sure what he wants to do next. But retirement will give him more time with his wife, Nancy Pearlman, and flexibility to visit his two children who live on the West Coast. He's also looking forward to spending more time exploring the outdoors.
A city native, Bashevkin left for school in Connecticut and Boston before returning to the area in the mid-1980s. As a faculty member of then-North Adams State College, he taught social work and community organizing, overseeing college interns placed at various social service agencies.
Sprague Electric Co.'s Marshall Street plant closing in 1985 sent a ripple effect through the community, he said, as hundreds were suddenly unemployed. Other factories and businesses that relied on Sprague also shut down.
"There was just a sense of hopelessness in the area," Bashevkin remembered.
He gives a lot of credit to former Mayor John Barrett III, he said, for boosting morale during tough times.
"He just wasn't going to take that," Bashevkin said. "He always said we were strong, good people. It was like his mantra, he said it over and over again to remind people — that this is a good community."
While so many people wanted to help, Bashevkin said there was no one group to bring community members and various agencies together.
Officials and community organizers looked east toward central Massachusetts where a community coalition had formed in the Athol and Orange area. Like North Adams, those communities had also lost manufacturing jobs.
Bashevkin joined what was then known as the Northern Berkshire Health and Human Services Coalition in 1986. The whole organization was housed within a Townhouse apartment on the NASC campus, where it was given mailing privileges, a phone, computer and eventually the Internet.
"The college was really our guardian angel as we were starting out," he said.
The coalition welcomed new people and programs over the years and undertook various initiatives. One of the first discussions focused on homelessness.
"We discovered people were sleeping in the streets, and we hadn't realized that was an issue," he said.
A homelessness crisis fund was founded and following a community conversation, the Louison House shelter was founded in Adams.
The coalition's monthly forums, he said, will be what he will remember most. Rural transportation, youth substance use and major national events such as the Sept. 11 terror attacks and Hurricane Katrina were all topics.
Bashevkin also acknowledged the work of the coalition staff, which oversees neighborhood organizing, family and youth programs, as well as the board of directors.
"They're all really nice people, and we all share the philosophy of respecting the individual," he said.
The city still has many challenges, he said. But he pointed to Mayor Richard J. Alcombright's administration and City Council members, and local agencies, as beacons of hope.
"We need to see what we can do to have the next generation be more involved in the world they live in," he said.
Contact Edward Damon at 413-770-6979. edamon@berkshireeagle.com @BE_EDamon on Twitter.
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Former North Adams Mayor John Barrett III, who served 13 consecutive two-year terms, took out nomination papers for the office on Wednesday. (File Photo Berkshire Eagle)
“Updated: John Barrett III takes out nomination papers for North Adams mayor”
By Adam Shanks, The Berkshire Eagle, August 12, 2015
NORTH ADAMS — Former Mayor John Barrett III quietly took the first step toward a potential run for mayor on Wednesday by pulling nomination papers.
Barrett, who served as the city's mayor for 26 consecutive years, lost the post to current Mayor Richard Alcombright in the 2009 general election. Alcombright has already announced his intentions to run for a fourth term this year.
"Yes, I did take out the papers, as a result of a real grassroots effort in the city of people asking me to consider running again for mayor," Barrett said when reached by The Eagle on Wednesday.
With a week left before the deadline, a total of five potential candidates have now taken out papers: Alcombright, Barrett, artist and real estate developer Eric Rudd, Richard David Greene, and Nik Lareau. Papers must be returned to the city clerk with 50 signatures by 5 p.m. on Aug. 20; thus far, Rudd is the only certified mayoral candidate.
Barrett is expected to make a formal announcement in the coming weeks.
"Now that we're coming down to the 11th hour, I agreed to take the papers out. That's all I'll say now and once I submit the papers, I will have more to say about my candidacy," Barrett said.
In a 2009 interview with the North Adams Transcript — conducted as he was leaving office — Barrett reflected on his accomplishments during his tenure in the corner office including the addition of Brayton Elementary School to the Northern Berkshire YMCA building, an addition to the North Adams Public Library, and an addition to Drury High School.
Assuming it is necessary, a preliminary mayoral election will be held on Sept. 21. The general election is scheduled for Nov. 2 and includes races for mayor, City Council, the North Adams School Committee, and the Northern Berkshire Vocational Regional School Committee.
Nine at-large city council seats will be up for grabs in the upcoming election, as well. So far, fifteen residents have taken out papers, including incumbents Keith Bona, Eric Buddington, Wayne Wilkinson, Benjamin Lamb, Nancy Bullett, Lisa Blackmer, Kate Merrigan, and Joshua Moran. Councilor Jennifer Breen is the only current councilor not to have taken out papers.
Potential challengers for council seats include Robert Cardimino, Ronald Sheldon, David M. Owens-Branco, Joseph Gniadek, former councilors Robert Moulton Jr., and David Bond, and former council president Ronald Boucher.
Moulton challenged Alcombright in the 2013 mayoral election and lost.
Only five council candidates have had their nomination papers certified thus far: Bullett, Gniadek, Wilkinson, Bona, and Cardimino.
So far, four potential candidates have stepped forward for three open seats on the North Adams School Committee: Karen Bond, Nicholas Fahey, Tara Jacobs, and Miles Wheat. Those seats are currently held by Larry Taft, Mary Lou Accetta, and David Lamarre. The winners of the election will serve a four year term on the board.
The last day to register to vote in the preliminary election is Sept. 2, and the final registration day for the general election is Oct. 14.
Contact Adam Shanks at 413-496-6308. ashanks@berkshireeagle.com @EagleAdamShanks on Twitter.
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John Barrett, right, seen here in 2010 with then-Pittsfield Mayor James Ruberto. Charlie Deitz WAMC.
"Former North Adams Mayor John Barrett Takes Out Papers For Old Seat"
By Jim Levulis, WAMC Northeast Public Radio, August 12, 2015
The former longtime mayor of North Adams is getting back into politics. John Barrett, who served from 1985 through 2009, has taken out mayoral nominating papers.
Barrett joins a field that includes his successor, three-term incumbent Richard Alcombright. Barrett took out papers Tuesday, according to the city clerk’s office. He did not return a call seeking comment Wednesday. Artist and businessman Eric Rudd admits a run by Barrett hurts his chances.
“Now Dick [Alcombright] can say to supporters ‘If you don’t vote for me, if drift and maybe vote for Rudd, you’re going to be helping John Barrett,’” Rudd explained. “And John Barrett is going to say the same thing to his people so we’ll get back to the same two camps and people will be afraid of breaking out and doing something different.”
Richard David Greene and Nik Lareau also took out nominating papers which must be returned with 50 voter signatures by August 20th to be certified.
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John Barrett III (Ben Garver — Berkshire Eagle Staff)
"Barrett lays out mayoral platform: Seeking 14th term in corner office in three-way race for mayor"
By Adam Shanks, The Berkshire Eagle, August 27, 2015
NORTH ADAMS - Nearly six years after he left the corner office, John Barrett III says he is seeking a 14th mayoral term to get North Adams "headed back in the right direction."
Barrett, who served as the city's mayor for 26 years from 1984 until 2010, will challenge incumbent Mayor Richard Alcombright and local developer and artist Eric Rudd for a two-year term this fall.
No stranger to the city's short election cycle — preliminary elections will be held in less than a month on Sept. 22 — Barrett wasted no time establishing his priorities and the differences between the Alcombright administration and a Barrett administration in a recent interview with The Eagle.
Barrett stresses that he is not running against Alcombright as a person, but the priorities and policies of his administration.
Since he left office, Barrett said that the average homeowner's tax bill has increased sizably while property values have dropped, though precious little funding has been poured into the city's decaying infrastructure.
Barrett says that addressing the city's "deplorable" housing stock and "attacking blight," largely through the use of federal Community Development Block Grant funds, would be among his top priorities. Hiring a full-time code enforcement officer would mean "you know who is living in these properties" and help police stem the flow of drugs into the city, Barrett said. The former mayor says he'd also look to revamp community policing efforts.
"I would be declaring a war on drugs in the city," Barrett said.
If he were to win another term, Barrett said he would continue his efforts to renovate the city's Mohawk Theater, which he believes is key to revitalizing the city's downtown.
Barrett also criticizes Alcombright's management of Western Gateway Heritage State Park, which is managed by the North Adams Redevelopment Authority under leadership of the mayor. When Barrett left office, the North Adams Redevelopment Authority had about $300,000 in its reserves, which have now dropped below $200,000.
Alcombright announced plans in 2012 to privatize the 7.6-acre park's commercial buildings, but has yet to find a viable tenant.
"Spending five years on Heritage State Park would not have been my priority," Barrett said.
Community Development Block Grant funds should also not be directed into a proposed skate park near Noel Field on State Street, Barrett argues. Instead, it should be put into revamping the city's housing stock.
"I don't think a skate park, at this time, and for $700,000, should be a top priority,"
Echoing arguments he made during a two-year stint as a city councilor from 2012 to 2014, Barrett said the renovation of Silvio O. Conte Middle School wasn't the right choice for the city. The city's other schools remain in need of repairs, he noted.
The city is currently embroiled in a battle with the general contractor it hired to complete the historic building's renovation into Colegrove Park Elementary School, and the project is on track to finish about four months past the initial end date.
"I was totally against the renovation of Conte for the very reasons that they're now encountering," Barrett said.
Although he doesn't think he could have prevented inevitable downsizing at the former North Adams Regional Hospital, which closed in 2014, Barrett believes that he would have been able to prevent such a sudden closure. While Sprague Electric famously began its departure from North Adams not long into Barrett's tenure, he says that he was able to keep them in the city in some capacity until 1992.
Barrett believes that "Barrett fatigue" played a role in his defeat at the hands of Alcombright in 2009. And although he admits at times he made mistakes—and had a temper, which he said has mellowed—the former mayor stands by his record.
"People were looking for a change in the person, not the policies," Barrett said.
That record includes an addition to the North Adams Public Library, the building of Brayton Elementary School, and an addition to Drury High School under his watch. Since leaving city hall's "corner office," Barrett has headed the Berkshire Works program for a stint and served as a city councilor for two years. But, now, he's looking to return as the city's leader.
"I'm looking forward to getting this city headed back in the right direction," Barrett said.
ashanks@berkshireeagle.com @EagleAdamShanks on Twitter
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“North Adams as destination is music to my ears”
By John Seven, Op-Ed, The Berkshire Eagle, September 21, 2015
The fact that the preliminary election for North Adams mayor takes place two days after the FreshGrass Festival finishes another successful year offers some irony to me, reminding me of a story from my early days reporting for the North Adams Transcript in 2003. I was approached by someone who had tried to start a music festival for North Adams. This person and others had come up with a plan, organized the festival and gotten major sponsorship and all that was left was to get the support of the corner office.
According to my source, the exact opposite happened. They were told by the mayor at the time he would not allow a music festival to take place in North Adams and there would be no further discussion. Like everything else at the time and years to follow, most of this was played out in in-person meetings and phone calls with no helpful paper trails to use for reporting. And what was the story anyhow? "Mayor prevents music festival from starting in North Adams." At the time, I'm not sure many people would have cared. The schools were bad and downtown was nearly a ghost town. Who could blame them for not caring?
But 13 years later, I see the influx of people, I see the publicity FreshGrass has garnered around the country. I hear Dwight Yoakum performing down the street from me on Saturday night and hear the approval of the audience.
Then I think about Solid Sound and how, between the two music festivals, thousands of people who never would have stepped foot in North Adams have. Because of these, North Adams isn't just some place they stop on the way to somewhere else, it's a destination, a place that they now equate with a good thing in their lives. That's powerful. That builds a lot of good will beyond our borders that advertising cannot. And it might not be this way if we still had leadership that opposed music festivals. That's the definition of backwards thinking.
Of all the columns I have written in the Eagle, I have never received so many responses as for my Aug. 17 column about former North Adams mayor John Barrett III. It struck a chord with a lot of people. I have never been thanked by so many people for writing something. I have never been approached by so many people with their own stories illustrating what I spoke about. I have never had so many people begging me to tell their stories for them, but also insisting that they remain anonymous because they are fearful of reprisal.
But despite all the requests, I can't tell your stories. I can only tell mine. The best achievement of the Alcombright years, as I said, has been to set a new tone of not only approachability but openness and the idea that you can be critical without fear. Any mayor to follow him will have to accept the same dynamic. Whispering your fears to me and hoping I will speak for you is against the spirit of that.
It's also part of the North Adams' tendency towards paternalism, which the former mayor relies on and which it has to get past. No one person will save North Adams. I believe part of opposition to Alcombright is directly related to his lack of forceful paternalism, something many of us do see as a positive.
You need to embrace your own stories in public, group together telling them, understand that numbers combined with honesty equals power.
A columnist in a newspaper cannot make that big a change. Only you, the citizens, can do that, using the power you already wield and always have.
John Seven, a writer, lives in North Adams. He can be reached at mister.j.seven@gmail.com or at vknid.com.
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Bill Donovan: “North Adams needs more from MoCA”
By Bill Donovan, Op-Ed, The Berkshire Eagle, January 30, 2016
NORTH ADAMS - The opening of Mass MoCA nearly 17 years ago is perhaps one of the most significant economic development projects in Northern Berkshire in the last 50 years. It was the beginning of what was referred to as the creative economy in the county. Art and culture was now economic development and job creation.
Under the leadership of Joe Thompson, Mass MoCA has exceeded just about everyone's expectations as it continues to expand its programs and receive acclaim in the international art community. Despite that, Mass MoCA's success of late has not translated into helping the North Adams economy.
Mass MoCA at first did have a positive impact on the city's economy. Millions of dollars in private sector investment was made in North Adams. The Porches Inn, a $5 million, opened. Apartments in downtown were being converted into condominiums, some selling for more than $300,000, and five new restaurants opened in the downtown. MCLA developed a fine arts program and was growing as a result of Mass MoCA and a new college president.
NO HELP TO DOWNTOWN
However, things changed, especially during the past five years when someone decided North Adams needed a new brand. Hundreds of thousands were spent on studies while the North Adams economy was spiraling downhill. Most evident was economic decline in the downtown, which just five years ago had been showing such promise when the Mohawk Theater saw a $3 million investment along with a renovated marquee. Today many businesses have closed, their space empty, and even the Mohawk marquee is no longer lit as it once was.
As exciting a cultural venue as Mass MoCA is, it has done nothing to revive North Adams' downtown. Mass MoCA has actually become an energetic competitor against growth in the downtown as it raids downtown businesses in order to fill its own commercial space. That's good news for the museum, but bad news for North Adams and the downtown.
It was more than five years ago when Mayor Richard Alcombright approved the museum's leasing space to the Social Security office, which had always been on Main Street. Former Mayor John Barrett III opposed the moving of Social Security to Mass MoCA as he believed it would negatively impact the downtown.
I was on the North Adams City Council when Barrett explained his position. Despite knowing that the office would help Mass MoCA financially, he felt it would be a greater detriment to the downtown because losing the foot traffic on Main Street could be the difference for some businesses surviving or closing their doors. When the Social Security offices moved, 70 percent of the commercial property on Main Street was filled. Today commercial property in the downtown is closer to being 70 percent empty.
There is no question Mass MoCA is important to the North Adams economy as without it things would be much worse. The problem is that it has become the city's entire economy and that is not good for either Mass MoCA or North Adams. The city needs a vision and plan which will benefit both Mass MoCA and North Adams. North Adams needs to have a say in its future and not have that future determined by people who don't live there.
Since the inception of Mass MoCA, more than $60 million in public money has been invested in the museum. There has also been significant private sector money invested to match a portion of the public money. In the last five years there has been little in the way of laying out real money from those who wanted public assistance for their projects.
Those with close ties to Mass MoCA didn't close the deal to privatize Heritage Park despite getting significant tax incentives. They even got a concession so they wouldn't have to pay the agreed upon $750,000 lease. The Greylock Mill is looking for significant tax breaks in addition to state and federal grants. The Redwood Motel developers were given a sweetheart deal on the easement they purchased from the city without any commitment as to what the land would be used for. Developers have responsibilities and North Adams shouldn't be used as someone's playground.
PART OF, NOT JUST IN
I was on the City Council when things didn't look too good for Mass MoCA. The entire city came together to fight for Mass MoCA and because of them it happened. Many new to the area have no idea how it came together. Mass MoCA and North Adams have to return to the days when they were synonymous with one another. As former Mayor Barrett always said, "MoCA can't just be in North Adams, it has to be part of North Adams."
The millions of public tax dollars given to Mass MoCA weren't intended only to make it an arts showcase, or a concert hall, or a nice place to do business. They were given to Mass MoCA so it could help save North Adams. It's time for local and state political leadership to start asking Mass MoCA some tough questions and demanding more bang for the taxpayers' buck.
Bill Donovan is an occasional Eagle contributor.
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Former North Adams Mayor John Barrett III has been appointed to the MCLA board of trustees. (Eagle file)
“Governor appoints John Barrett III to MCLA board of trustees”
By Adam Shanks, The Berkshire Eagle, 4/13/2016
NORTH ADAMS - Former North Adams Mayor John Barrett III will assume a new role in local leadership.
Barrett has been appointed by the governor to serve on the board of trustees at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, according to a release issued Wednesday by the office of Gov. Charlie Baker.
"I'm honored by it; it's my alma mater, and it's where I started my political career as student president," Barrett said. "I'm anxious to help the school in any way possible."
The former mayor was one of several appointees to public college boards announced by Baker. Current MCLA Trustee Susan Gold was reappointed to her post.
"We are fortunate to benefit from the dedication and expertise of Susan Gold, who served as co-chairwoman of two presidential search committees. Her willingness to commit to this critical position speaks to her deep dedication to MCLA, and I am grateful for her service," MCLA President James Birge said in a statement. "In addition, as one of the first political leaders in the nation to recognize the importance of the arts as an economic development tool, John Barrett will be a valuable addition to the board."
Barrett, a Democrat who served 13 terms as mayor from 1984 to 2009, publicly endorsed and campaigned for Baker, a Republican, in his 2015 gubernatorial bid against Attorney General and North Adams native Martha Coakley.
"Lieutenant Gov. [Karyn] Polito and I congratulate the trustees on their new roles and thank them for their willingness to step forward and serve the commonwealth," Baker said. "Board oversight is critically important, and we rely on their expertise and leadership to be strong stewards of our institutions of higher education."
Baker and Barrett's relationship dates back some 20 years, when the now-governor served as secretary of administration and finance Gov. William Weld in the 1990s. Barrett described Baker as a "key player" in the establishment of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.
In addition to the being the city's former mayor, Barrett also noted he's been a resident of the neighborhood for 40 years and been a long proponent of the college.
Barrett said he did not seek the appointment, but was asked by Polito to serve.
Contact Adam Shanks at 413-496-6376. ashanks@berkshireeagle.com @EagleAdamShanks on Twitter.
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Bill Donovan: “Our region isn't sharing state's overall success”
By Bill Donovan, Op-Ed, The Berkshire Eagle, March 6, 2017
ADAMS — U.S. News and World Report recently ranked Massachusetts the No. 1 state in the nation. The online magazine, which ranks almost every aspect of American life (usnews.com/rankings), also ranks Massachusetts' major metropolitan areas. Boston (8) , Worcester (54) and Springfield (67) are ranked among the top 100 locations to live in the country.
It's debatable whether or not the rankings have any statistical validity, but it's probably safe to say they represent the most commonly held opinions among a wide and fairly representative group of people.
So it can be assumed a large group of people think Massachusetts, and especially its three large metropolitan centers, are great places to live. The rankings mentioned education and health care as being strong points. It's probably also safe to say that people would not share such a positive opinion of our state and its cities without a correspondingly positive opinion of the economic opportunities they offer.
While it's nice to hear that our state and its major cities are so well regarded, the question that immediately comes to mind is what happened to us? If the rest of the state is doing so wonderfully, why is Western Mass., especially Northwestern Mass., trapped in this terrible cycle of population decline, poverty and widespread drug addiction?
First and foremost is the lack of good jobs. Our jobs left when our major employers, General Electric in Pittsfield and Sprague Electric in North Adams, left. The terrible aftershocks of thousands of good middle class jobs evaporating almost overnight continue to reverberate throughout every aspect of Northern Berkshire life. Another reason we struggle so forcefully, and it's a direct result of the vanishing job market, is population decline.
North Adams and Adams are especially hard hit by a population count that's dropping like a rock. The population that hasn't moved out or is planning to move out is comprised of the wealthy and well-off, the few of us who still are fortunate enough to have decent jobs, and a growing group of the economically challenged and struggling.
Real solutions needed
The middle class in much of Northern Berkshire, the group that buys homes and cars and a wide range of consumer goods that used to keep this area's economy chirping, is shrinking and shrinking rapidly. And the economically challenged group which is filling the void is furiously struggling with all of the social problems associated with being broke and without opportunity, chief among those problems a raging heroin and opioid addiction crisis.
A fair question to ask, then, is how can a big part of the rest of our state be doing so well as to be nationally ranked and recognized for its success, while we struggle so desperately with such overwhelming issues?
Why aren't there real solutions being offered to these problems that are choking the life out of us while the rest of the state is enjoying a banquet?
The most honest answer begins and ends with our political leadership. We need lions, not cheerleaders. We need political leaders who are willing to go to war with our state and federal legislators in Springfield, Boston and Washington. Gov. Baker should be suffering migraine headaches from the phone calls, letters and public demands from our local and state officials. Congressman Neal seems like a nice guy, but he shouldn't be able to open a newspaper or sit through an interview without being confronted with bold, angry challenges from our Western Massachusetts officials. Even Sens. Markey and Warren should be constantly prodded and poked to do something concrete for Western Massachusetts.
The solutions which have been trotted out in recent years to resuscitate our critical-condition economy here in Western Massachusetts have all come up short. There is no better example than the perpetual dance around the Greylock Glen. While Adams and Cheshire bitterly argue over which community will have to close an elementary school we can no longer afford, we're told that economic salvation for our community lies in a hobbit-themed campground.
We don't need any more campgrounds, hobbit-themed or otherwise. We don't need any more master plans. We don't need any more studies.
We don't need any more half-baked schemes and drawn-out, endlessly planned proposals that are draped in all the right window dressing and buzz words of "tourism" and "the arts" and "long-range economic development."
We need good jobs, and we need them now.
Bill Donovan is an occasional Eagle contributor.
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Letter: “Visitors are critical to North Berkshire economy”
The Berkshire Eagle, March 15, 2017
To the editor:
Here's a few things for Bill Donovan ("No argument made for scenic rail funds," op-ed, March 13) and others to think about.
The global economy we had in 1950 is gone. GE is gone and so is Sprague. None of this is North Adams Mayor Alcombright's fault. Do people really think that there are big companies wanting to build businesses here in Northern Berkshire and Mayor Alcombright is telling them to go somewhere else?
Mr. Donovan writes, "We need good jobs and we need them now," so why doesn't he start a business and hire someone instead of complaining? He decries building "campgrounds" and other visitor attractions. Here is some interesting information for him.
My wife and I rent out a small apartment in Adams to tourists and vacationers. Since June 2015, we have had roughly 125 parties stay with us for over 175 nights. That is over 300 people who have come here with 80 percent never having visited the Berkshires before. We have had folks from all over the U.S. plus many foreign countries.
Aside from the all around beauty of the Berkshires, the primary reasons these people have told me they are visiting Northern Berkshire are — guess what, Mr. Donovan — Mount Greylock and Mass MoCA. These guests have nothing but good things to say about our area and they all spent money here.
So if people want to come stay in a hobbit hole at Greylock Glen, eat in local restaurants, buy local gas, pay admission to local cultural institutions, rent bicycles to ride on the rail trail, have an ice cream, etc., I say the more the merrier.
Sandy McNay,
Adams
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Our Opinion: “A major leap in evolution of Mass MoCA”
The Berkshire Eagle, Editorial, May 26, 2017
Who would have believed two decades ago that the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams would today be unveiling its third and final phase, mammoth Building 6? Well, not everybody, but after early stops and starts as the unlikely vision of a world-class art museum sprouting in a financially reeling mill city struggled to be realized, Mass MoCA is family established and that vision is expanding significantly.
Since its inception, Mass MoCA has always been about big ideas and big art in a big setting. With completion of its last phase in the 16-acre, former Sprague Electric industrial complex, the museum is opening the doors to Building 6 and 130,000 square feet of additional gallery space. This will roughly double the available gallery space and enable the museum to add a substantial long-term collection to its temporary exhibits. Today, the museum celebrates the opening of a new space that will offer virtual reality exhibits, inventive experiments in light and dimension, and giant sculptures that had to be brought in with cranes. MoCA's global renown should increase along with its already formidable dimensions.
The road to today's celebration was long and winding. In 1985, Sprague Electric, which in 1966 employed 4,100 workers producing components of the thriving consumer electronics market, shut its doors, the victim, like so many U.S. manufacturers, of foreign competition. The city was devastated, but Thomas Krens, the director of the Williams College Museum of Art, and his colleague, Joseph Thompson, joined North Adams Mayor John Barrett III that same year to pursue a bold idea of converting vacant mill buildings into a museum of contemporary art. In 1986, they began exploring the possibility of employing the former Sprague complex on Marshall Street as home for that museum.
In 1987, the city and Williams College joined forces to pursue state funding for the project and in 1988 Mr. Thompson was named founding director of Mass MoCA. The concept shifted in the following years as an attached convention center was dropped along with a hotel, and its target opening date of 1991 soon proved unrealistic. North Adams detractors who still saw the city as a manufacturing base grew louder, and the skepticism voiced included words carried in Eagle editorials and commentary on these very pages.
Mr. Thompson, Mr. Krens and Mayor Barrett forged ahead, however, and they found a key ally in Governor Mike Dukakis, who between 1998 and 2000 continued to advocate for the project's funding. Mr. Thompson noted recently in The Eagle that seven different governors of both parties have participated in moving the project forward, continuing today with Governor Charlie Baker. The governor worked on the Mass MoCA project as Governor William Weld's secretary of finance and administration in the early 2000s.
Even though Mr. Weld froze funding for the project in 1991 during a recession and insisted on more private money, in 1994 [re-election year] he released the first funds dedicated to construction. Mass MoCA opened five years later.
Over the years, Mass MoCA's mission has evolved in ways that could not have been anticipated at the beginning. In 2010, Wilco played a concert at a large field the museum purchased near the complex and the Solid Sound Festival was born. Fresh Grass, a festival of grassroots music, arrived later, and the new building will include backstage facilities better enabling Mass MoCA to host concerts, like the one the band Cake will play today. These additional draws have further enabled the museum to attract customers, provide jobs and bring people downtown to dine in restaurants and buy from retailers.
Since 1989, when a Mass MoCA warehouse ball sold 800 tickets at $50 piece, a strong fundraising component has made the museum a model public-private enterprise. Private money from a variety of sources has joined with government funding to fund an evolving Mass MoCA over the years, and the $65.4 million Building 6 project is being financed with $25.4 million in state money and $40 million in private donations.
Building 6 will enable high-profile artists like Laurie Anderson, Jenny Holzer and Robert Rauschenborg to station their works — substantial in both size and imagination — for the long term. The expansion has the additional benefit of uniting the mammoth complex with a walking path that can be followed without covering any of the same ground twice. Artistically, aesthetically and economically, today's opening of Building 6 enables Mass MoCA to bring the property and its buildings together in a way that hasn't been seen since Sprague Electric went out of business.
Today, we join in celebrating the vision and the tenacity of leaders at Mass MoCA and we look forward to seeing the next steps in its evolution. Take a trip to see what it's become; take a trip to another world stage for the arts in the Berkshires.
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“From idea to reality: Mass MoCA: A timeline”
By Jennifer Huberdeau, jhuberdeau@berkshireeagle.com – The Berkshire Eagle, May 28, 2017
NORTH ADAMS — Located at the convergence point of the north and south branches of the Hoosic River, activity on the 16-acre site of Mass MoCA has long mirrored the economic development of the last 200 years.
Prior to the Revolutionary War, the site was home to a grist mill and a saw mill. Under the ownership of Jeremiah Colegrove, the site included an oil mill, a clothing works and a carding house. The first cotton mill, the Windsor Print Works, was located on Marshall Street in 1813. Also calling the site home were wagon- and sleigh-makers; the headquarters for the Johnson Grays, a Civil War unit out of North Adams; and the North Adams Ironworks, which later forged armor plates for the Civil War ship, the Monitor.
In 1860, the Arnold brothers purchased a portion of the site and build the Arnold Print Works. The original print works burned in December 1871, but the brothers rebuilt. In 1874, Albert C. Houghton, later the city’s first mayor, purchased the print works. The print works remained in operation until 1943. At that time, Sprague Electric purchased the Marshall Street complex and moved the majority of its operations there. By 1966, Sprague was the city’s largest employer with 4,137 jobs. In 1981, Sprague Electric was sold to the Penn Central Corp. In 1985, Sprague Electric was renamed the American Annuity Group. That same year, after 43 years of operation in the city, Sprague closed the Marshall Street plant.
Here is a timeline of events that led to the creation of Mass MoCA and highlights of its subsequent years of operation.
November 1985: Williams College Museum of Art Director Thomas Krens conceives the idea for what will become Mass MoCA while visiting Germany.
February 1986: Krens meets with North Adams Mayor John Barrett III and proposes turning a vacant industrial building in the city into a showcase for collections of contemporary and minimalist art. The initial proposal looks at the Windsor Mill and a former textile mill, now the Eclipse Mill artists lofts, as viable candidates for the future museum.
Krens and Barrett look at the former Sprague Electric Co. as a possible exhibition site.
May 5, 1987: North Adams and Williams College announce they will seek $35 million from the state’s Civic and Convention Center program to renovate the 28-building Sprague Electric Co. complex into a 435,000-square-foot contemporary art museum, with a hotel, restaurant, art book warehouse, and stores. The $35 million sought is half the projected cost of the $72 million
Nov. 5, 1987: North Adams City Council backs plans for Mass MoCA; 11,000-signature local petition sent to Statehouse.
Jan. 5, 1988: Convention Center funding bill dies in the Legislature.
Jan. 12, 1988: Gov. Michael S. Dukakis submits Mass MoCA as separate state funding proposal.
January 14, 1988: Thomas Krens is named director of the Guggenheim Foundation.
March 14, 1988: The Legislature issues its approval of a $35 million bond issue for the museum. Gov. Dukakis signs the bill eight days later. Projected opening of the museum is 1991.
May 25, 1988: Mass MoCA Cultural Commission appointed by Mayor Barrett and North Adams City Council. Krens is name chairman of the commission.
June 26, 1988: Convention center portion of plan dropped.
Aug. 2, 1988: The Mass MoCA Cultural Commission approves the use of $1.7 million in state for a feasibility study. Joseph C. Thompson, Krens' colleague at the Williams College Museum of Art, is named founding director of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.
Oct. 18, 1988: Mass MoCA design team is named: Skidmore Owens & Merrill, Frank O. Gehry Associates and Venturi Scott Rauch. Sum of $725,000 allocated out of $1.7 million feasibility budget for design services.
Feb. 11, 1989: Mass MoCA warehouse ball a sellout; 800 tickets sold at $50 each, with 500 turned away.
April 26, 1989: Mass MoCA planners reported to be rethinking strategy — using state funds to build museum first, then attract developers.
Oct. 3, 1989: Preliminary feasibility study scales down museum and commercial space by half; cuts retail space from 15 to eight spots, hotel concept changed to condominiums.
June 1990: MoCA planning reported behind schedule. State Inspector General Joseph R. Barreal says North Adams will have to put up $10.7 million share of financing and cover deficit if attendance falls below projections. Museum now expected to open in summer of 1993.
Dec. 9, 1990: Krens resigns from Mass MoCA Cultural Commission. Modified feasibility study scales back plans to a first phase of five buildings: 220,00 square feet and $46 million budget. Commercial development, hotel/condos, art book warehouse, and high-tech museum concepts dropped.
Dec. 17, 1990: State Division of Capital Planning and Operations withholds approval of MoCA feasibility study because of uncertainty project can attract 30 percent private funding.
Dec. 28, 1990: Dukakis signs amendment to feasibility study agreement, allocating $680,000 for MoCA planning after he leaves office. State funding conditional on successful fundraising and securing of a museum operator, art collection.
Jan. 14, 1991: MoCA 500 Fund Committee organizes to raise $500,000 in Berkshires over six months as part of 3-year campaign to raise $3 million regionally and $9.1 million nationally to finance endowment and capital construction.
Jan. 31, 1991: Amid $1 billion state deficit, Gov. William Weld freezes MoCA funds. State refuses to release $688,000. Barrett threatens to sue.
June 10, 1991: MoCA fund drive tops $1 million.
July 31, 1991: Gov. Weld says he wants more private, less public funding for MoCA before release of $688,000 in planning funds.
Oct. 17, 1991: Gov. Weld, Barrett sign agreement releasing $688,000 in planning funds.
March 6, 1992: MoCA planners announce search for museum operator.
May 1, 1992: Three museums — Guggenheim, Boston Institute of Contemporary Art and Art Gallery Toronto — express interest in MoCA operation.
Dec. 12, 1992: Barrett reports nearly 50 percent of $12 million raised but there is no museum management agreement yet.
Dec. 31, 1992: Gov. Weld grants MoCA a seven-month extension. Planners say they have firm commitments of $4.1 million. Barrett advocates phased approach of one building a year over five years.
May 17, 1993: Barrett says fund drive still at $4.5 million mark. Says he will not seek further extension. Appears the project will die.
Dec. 2, 1993: Mass MoCA plan springs back to life. Thompson and Sam Miller, director of Jacob’s Pillow, announce several cultural venues will collaborate with Mass MoCA. Thompson re-envisions the museum to include the performing arts and sections of space for commercial use.
Dec. 31, 1993: Gov. Weld officially supports Phase 1 of Mass MoCA.
May 1994: Gov. Weld officially releases first funds for Mass MoCA construction.
Sept. 8, 1994: Mass MoCA signs lease agreement with first tenant, computer animation company Kleiser-Walczak Construction Company.
April 24, 1995: State approves Mass MoCA bill. Bruner/Cott & Associates submit final plans for the museum complex. The project is certified and approved by the state, and $18 million is released to the project.
1996: The inaugural project, "Desire," an exhibition of music, photography and large-scale installation pieces by David Byrne of the Talking Heads opens.
1997: The Clark and Mass MoCA organize the conference, "Reimagining Museums for New Art," on the changing role of contemporary art museums.
1998: The Clark sponsored "EarMarks," one of the largest installations of site-specific sound art on the East Coast. Organized by Mass MoCA Director Joseph Thompson, "EarMarks" was located in seven Berkshire County sites, including at the Clark.
May 30, 1999: Mass MoCA opens with 200,000 square feet of space open to the public. It is the largest center of contemporary visual and performing art in the United States.
1999: KidSpace, a collaboration with The Clark and the Williams College of Art, opens. The Clark also sponsors "Tree Logic," the upside-down tree installation in MoCA’s courtyard.
2004: Mass MoCA celebrates its fifth anniversary.
October 2006: Mass MoCA announces a $6 million, privately funded project to renovate 27,000 square feet in Building 7. The new galleries, designed by Bruner/Cott, will house a retrospective of about 50 large "Wall Drawings" by conceptual artist Sol LeWitt. The project is a collaboration with the Yale University Art Gallery.
Dec. 16, 2006: “Training Ground for Democracy,” a commissioned piece by artist Christoph Büchel fails to open. The museum has spent $250,000 on the piece.
March 29, 2007: Mass MoCA confirms Christoph Büchel has not worked on the exhibit since December. Büchel charges, in a Globe article, that Mass MoCA violated verbal and contractual agreements that stipulated no one was to enter the exhibit prior to its completion.
April 11, 2007: Museum officials announce that $25 million of a $37 million “Permanence Fund” has already be raised. This is the first time the museum will have an endowment fund.
May 22, 2007: Mass MocA takes Büchel to court: seeks declaratory ruling from U.S. District Court in Springfield to allow the abandoned materials and partial constructions to be opened to public view.
Sept. 21, 2007: US. District Court Second Circuit rules that Mass MoCA can open “Training Day” to the public.
Sept. 26, 2007: Mass MoCA announces it will scrap Büchel’s “Training Day” despite a ruling allowing it to be opened to the public. Instead, it reopens Gallery 5 with a Jenny Holzer exhibit.
April 2008: Teams of Sol LeWitt’s former assistants and newly hired apprentices arrive at Mass MoCA to prepare 105 “concept” pieces for display.
Nov. 16, 2008: Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective opens. The exhibit is slated to be on view until 2033.
Jan. 29, 2010: A federal appellate court rules Büchel’s claims of copyright infringement against Mass MoCA bear merit and should be heard by a federal jury. The issue is returned to the U.S. District Court in Springfield. However, the court also upholds four rulings by the district court, reaffirming that Mass MoCA did not violate Büchel’s rights under the Visual Artist Rights Act of 1990.
June 16, 2010: Mass MoCA acquires a large field near the complex and names it “Joe’s Field.”
Aug. 13 -15, 2010: Wilco hosts the first Solid Sound Festival at Mass MoCA at Joe’s Field.
December 2010: A settlement between Mass MoCA and Büchel ends the long-standing feud between artist and museum. The settlement dismissed all claims and allowed Büchel to remove some of his work from the museum.
April 26, 2011: Mass MoCA officials announce plans for the renovation of Building 6 and the creation of 40,000 square feet of gallery space on the foundation of Building 16. The space will eventually host the museum’s second permanent temporary exhibit of Anselm Kiefer’s work.
June 23-25, 2011: Solid Sound Festival returns for a second year. Wilco announces the festival will return in 2013.
Sept. 24-25, 2011: FreshGrass: A Festival of Bluegrass and Art debuts at Mass MoCA.
Oct. 3, 2013: Anslem Kiefer exhibit opens
March 6, 2014: Mass MoCA officials announce a $25.4 million state grant that when combined with $40 million in private donations will allow the museum to begin the $65.4 million renovation of Building 6, which nearly doubles the size of the museum’s gallery space.
May 28, 2017: Mass MoCA’s third and final phase, the opening of Building 6, is realized.
Sources:
Berkshire Eagle archives; “Mill Town, Factory Town, Cultural Economic Engine: North Adams in Context,” a 2006 report by C3D (https://web.williams.edu/Economics/ArtsEcon/library/pdfs/NA%20History%20and%20Ethnography%2012006.pdf); Mass MoCA, http://massmoca.org/about/history; Downside Up The Movie website, http://www.downsideupthemovie.org/interact/timeline2.htm; North Adams Historical Society.
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John Stirratt of WILCO performs earlier this month at the New Orleans Jazz And Heritage Festival. Photo by Amy Harris, Invision, AP.
John Stirratt: “Why I fell in love with North Adams”
By John Stirratt, Op-Ed, The Berkshire Eagle, May 26, 2017
When I first played North Adams with Wilco — during our inaugural 2010 edition of the Solid Sound Festival — I was taken with the place: micro-urban, but tucked in the Berkshires mountains; raw, but boasting amazing features, like the tallest and most literary-rich mountain in Massachusetts, Mount Greylock; and a fantastic museum of cutting edge art, Mass MoCA, with whom we team up to host Solid Sound.
That festival was so much fun that Wilco has come back five times since, counting the upcoming 2017 edition, plus another benefit concert for Mass MoCA.
And my family has fallen in love with the place. So much so, that we've recently joined in the redevelopment of the old Redwood Motel — a quintessential but down-at-the-heels moto-lodge on Route 2 between North Adams and Williamstown — into Tourists, a new outdoor retreat and lodge on the banks of the Hoosic River in the West End of North Adams.
So, I've gotten to know North Adams a bit. And besides the obvious "must-sees" like Mass MoCA and Marble Quarry, here is my list of favorites:
Bright Ideas Brewing: Just inside the granite gates of Mass MoCA campus off Marshall Street, this is the perfect place for a break between art shows or after a performance. The beautiful interior has a great continuity with the museum — but with beer! — and in its first year has already become a hangout for both North Adams residents, Mass MoCA visitors, and artists.
Jarvis Rockwell Gallery: Yes, his name is iconic in the Berkshires and America (he's Norman's son), but Jarvis Rockwell has created his own completely individual and unique universe in a storefront gallery on Main Street that showcases his extensive miniature installations, fashioned from his collection of thousands of toy figures, as well as his drawings. Definitely a must see downtown.
Cascades hike: At the end of Marion Avenue near the cemetery, about a mile west on Route 2, there is one of the most delightful, beautiful hikes you can imagine, ending at a surprisingly large waterfall. And it's a short hike! In a region with lots of world-class hikes, this one is convenient to downtown, and kid-friendly.
Pedrin's Dairy Bar: This old-school outdoor fried clam, ice cream and picnic table lunch spot is great for kids, and the onion rings are first rate. It's on Route 8 south toward Adams.
New sound art sculpture: Klass Huber and Andrew Schrock of the New Orleans collaborative Airlift have created an amazing, playable art sculpture downtown at the junction of Main and State streets, just under the Route 2 overpass. A humming, rotating metal tower that looks like a tree house gone amok, this is wonderful work of art that connects downtown with the Mass MoCA campus, and it's excellent collection of sound art installations, which is almost a museum within a museum.
Later in the summer, we'll be adding several more Airlift works of "musical architecture" at Tourists. We're looking forward to taking them for a spin. Drop in.
John Stirratt plays bass guitar in Wilco.
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“Tom Bernard first candidate to run for North Adams mayor”
By Adam Shanks, ashanks@berkshireeagle.com – The Berkshire Eagle, June 5, 2017
NORTH ADAMS — The city has its first candidate for mayor.
Tom Bernard announced his candidacy for mayor in the November election on Monday afternoon, campaigning for improved education and infrastructure as a catalyst for a brighter future in North Adams.
Bernard worked at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts before moving to Smith College, where he continues to work as the director of special projects.
A city native and graduate of Drury High High School and Williams College, Bernard returned to the Berkshires in 2004 to work as a development officer at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.
"Over the past 10 or 15 years I have put together a resume that lines up really nicely with what the next mayor needs to know and needs to be able to do," he said.
Bernard joined MCLA as director of corporate, foundation and government relations. Between 2009 and 2014, he worked as executive assistant to then-MCLA President Mary K. Grant. He then moved into administration and finance, where he had a hand in the school's budget.
The job included "seeing how you manage scarce resources, which is something that they city has a challenge with," Bernard said.
"And trying to find those spaces on the margins where you can have free cash to innovate, to pilot, to move things forward."
Bernard, a registered Democrat, has previously served stints on the boards of the North Adams Chamber of Commerce, the Mohawk Trail Association, and the Northern Berkshire Community Coalition.
Mayor Richard Alcombright announced last week that he would not seek a fifth term in office in the upcoming election, making this year's race the first in more than 30 years to not feature the incumbent.
Bernard believes the new blood will allow for a different sort of election in 2017.
"What I hope is that we have — whoever is in the race — a set of conversations that are about vision and challenge and opportunity, and what we need to do to move the city forward," Bernard said.
Bernard said he share's Alcombright's optimism about the city's future.
"We've got some good momentum," Bernard said.
Former Mayor John Barrett III, who served as mayor for 26 years, said he had not decided whether or not he would run when reached by The Eagle on Monday. Barrett was ousted by Alcombright in 2009 and lost in a rematch in 2015.
Bernard's announcement was quickly met with praise from some city councilors, including Benjamin Lamb, Keith Bona and Kate Merrigan.
"I've had the pleasure of knowing Tom Bernard for almost 15 years. He's an incredibly hard working and dedicated citizen in this community, and has a really great breadth of experience as an administrator.," City Council President Benjamin Lamb wrote on Facebook.
But Bernard noted that the two have different backgrounds — Alcombright's being in community banking — that might result in Bernard having a slightly more "pragmatic" approach.
For example, the next mayor will have to analyze the choices when it comes to education, particularly regionalization.
"As we look at the collaborative opportunities, we also have to preserve what is unique about the education system in North Adams," Bernard said, noting as an example the arts programs in North Adams Public Schools.
Bernard wants to see Drury High School become a Level 2 school.
"Build on strengths, but also recognize that on a foundational level there's room to strengthen and work within the system to make improvements," he said, adding that McCann Tech is a premier vocational program.
Bernard said he focuses on education as a catalyst for economic development and a way to increase jobs, either by growing companies here or encouraging investment from outside the community.
"That brings in additional people who are homeowners and taxpayers, who send their kids to schools, so you're building the population," Bernard said.
The candidate also emphasizes the importance of addressing the city's infrastructure needs and public health.
"Continue to address the opioid crisis. I am someone who looks at that, first of all, as a treatment issue," Bernard said, though he added the dealers who import drugs into the city need to be addressed from a public safety perspective.
Bernard said he hopes there are conversations in the coming months about bringing different groups within the community: "one city working toward a common vision."
"How do we knit together these different identities in the city as a hub of art and culture and tourism and innovation — a place where education happens and a place that has deep roots and a strong sense of pride."
As mayor, Bernard said he would want to be "visible and accessible."
"I think that the work that current mayor did to increase transparency is exactly right, and [I would] continue that and expand it," Bernard said.
Bernard lives in North Adams with his wife, Jennifer and daughter Alexandra.
Nomination papers are due on Aug. 7 and the city election is scheduled for Nov. 7. If more than two candidates enter the race, a preliminary election will be held on Sept. 19.
Reach staff writer Adam Shanks at 413-496-6376 or @EagleAdamShanks on Twitter.
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Our Opinion: “Gailanne Cariddi”
The Berkshire Eagle, Editorial, June 18, 2017
Gailanne Cariddi served North Adams as a businesswoman, city councilor and state representative of the 1st Berkshire District, which also put eight other towns within her purview. Her accomplishments were accompanied by a quiet dignity that was her trademark until her death Saturday at the age of 63.
State Representative William "Smitty" Pignatelli, a Lenox Democrat who described Ms. Cariddi to The Eagle as a "dear, dear friend" of 35 years (Eagle, June 18), said the North Adams Democrat had been quietly battling cancer for more than a year. That this fight was not public knowledge was typical of Ms. Cariddi, a private person in a profession given to high-profile personalities. State Senator Adam Hinds, a Pittsfield Democrat, succinctly summed up her approach to public service as: "Kindness, humility, don't seek the limelight and focus on helping those around you."
The North Adams native's roots in the city's business community go back to the Cariddi Sales Company founded by her father, James Cariddi. Former Mayor John Barrett III recalls that her tenure on the City Council, which included several terms as Council president, was marked by her diligent, largely behind the scenes work on projects that moved the city forward, as well her kindness to others. An advocate of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, she was instrumental in securing the $25 million state grant critical to Building 6 project at MoCA.
Mr. Barrett told The Eagle he thought Ms. Cariddi would succeed him at some point, but in 2010, a vacancy in the 1st Berkshire District prompted her to run for a spot on Beacon Hill. She became the first woman elected to that seat and was in the midst of her fourth term.
Her appointment this term as House chair of the Joint Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture testified to her keen interest in important issues that not only affected her district, which includes Adams, Cheshire, Clarksburg, Florida, Hancock, Lanesborough and New Ashford along with North Adams, but affected all of Berkshire Couny. The same can be said of her other areas of keen interest and expertise, such as protecting small business, boosting education and assuring affordable health care. Given her respect for personal privacy it is not surprising that she has been in the middle of the ongoing fight in Massachusetts to relieve residents of the burden of increasing spam phone calls.
Representative Cariddi's quiet dignity, intellect and hard work were the common themes consistently brought up by Berkshire elected officials, from those mentioned to Pittsfield Mayor Linda Tyer, North Adams Mayor Richard Alcombright, and state Representatives Paul Mark and Trivia Farley-Bouvier, as well as House Speaker Robert DeLeo. The loss of Gailanne Cariddi is a painful one for her district and the Berkshries, but she leaves behind a solid legacy and a template for how to serve in government with grace and dignity.
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Stephanie Bosley
Photo provided by Stephanie Bosley
“Another Bosley running for Statehouse seat”
By Adam Shanks, ashanks@berkshireeagle.com – The Berkshire Eagle, July 5, 2017
NORTH ADAMS — The race to fill former state Rep. Gailanne Cariddi's seat has begun.
Stephanie Bosley on Wednesday announced her candidacy for the 1st Berkshire District, which once was held by her father, former Rep. Daniel Bosley.
"I got to listen to the policies and the politics that were happening while my father was in the Statehouse," Bosley said. The result, she said, was she saw "how you can positively impact people's lives with the policies that you're helping to create in Boston."
Cariddi, a Democrat who lived in North Adams, died of cancer on June 17 at the age of 63.
A special election will be held to determine who will fill Cariddi's seat for the remainder of her term, which was set to expire on Jan. 19, 2019.
The primary for the special election will be held on Oct. 10, Secretary of the Commonwealth William F. Galvin announced last month. The special election will be held on Nov. 7, which is already a scheduled election day.
Daniel Bosley served as the 1st Berkshire District's representative for 24 years.
Stephanie Bosley, 29, a Democrat, has a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a master's degree in public affairs from the McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies at the University of Massachusetts at Boston.
She is currently on a leave of absence from her position as a client relations associate for 1Berkshire, a regional economic development agency based in Pittsfield.
There, her role was to reach out to businesses "so that they understood the programs and services that were available to them and help them network with each other."
"I really learned about the economic development needs of the area," Bosley said.
Among those needs is transportation, she added.
"With an economy that's reliant on tourism and culture, we need to find ways to improve transportation," Bosley said.
Prior to working with 1Berkshire, Bosley has worked in the economic development office in the town of Adams. She also has experience with the Northern Berkshire Community Coalition, Soldier On and the American Cancer Society.
Bosley has long known she wanted to run for the 1st Berkshire seat at some point.
"Recently it's become more clear to me that this is a good opportunity for me now with the experience and education I have," she said.
However, she wishes it was under different circumstances that she was seeking the seat.
"Losing [Cariddi] was definitely heartbreaking," said Bosley, who said she had known Cariddi for a long time and often talked politics with her whenever their paths crossed. "'I had always envisioned that when I ran she would be a mentor."
And does she have the endorsement of her father?
"Absolutely," said Daniel Bosley when reached by The Eagle on Wednesday.
Stephanie Bosley was born when Daniel Bosley was in office, and she was in her 20s by the time her father left the seat.
Despite the political lineage, "she's got her own ideas about different issues," Daniel Bosley said.
"She's much more qualified than I was," he added.
Bosley has launched a campaign website, bosleyforstaterep.com.
Reach staff writer Adam Shanks at ashanks@berkshireeagle.com or @EagleAdamShanks on Twitter
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Letter: “Blackmer would be a dedicated state rep.”
The Berkshire Eagle, July 13, 2017
To the editor:
In 2012 I was involved with running the coordinated campaigns of Sen. Elizabeth Warren, President Barack Obama and the new-to-the-Berkshires Rep. Richard Neal for Northern Berkshire County. When Congressman Neal showed up at our headquarters on Ashland Street in North Adams, one of the first people to greet him was City Councilor Lisa Blackmer. After a quick pleasantry, Lisa skillfully went to work and listed off a number of specific projects that North Adams could use federal help with. I was both impressed and floored by her chutzpah with a sitting member of Congress. That's the kind of gutsy, in the trenches, public servant she is.
I am happy to see a respectable field of contenders lining up for the 1st Berkshire District special election, but I've already made my mind up. Over the past decade, there is nobody who has delved further into the policies and practices of local governments than Lisa Blackmer. As a city councilor, town administrator and town treasurer, her dedication did not go unnoticed by others around the state, including the Massachusetts Municipal Association, where she eventually presided over the board.
In these days when Berkshire County and Massachusetts face serious challenges, from the current opioid crisis to Gov. Baker's slashed budget proposals to President Trump's attempts to strip health insurance from millions of Americans, we need someone representing us on Beacon Hill who will delve deep into the policies that affect us and our families. We need someone who is not afraid to advocate and fight for our schools, our healthcare needs, our roads, our jobs and our people. We need someone diligent, compassionate and consistent. That person is Lisa.
If you don't actually know Lisa, you should. She shows up, does her homework as well as the unglamorous behind-the-scenes work of policy crafting. She has a track record of making things happen. Please considering giving her your vote for state representative from the 1st Berkshire District.
Greg Roach,
North Adams
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Lisa Blackmer: “Representative candidate makes her case”
By Lisa Blackmer, Op-Ed, The Berkshire Eagle, August 7, 2017
NORTH ADAMS — I have kicked off my campaign for state representative. I am running to make sure those who reside in the 1st Berkshire District have the opportunities they need to prosper in their lives, their work and raising their families.
A Berkshire native, I have spent the last 30 years in the 1st Berkshire District and my commitment to its future success is evident both in my personal and professional life. My first priority will be to advocate and push through the legislation that my friend and colleague Gail Cariddi proposed on behalf of those in our district.
I know firsthand the impact that government can have. There are good programs available to help folks in need. My dad got hurt on the job, delivering milk for Fairdale Farms. Because of workers' compensation and the G.I. bill, he was able to go to college as an adult with a wife and three daughters.
My mom was a stay-at-home mom and we lived in a rural community where the quarries had closed and jobs were limited. We qualified for an earlier incarnation of food stamps and Medicaid. Later, my sisters attended Head Start.
Representing all constituents
Though we had limited resources, my family still helped others. Taking care of people and creating an environment where we all can succeed is something that is deeply ingrained in me. A state representative must understand the entire community she represents, from the most vulnerable to the most powerful — all are her constituents. "There, but for the grace of God go I," is never far from my mind.
I will continue Gail's commitments, to the economy, to schools, to the environment — but most importantly I will continue her work for you, the people of Northern Berkshire County.
Our schools are funded by an outdated and inadequate formula that does not take into consideration the challenges of small cities, towns and rural areas. I will fight to change how the foundation budget is funded so that every child in our district and across the state has a chance to make it and succeed.
We can't let the political right brand us as tax-and-spend Democrats. There are logical ways to save the taxpayers money without harming local services, including exploring options for regionalization and cooperation. Locally, we have a regional veterans agent and an animal control officer. Additionally, Gail proposed regional disability commissions, which I fully support.
Our residents want to work, but jobs of today require different skills. I want to help connect those residents to the jobs and skills they need. I will push for more effective workforce development programs to help our residents and our businesses be more competitive in the 21st century economy. Schools like McCann Tech, BCC and MCLA can help us get there and not only help today's employers, but create and attract the employers of tomorrow.
Jobs in tourism, retail, medicine and public safety are often 24/7. Our transportation system is not. What good is a great workforce if we can't get to our jobs? We must continue as a regional delegation to help the BRTA provide more service when people actually need it.
I will join the effort to bring better passenger train service to Berkshire County to make Boston and New York easy and affordable trips for those of us who travel for both work and fun. As someone who regularly drives to Boston for morning meetings, I share your frustration with east-bound traffic delays. You can get there from here, but it shouldn't be such a challenge.
Our hill towns and rural areas are struggling with low-speed or no Internet that prevents any modern employer from setting up shop and hurts the current residents, especially school kids at home. Even North Adams and parts of Williamstown don't have access to modern fiber-optic networks that are crucial in today's economy. Sharing information in North County should be as fast as it is in Boston and the suburbs.
Challenges and assets
Northern Berkshire has many challenges, but we also have many assets. Our educational and cultural institutions are economic drivers and innovators. They enhance our quality of life and help us leverage other assets. Our tourism market is more than visual and performing arts. We also have recreational venues and the great outdoors. There are efforts throughout the region, both public and private, for sustainable energy projects. We have been rehabilitating old properties with new investments. Projects like the Greylock, Excelsior/Norad and Windsor mills are examples of what we can accomplish with our time, treasure and talent.
Our towns need every last penny they can get from the state. Most of the tax bases in Northern Berkshire County are struggling to keep up with the needs of their residents. I will make sure that everything we are due from Beacon Hill comes home.
On top of my many years of public service in North Adams, Sandisfield and elsewhere, I have tirelessly advocated for Berkshire County through my work with the Massachusetts Municipal Association (MMA). I have made representing our area and its needs in Boston a priority for the last six years. In my capacity as the Western Massachusetts representative to the MMA, and previously as its president, I have been instrumental in convincing the Legislature and governor's office to release vital resources to our area, including the Winter Recovery Assistance Program, (aka the "pothole money"), broadband funding, and increases in local aid.
I want to continue those efforts and take the fight for North County to the Statehouse. As a city councilor, town administrator, and treasurer/collector, I have seen the extensive challenges facing our communities and schools. I know what the district needs to grow the economy, get better access to health care, and provide better transportation. I look forward to serving and working to create opportunities for all residents of Northern Berkshire.
To reach Lisa Blackmer, email lisablackmerforrep@gmail.com or visit lisablackmer.com for more information or to volunteer.
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“Blackmer lays out vision in state rep. candidacy"
By Adam Shanks, ashanks@berkshireeagle.com – The Berkshire Eagle, August 27, 2017
NORTH ADAMS — Lisa Blackmer unveiled her vision for the cities and towns of the Northern Berkshires on Wednesday.
The State Rep. candidate released a list of priorities she would pursue if elected to represent the 1st Berkshire District in November.
Blackmer, a North Adams city councilor and former president of the Massachusetts Municipal Association, called for increased unrestricted general government aid to towns and cities and an end to unfunded state mandates.
"Adequate funding for municipal and education aid is necessary in order for cities and towns to provide the basic local and school services that the residents of the 1st Berkshire District deserve and expect," Blackmer wrote.
Blackmer would also advocate for state payments in lieu of taxes on its land in cities and towns and improved funding for roads and bridges.
The special election to replace former State Rep. Gailanne Cariddi, who died in June, will be Nov. 7.
If necessary, a primary will be held on Oct. 10. Candidate nomination papers are due to election officials on Sept. 5.
Blackmer's full plan can be read at her campaign website, lisablackmer.com.
Reach staff writer Adam Shanks at 413-496-6376 or @EagleAdamShanks on Twitter
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Letter: “The kind of mayor North Adams needs”
The Berkshire Eagle, July 13, 2017
To the editor:
The people of North Adams need a mayor who will work for the city as follows:
Keep taxes down. Cater to the poor. Make it more affordable for seniors to keep their homes and not lose them because the taxes and water bill keep going up. Avoid raising taxes and don't extend projects when they go over budget. Don't keep giving raises to teachers, police, firefighters and top City Hall employees so as to keep getting reelected.
Start a youth council to show respect for youth. Stop the speeding on the Curran Highway, Eagle Street, Franklin Street and State Road. Repair the roads properly. Provide more programs for seniors. The mayor and City Council should work as a team and get out on the streets to see what is going on.
John Jackson,
North Adams
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John Barrett III
“John Barrett III sets sights on 1st Berkshire District seat”
By Adam Shanks, ashanks@berkshireeagle.com – The Berkshire Eagle, July 22, 2017
NORTH ADAMS — John Barrett III isn't ready to retire from politics: He's launching a campaign to represent the 1st Berkshire District in the state House of Representatives.
"I'm confident that I can provide the leadership, but most importantly the voice that's needed to carry on the work" that the late Rep. Gailanne Cariddi started, said the former North Adams mayor.
Barrett, 70, joins three other Democratic candidates in the race to fill the seat formerly held by Cariddi, who died of cancer in June.
At one time the longest-serving mayor in Massachusetts with 13 consecutive two-year terms, Barrett is credited for drawing North Adams out of the doldrums of the post-Sprague Electric era, a major employer that closed soon after he was first elected in 1983.
Barrett would later become an early supporter of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, which took root in the Sprague campus.
After leaving the corner office in 2010 following a loss to North Adams' current mayor, Dick Alcombright, Barrett went to work as the executive director of the BerkshireWorks workforce development program in Pittsfield, where he spent three years. He was elected to a two-year term on the City Council in 2011 and lost a bid for mayor in 2015.
Barrett serves presently on the board of trustees at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts and teaches a winter study course on politics as an adjunct professor at Williams College.
Barrett said he began to consider a run for the seat in the weeks after Cariddi's death.
"I felt as though it would be an opportunity for me to be of service to the Northern Berkshire area and the 1st Berkshire District, mainly because of the experience that I've gained over the years in not only politics but also in government service," Barrett said.
The 1st Berkshire District needs a representative that is prepared to step in and knows stakeholders on both sides of the aisle, he said.
If elected, Barrett said he would focus on adjusting the Chapter 70 education funding formula, which he argues does not account for communities' relative wealth and disproportionately harms rural communities like those in the Northern Berkshires.
"It's going to continue to get far worse than what I had first assumed," Barrett said, adding that programs have been cut while communities and taxpayers pay a larger share of educational costs.
If elected, Barrett said he would put together a coalition to address the education funding formula. Citing his experience at BerkshireWorks, Barrett said he would champion workforce development, saying that the way it has been addressed has been "pass ."
"We have to develop new ways, new programs, to make sure that we're training our employees," Barrett said.
Improvements in education funding and workforce training will help spur economic development, said Barrett. He acknowledged the benefits of a creative economy but warned of becoming a one-industry region.
The other candidates in the Democratic race are Stephanie Bosley, a 1Berkshire employee; Lisa Blackmer, a North Adams city councilor and former president of the Massachusetts Municipal Association; and Kevin Towle, a legislative aide to Cariddi.
The 1st Berkshire District includes the towns of Adams, Cheshire, Clarksburg, Florida, Hancock, Lanesborough, New Ashford, Williamstown and the city of North Adams.
A primary is scheduled for Oct. 10. The general election is Nov. 7.
Reach staff writer Adam Shanks at 413-496-6376 or @EagleAdamShanks on Twitter.
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July 22, 2017
In 2014, former North Adams Mayor John Barrett III endorsed Republican candidate for Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker over Berkshire County native Martha Coakley.
Governor Charlie Baker has done nothing but disservices to Western Massachusetts. He can't even balance the state government budget! The state's bond rating has been downgraded. Massachusetts is the #1 per capita debtor state in the nation. Over 20 years ago, Baker oversaw billions of dollars in cost overruns in the "Big Dig" project.
Now, John Barrett III is running as a Democrat candidate for Northern Berkshire State Representative! If he wins the special election, Barrett will be a "yes man" rubber stamp for the failed Baker administration!
- Jonathan Melle
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July 25, 2017
John Barrett III's phone call to Brian Bedard to fire a taxpaying citizen, Jeffrey Ferrin, is, as blogger Dan Valenti calls it, "Exhibit A", in what is the biggest flaw in Pittsfield politics, or North Adam politics!
If you are a taxpaying citizen, and you exercise your freedom of speech against a local powerbroker in Pittsfield, you will get canned from your job in a New York minute. Pittsfield/N.A. politicians retaliate against the very people who pay their salaries and other benefits. If you don't fall in line, you get blacklisted!
That is no different than governments such as China or other Authoritarian regimes where the politicians control the people instead of the people participating in their government!
I know it goes on in other parts of our otherwise free country, but Pittsfield politics is the NADIR when it comes to a top-down, one political party, suppression of taxpaying citizen participation, and low voter turnout numbers!
- Jonathan Melle
*
I read the comments section of the iBerkshires’ news article about former N.A. Mayor John Barrett III’s candidacy for State Representative. Jeffrey Ferrin of Pittsfield posted anti-Barrett comments on social media. Barrett called Ferrin’s boss, Brian Bedard, to have Ferrin fired from his job. Ferrin called Barrett out as a “Bully” for getting Ferrin canned. Ferrin called Barrett a “Coward” for not calling Ferrin himself. Ferrin pointed out that someone like himself does not have freedom of speech in Berkshire County. If you speak out against one of the local powerbrokers, you get the shaft.
http://www.iberkshires.com/story/55196/Former-North-Adams-Mayor-Barrett-Announces-Candidacy-for-House-Seat.html
- Jonathan Melle
P.S. I predict Jeffrey Ferrin’s comments will be taken down from the iBerkshires web-site very soon! So I am posting them, below.
Here are Jeffrey Ferrin’s comments:
After the events of the day after my last post, I had to think about how I was going to post this.
I would first off like to publically appologize to Brian Bedard for having posted my last comments about John Barrett at work not knowing that the post would go thru my Facebook and show up as a Sales Person working at Bedard Bros. Nor knowing that John Barrett was a coward and would call him.
Clearly freedom of speech is still very much frowned upon when you work in the Berkshires and everyone with power knows everyone with powers and nobody wants to upset the other. Especially if you are in business or support the very candidate or public figure in which ones opinions may be in oposition from those in power, which in this case is very apparent.
That being said, I will not appologize for my comments and all John Barrett did was prove me right about being a Bully. He made it a point today to instead of commenting on my statement or messaging me, he called Brian Bedard direct and had me fired from my job. That is the very bully I am talking about. Good for you John…I could care less about how many years he served as the Mayor of North Adams nor that he was the longest serving Mayor in Massachusetts. It does not mean that that tiger will change it’s stripes nor that he was or is in fact a good person. This is why I am and always have been very vocal about the politicians that are self serving and abusive with their powers towards others. Gary Johnson did the exact same thing when I posted a comment about him after his dealership contacted me about my personal experience with them.
This by no means will ever stop me nor discourage me from being truthful nor open about how I feel nor an opinion I may have as a free tax paying citizen who very much has the right to free speech without the intrusion of others.. If others are offended, then that is on them, not me. If employers feel they have to walk on egg shells because of employees having an opinion, then that to is on them and they should really balance their personal feelings from the business at hand and not the fact that those that were offended are friends who cry wolf because they did not like the comments. I did my job and did it well for someone who never sold cars before. I have no regrets for being who I am and sleep just fine at night.
So I say to John Barrett the BULLY. If you want to have words with me, please have the courage to talk to me direct. Not Brian Bedard. you could have argued I was a liar, misinformed, anything, but it is clear I struck a nerve and am being truthful and that is why you took the low road.
Here are more of Jeffrey Ferrin’s comments:
John would be the last canidate I would ever support in any election. After watching his sickening behavior in Pittsfield, when he was a so called “consultant” was appauling. He talked about things he knew nothing about regarding highway work, equipment maintnance let alone how to actually do the jobs he was supposed to be giving advise on. He threatened employees he had no power over and he ripped off the city financially by admittingly violating procurment laws before the City Council when he and Peter Bruneau were obtaining equipment without the knowledge of anyone but Bruce Collingwood. He was a bully and a limelighter. He cared only for himself and what glorification he could get from the media. I can remember very clearly one such press conference where he told me I had no right to be present at City Yard let alone ask him quesions about how he was obtaining equipment without a bid or approval. I had to remind him he was no longer in Kansas Dorothy and that I was one of those tax payers wasting good money on bad advise and behavior. He obruptley stopped the press conference and walked away. I had to remind him he was a so called waste of money consultant and did not have the powers to intimidate, fire, nor reprimand employees let alone make purchases with tax payer money. John does not know how to consult without feeling he also has to be in charge. But then again he and Jimmy Ruberto were two peas in a pod anyway.. I sure hope the good people of the district vote for anyone more suited to actually work with the people they serve. John works for himself and his own self rightious gains and glory and nothing more. He was a huge failure when his good buddy Jimmy once again gave him another job in Pittsfield at the Unemployment office. He royally screwed that up to. He really was out of his league and had zero experience there. Here is some advise John. Jimmy is no longer around to give you handout jobs, so stop losing all your money and get a working class job where you have to take orders from soemone else. You have milked tax payers long enough…Or better yet. Run off into obscurity and just retire and leave the work that has to be done to people who really do care about someone other than themselves.
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Letter: “Barrett a fighter for city, Western Mass.”
The Berkshire Eagle, August 4, 2017
To the editor:
I am so pleased that John Barrett III is running for state representative from the 1st Berkshire District. Look at what he's done for North Adams as mayor all those years. He also knows most of the people in the Statehouse.
Mr. Barrett will constantly remind Boston that Western Massachusetts doesn't end in Springfield. You may not like him, but he will fight for North Adams, as he has always done.
I'm proud to be voting for John Barrett and I hope you will also.
Ben Maslanka,
North Adams
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Candidates for the 1st Berkshire District: John Barrett III, Lisa Blackmer, Stephanie Bosley, Christine Canning and Kevin Towle. Photos by Gillian Jones — Berkshire Eagle.
“1st Berkshire State Rep. hopefuls gather to flex policy, positions at Adams forum”
By Adam Shanks, ashanks@berkshireeagle.com – The Berkshire Eagle, September 11, 2017
ADAMS — The five candidates for state representative laid out their platforms and offered a glimpse into their priorities on Monday during a public forum in Adams.
Though often echoing each other's goals — like adjusting the state funding mechanism for local schools — the candidates diverged in the nuance of how to achieve them.
Eschewing a typical debate format, event host ProAdams instead allotted each of the five 1st Berkshire District candidates 10 minutes to illustrate his or her platform.
"Our idea was just to let the candidates speak tonight," said David Bissaillon of ProAdams.
The host asked only that candidates touch on the topics of economic development, education and community growth.
"We were saddened with the passing of [state Rep. Gailanne] Cariddi, and this is an important position for us," Bissaillon "These are challenging times, but there are also a lot of good things going on."
In the Democratic primary, the contest will be between John Barrett III, Lisa Blackmer, Stephanie Bosley, and Kevin Towle. Christine Canning is uncontested on as a Republican.
The Democratic Primary is scheduled for Oct. 10 and the special election will be held on Nov. 7.
The winner will serve the final year of Cariddi's term.
The lone Republican candidate, Canning expressed a willingness to work on both sides of the aisle and to not be afraid to cross party lines.
She highlighted a professional background in education and her ability to secure grants and state funding.
Canning, who lost a state Senate election to Sen. Adam Hinds last year, carried over her 15-point economic development plan from that campaign.
She advocated for stronger job training programs and described herself as a "straight-shooter."
"It may not always make me popular, but it is what it is," Canning said.
Bosley did not shy from her family history — her father Daniel Bosley served as the district's representative for 24 years until 2011 — and the "many policy discussions at the dinner table" that came as a result of it.
But she also highlighted her years of experience professionally, including working for the Northern Berkshire Community Coalition and American Cancer Society.
Bosley advocated for creating a three-tiered state funding formula for local schools, with different formulas for urban, suburban, and rural districts — "so that we're not competing with urban education systems to receive funding," Bosley said.
She also advocated for increased funding for adult basic education, creation of a state-funded housing rehabilitation program, and increased access to high-speed broadband internet throughout the district.
Blackmer leaned on her years of experience as a North Adams City Councilor, past President of the Massachusetts Municipal Association, and as current treasurer and collector for the town of Buckland to illustrate her career.
"All of this experience has brought me to the conclusion that cities and towns are on the front line of providing services to our communities," Blackmer said.
Blackmer has voiced support of improved special education funding and regional transportation funding for school districts, which she believes could be paid for by the millionaires tax.
"Our schools should be as exceptional and as diverse as our community," Blackmer said.
Blackmer also supports a single-payer healthcare system and investment in high-speed rail infrastructure.
Kevin Towle spent nearly a year working as an aide to Cariddi prior to her death.
In that time, and in the months manning her office since then, Towle argued he has forged the connections and gained experience that make him a qualified candidate for the position.
Towle — who noted he has released a 12-page economic development plan — has advocated for free in-state tuition at state colleges for families earning less than $250,000, but said it's important to expand public education at all levels.
"Expanding public education provides an opportunity for all," Towle said.
Towle has also come out in support of single-payer healthcare, which he said is supported by economists. He also believes in the implementation of paid family leave.
John Barrett III served as the mayor of North Adams for 26 years and now sits on the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts' Board of Trustees.
"I've felt the area could benefit with the experience I've attained," Barrett said.
Barrett spent much of his time highlighting the Greylock Glen redevelopment project, and advocated for the continued funding of the project from the state. While it would not be a cure-all, the redevelopment plan in Adams would be a "catalyst" for growth, Barrett argued.
Barrett also castigated the state for its education funding formula, which he argued disproportionately harms districts like those in the Northern Berkshires.
"We have to do something about the educational system," Barrett said.
Barrett, who served nearly three years at the helm of BerkshireWorks, also advocated for improved job training and workforce development programs.
Reach staff writer Adam Shanks at 413-496-6376 or @EagleAdamShanks on Twitter
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Our Opinion: “Key election campaigns in North Berkshire”
The Berkshire Eagle, Editorial, October 11, 2017
The stage is now set for two North Berkshire election campaigns that will provide an opportunity to air out views on all the issues facing those communities — and most specifically the city of North Adams.
John Barrett III defeated three challengers in the 1st Berkshire District's special preliminary election Tuesday and will now face Republican Christine Canning on Nov. 7 for the right to complete the late Gailanne Cariddi's term in the State House. Mr. Barrett, who was at one time the longest-serving mayor in the state, lost his bid for a 14th term as mayor of North Adams in 2009 and was defeated by Mayor Richard Alcombright in his bid to return to office in 2015. While it may have seemed that Mr. Barrett's long political career was over, he proved two years later that he could still bring voters to the polls, handily winning North Adams and Adams in the nine-town district.
Stephanie Bosley, who decisively captured Williamstown, finished second and demonstrated that the newcomer has a political future. Like Ms. Bosley, Lisa Blackmer and Kevin Towle proved to be worthy candidates, and we hope all will stay involved in government and politics. North Berkshire, like all of Berkshire County, needs fresh ideas and perspectives.
The race between John Barrett and Christine Canning is sure to focus on jobs and the economy, a defining and complex subject in the district. Education funding is another critical issue, and we would like to see a thorough discussion of the possibility of greater cooperation, if not a merger, between the North Adams and Adams school districts by the two candidates in the weeks ahead.
Following three decades in which either Mr. Barrett or Mr. Alcombright was mayor, North Adams will have a fresh face in the city's top office. Political newcomer Thomas Bernard and City Councilor Robert Moulton Jr. will square off November 7 in the race to succeed Mr. Alcombright, who chose not to run for re-election.
The issues of the economy and education sure to dominate the 1st Berkshire District race will be mirrored in North Adams. The city's crime rate and opioid addiction crisis should also be front and center. A packed City Council race in which 17 candidates will vie for nine seats will provide a further opportunity to debate the problems facing the city as well as how best to build upon the city's strengths. (While Pittsfield does not have a mayoral race this year its chance to air out issues comes in the campaigns for the four at large City Council spots and the five contested ward races.)
There is nothing like an election campaign to bring town, city and regional issues, problems and opportunities to the foreground. Let's make the most of this chance in the short weeks before Election Day.
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Letter: “Send Barrett to Boston to benefit Berkshires”
The Berkshire Eagle, October 13, 2017
To the editor:
I am pleased to write this letter in support of John Barrett for state representative. As a longtime professional in workforce development, I can attest to John's personal knowledge and experience on this issue in Berkshire County.
John and I worked together when he was executive director of a local career center. Much of our work at the career center included training our workforce through on-the-job training programs funded through state and federal initiatives. These programs saved local businesses substantial dollars and put local job seekers back to work. John's experience makes him the most qualified in this special election as he understands the unique needs of our area businesses and believes in training our existing workforce.
The career center was also the hub for unemployment benefits. Before those services went exclusively online, John willingly jeopardized his position as executive director in order to alert the public about the new online system and the elimination of walk-in services. He was pressured by the officials in Boston to keep quiet about the roll-out of the new, online system. John felt the system was not ready and would cause financial hardship to the individuals filing for unemployment benefits. The Boston Globe and The Berkshire Eagle later published stories about the demands from the state placed on John. For the benefit of the public, John did not comply with those demands, and his contract was not renewed.
We need experienced leaders like John Barrett in Boston to voice the unique issues and concerns of our district. He is not afraid to speak up in the best interest of his constituents. John is not a man who keeps the wolf at the door. And for that reason alone, he is the right candidate, the experienced candidate, needed at this time for the 1st Berkshire District.
Shelly Icardi, Cheshire
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John Barrett III celebrates after learning he won the 1st Berkshire District state representative Democratic primary. He will face Republican Christine Canning on Nov. 7 for the seat that was vacated when former state Rep. Gailannce Cariddi died.
“State rep. hopeful Barrett lays out vision on economy, education”
By Adam Shanks, ashanks@berkshireeagle.com – The Berkshire Eagle, October 23, 2017
NORTH ADAMS — After winning a four-way primary election last week, John Barrett III has his eyes set on Beacon Hill
The Democratic candidate for the 1st Berkshire District state representative and former Mayor of North Adams for 26 years sat with Berkshire Eagle editors and reporters on Tuesday to discuss his vision for the Northern Berkshires and the upcoming special election to replace former state Rep. Gailanne Cariddi.
Barrett will face Republican candidate Christine Canning in the Nov. 7 election.
Barrett has made public education funding a cornerstone of his campaign, arguing that revisions are needed to the state's Chapter 70 funding formula in order to adequately support local schools.
As for further regionalizing school systems, Barrett said parochialism is alive and well in the Berkshires, but added that sharing some services between the districts "has to be worked into the equation, somehow, some way."
He also spoke on economic development, advocating for the return of small business and diversifying the economy instead of relying solely on the tourism and arts for growth.
Barrett stressed the importance of the "image of the community."
"When you create that aura that this community is on the move, that's important," Barrett said, noting that North Adams was recently designated as having the highest violent crime rate in the state.
The candidate also expressed his continued support for the Greylock Glen project in Adams, which looks to become a recreational hub that draws tourists to Adams and promotes economic growth.
Barrett, who served for more than two years at the helm of the BerkshireWorks career center in Pittsfield, also highlighted the importance of job training.
What worked in Berkshire County, Barrett said, is having 90 percent of a trainee's salary paid for a six-month stint at a local company.
"They'd be trained for those jobs that are there," Barrett said. "Right now, Berkshire County is the only county in Massachusetts that has to import people to fill the jobs that are open, which says something is wrong."
Businesses also need improved broadband access, Barrett argued.
"Broadband is here, but we're falling further and further behind [in internet speeds] every day," Barrett said.
Barrett clarified that, should he win in November, he would seek reelection next year.
Barrett acknowledged it takes years to gain clout as a state legislator, but said as a State Representative his greatest impact will be in aiding local leaders with their issues and initiatives.
"There's not a lot a state representative can do, but I view my role as state representative as far different than what the traditional state representative is," Barrett said.
Barrett said he has visited the the Berkshire Arts and Technology Public Charter School in Adams recently and said the school is "doing excellent things."
"I'm not opposed to the charter school, but to the funding. I've always made that very clear," Barrett said, noting that a student leaving a district to attend a charter school is more financially damaging to a the district that a student that utilizes school choice to leave.
Barrett believes those who supported Stephanie Bosley, Kevin Towle and Lisa Blackmer in the primary should support him in the November special election.
"There wasn't one bad word by any candidate about the other; we stuck to the issues," Barrett said of the primary race. "I don't think there's a disagreement on the issues at all."
The former mayor also addressed comments that he made in the immediate aftermath of his primary victory, which many on social media derided as divisive.
But Barrett said he believed the intention of his comments was "very clear."
"Outsiders were influencing the decisions that were being made in North Adams," Barrett said. "The outside investors that were coming in there determining what was best for the city and shutting out the people that lived there."
As an example, Barrett said investors and the city "destroyed" Western Gateway Heritage Park in an effort to create the Greylock Market, a proposal to revitalize the park that ultimately failed despite the use of an $880,000 MassWorks Grant to improve its infrastructure.
"Go look at it today. It didn't produce one job," Barrett said.
When he refers to "outsiders," Barrett said he is not referring to those who move to the city.
"But that's just the critics that will say `look, there he goes dividing the city,'" Barrett said. "I didn't have a divided city — that's one thing I was proud of as mayor."
As for Mass MoCA, Barrett said he maintains that it has to not only be in North Adams, but be a part of North Adams.
"The people that are living in the city are not benefiting from the success of Mass MoCA," Barrett said.
Barrett noted that local residents have seen their taxes skyrocket.
Reach staff writer Adam Shanks at 413-496-6376 or @EagleAdamShanks on Twitter.
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Letter: “Canning would bring a welcome change”
The Berkshire Eagle, October 27, 2017
To the editor:
North Adams is the eighth poorest city in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The city has struggled for over four decades and many of those years under John Barrett.
The 1st Berkshire District cannot afford to be represented by someone from the "Good Ol' Boys" gang. It is time for serious and smart ideas. Christine Canning's experience in both private business and education will help Berkshire County and Massachusetts move in the right direction. She doesn't take money from PACs and special interests so she will not be beholden to lobbyists, but will look out for the people in Berkshire County.
It is time for the 1st Berkshire District to see success. Christine Canning offers new and better ideas and will represent the people and not the swamp on Beacon Hill. I wish I could vote for Christine Canning. Hopefully, the voters in Northern Berkshire will vote for the future and a better life.
Patrick Fennell, Great Barrington
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Letter: “Barrett adds kindness to many qualifications”
The Berkshire Eagle, October 29, 2017
To the editor:
The 1st Berkshire District is ready to lead the state with creative solutions to municipal challenges and rigorous business development. John Barrett III has the ideas, energy, connections, and most importantly, the experience to move our portion of the Commonwealth in this direction.
I am proud to say that I was born and raised in North Adams, graduating from Drury High School in 1993. During this time I watched as Mayor Barrett worked tirelessly to transform our city into a center for high quality jobs, education, and quality of life. At one time the longest-serving mayor in the state with 13 consecutive two-year terms, John is credited for bringing North Adams out of the doldrums of the post-Sprague Election era and had the foresight to work to bring Mass MoCA to our town when so many had their doubts about cultural arts thriving in our community. He never lost sight of his roots in education and successfully brought the Brayton Elementary School project to fruition.
What is often overlooked during elections are the personal connections that candidates make with those who are most affected by real-life problems. This is where John stands apart from everyone else.
In 1995 my brother, Michael Sarkis, was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. This was an aggressive cancer and rare in an otherwise healthy 19-year-old boy. In the blink of an eye my family was uprooted and living in an efficiency hotel in Worcester while my brother was being treated at UMass Medical Center. It was the holiday season. Mike was struggling. We were missing home.
Our family received a call from Mayor Barrett to share that he knew my brother's story and told us that he would be dedicating the tree lighting ceremony to my brother so that we knew that our neighbors and friends at home were with us in Mike's fight. The ceremony was recorded on audio cassette and friends brought it to us at the hospital so we could all listen together to hear the cheers and the heartfelt words from home. My mother still has this recording with her to this day.
John stayed connected with our family during the entire 14 months of my brother's illness. There were phone calls to check in and donations from John and the people of North Adams to help us with our stay. When Mike passed away on Dec. 25, 1996, Mayor Barrett was there for us again at both the calling hours and funeral. To this day, he hasn't forgotten our family and we haven't forgotten his kindness.
Many city residents can remember times when John made donations to assist them, or when he took the time to just listen over a cup of coffee in their homes. He expected no recognition or accolades.
John Barrett will work hard in Boston for common sense solutions that will help us here at home on the issues of funding for education, bringing more good-paying jobs to our area, and ensuring a continued high quality of life for generations to come. As mayor, he already proved he could do it once. Vote him into office as state representative and let him work for us and do it again.
Michelle Colvin, Pittsfield
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“Barrett's financial resources outpace Canning's in 1st Berkshire District race”
By Adam Shanks, The Berkshire Eagle, November 3, 2017
NORTH ADAMS — Democratic Candidate John Barrett III has substantially more financial resources than Republican opponent Christine Canning in the race for state representative.
The Barrett campaign spent more than 25 times that of Canning from the Sept. 23 special state primary election and Oct. 20.
Pre-election campaign finance reports were due from each candidate Oct. 30.
The next 1st Berkshire District representative will be decided in a special state election Tuesday, and the winner will finish the remaining year of former state Rep. Gailanne Cariddi's term. Cariddi died of cancer in June.
Barrett was the top vote-getter of four Democratic candidates in the primary election in October; Canning ran unopposed.
In interviews with Eagle reporters and editors throughout the campaign, Canning has said that she does not seek out campaign donations.
Canning, of Lanesborough, began the year with a balance of $2,201.55, which was left over from her unsuccessful bid for state senator in 2016. Canning has spent only $894 all year, $494 of which was spent in the weeks included in the pre-election report.
Canning's campaign spent $159.96 on robocalls to voters, $142.29 on Facebook ads and $100.98 on wickets for campaign lawn signs in recent weeks.
Canning has raised $400 this year, taking in donations of $250 from Neal Burton of Pittsfield and $150 from Kathy Mickel of Dalton.
Barrett, of North Adams, has more rapidly raised money and poured resources into the campaign.
The most recently filed report shows Barrett spent $7,735 for campaign art and mailers from West Springfield-based company Class A Graphics. The report lists expenditures to the U.S. Postal Service totaling more than $4,450.
The campaign also spent nearly $1,000 on lawn signs, the report states.
Barrett's pre-election report lists $500 donations from the Richard E. Neal Massachusetts Political Action Committee and James Whitney of North Adams.
In total, Barrett has raised $16,010 in 2017.
Reach staff writer Adam Shanks at 413-496-6376 or @EagleAdamShanks on Twitter.
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John Barrett III celebrates his state representative win in the 1st Berkshire District Tuesday night [11/7/2017]. Barrett will serve the remaining year in the term that was held by Rep. Gailanne Cariddi until her death in June [of 2017]. Photo credit: Caroline Bonnivier Snyder - The Berkshire Eagle
“John Barrett III wins 1st Berkshire District seat in Statehouse”
By Kristin Palpini, The Berkshire Eagle, November 7, 2017
Democrat John Barrett III, a 26-year mayor of North Adams, will be the next 1st Berkshire District state representative after winning Tuesday's election in a decisive victory.
The final vote was 4,733 for Barrett and 1,415 for Republican Christine Canning.
The 1st Berkshire District consists of the city of North Adams and the towns of Adams, Cheshire, Clarksburg, Florida, Hancock, Lanesborough, New Ashford and Williamstown.
Unlike other people elected this month, Barrett, 70, will be sworn into action right away instead of waiting until January. Barrett is serving the remainder of Rep. Gailanne Cariddi's term. Cariddi died in June after being ill with cancer.
Barrett, whose political agenda includes getting more funding for Berkshire County public schools and growing workforce training programs, said the win feels overwhelming and positive.
"I've had many victories, but still I'm humbled by it being this large," Barrett said Tuesday night of the final tally.
"I'm going to be a great voice in Boston. I'm going to let them know about us," he said.
Canning did not respond to a telephone call seeking comment Tuesday night.
Barrett won each municipality in his district, earning 2,588 in his hometown of North Adams, Canning received 681 votes there. Canning came the closest to winning a municipality's vote in Lanesborough, her hometown, where she earned 112 votes to Barrett's 142.
"People believed in my plan, with my goal of economic development," said Barrett. "Now, it's time to get to it."
When Barrett begins his term as a state representative, he will be thrown into ongoing debates on Beacon Hill about criminal justice reform, health care and the budget in addition to pushing Boston to address the needs of Berkshire County residents.
"I think we have an opportunity to work with his experience on economic development and revitalization," said state Rep. William "Smitty" Pignatelli, D-Lenox. "I look forward to working with (Barrett) not only on a personal level, but on a professional level, too."
During his campaign, Barrett touted his experience as a longtime mayor of North Adams from 1984 to 2009 and as the former executive director of the BerkshireWorks career center in Pittsfield for two years after his departure from office. The North Adams resident has promised to fight for the revision of the state's Chapter 70 funding formula for local schools, which he argues doesn't benefit rural school districts like those in Northern Berkshire County. He also said that he wants to see improved workforce training programs in Massachusetts.
"Soon after the new year starts we'll be getting into the budget season," said state Rep. Tricia Farley-Bouvier, D-Pittsfield. "Advocating for the 1st Berkshire District is, of course, so important to the budget process. It'll be good to have him there."
Barrett's partial term will expire Jan. 19, 2019. Another election for a full term of the 1st Berkshire District seat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives will take place in November of 2018.
"It's great to see such a good win for a Democrat," said state Rep. Paul Mark, D-Peru. "I think he's going to bring a unique perspective having been a mayor for over 20 years. I don't think anyone else in the Legislature has that kind of experience and I think he has a good command of the issues. He's going to be a strong advocate for the 1st Berkshire District."
Kristin Palpini can be reached at kpalpini@berkshireeagle.com and @kristinpalpini on Twitter.
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John Barrett III defeated Lanesborough businesswoman Christine Canning on Tuesday, in the race to represent the 1st Berkshire District in the House of Representatives. The special state election was held to fill the vacant seat of Gailanne Cariddi, who died in June. Barrett will serve the remainder of her term, until Jan. 19, 2019, though he has said he intends to run for re-election when the time comes. Photo credit: Adam Shanks - The Berkshire Eagle
“Barrett vows to be 'visible' as newly elected 1st Berkshire District representative”
By Adam Shanks, The Berkshire Eagle, November 10, 2017
NORTH ADAMS — John Barrett III was just elected to the Statehouse, but he has no plans to become a Boston politician.
"I'm not hanging around down there all week just to hang around. Most of my time will be in the district," Barrett said. "Most of the time I will be visible in the district."
Barrett handily defeated Lanesborough businesswoman Christine Canning in the race to represent the 1st Berkshire District in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, returning to elected office for the first time since 2009.
The largest obstacle Barrett faced in the election was the primary, which pitted four Democrats with similar policy viewpoints against each other. But Barrett prevailed, with 42 percent of the vote.
The special state election was held to fill the vacant seat of Gailanne Cariddi, who died in June. Barrett will serve the remainder of her term, until Jan. 19, 2019, though he has said he intends to run for re-election when the time comes.
The state representative-elect and former mayor of North Adams for 26 years sat with The Eagle on Thursday to discuss his transition and priorities.
In the immediate aftermath of his victory, Barrett said he is spending considerable time just answering all of the messages he has received from supporters on Facebook.
But he's also already working to establish relationships with his colleagues on Beacon Hill.
"I just want to make sure that Northern Berkshire, and all of Berkshire County working with the [local] delegation, is represented at the table," Barrett said.
At one point, he was the longest-tenured mayor in Massachusetts. Now, Barrett is the junior-most member of the House.
"It is strange, but going down there, I know a lot of them that have been there quite a while and some of the new ones," Barrett said of the House's members. "It's a respectful body, and I think a lot of them followed this race."
Despite his mayoral experience, Barrett said he fully understands his place as one member in a body of 160 representatives.
"I understand the process and I understand what my role is, but I think I have access to a lot of people that could be helpful to this area."
As the House's legislative work winds down, Barrett expects to spend the rest of the year largely in the district — where he plans to be spending most of his time as representative.
"It's better to stay up here and directly work with the communities and also be a resource to them," Barrett said.
He is not yet sure what committees he will serve on, but he plans to meet with the speaker of the House in the coming weeks.
Barrett said throughout the campaign that one of his top priorities would be addressing the state's Chapter 70 education funding formula to make the system more equitable for poorer communities. But he acknowledges that's not something he'll singlehandedly be able to change right away.
"The money is there, but what are the priorities of the administration?" Barrett asked. "In order to have a strong economy, you have to have a strong school system."
Among Barrett's top priorities is working to have state funding released for the Greylock Glen project, which, he argues, would have a positive impact on Adams and the surrounding communities.
He's also hoping to continue Cariddi's work to curtail robocalls and hopes to address rising cable bills.
Barrett expects to be sworn in Wednesday, but that can depend on when local officials certify the election results before passing them to the Governor's Council, which meets weekly, according to Debra O'Malley, a spokesperson for the Secretary of the Commonwealth's office.
"There are a couple of things that contribute to the timing," she said.
Barrett said that, as of now, he expects the Governor's Council to certify the results and to be sworn in Wednesday.
Reach staff writer Adam Shanks at ashanks@berkshireeagle.com @EagleAdamShanks on Twitter and 413-496-6376
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“Barrett sworn in, pays tribute to Cariddi”
By Colin A. Young, State House News Service, November 15, 2017
BOSTON — Just in time for the last formal session of 2017, the Massachusetts House on Wednesday welcomed two new members, restoring the chamber to a complete 160-member roster of representatives.
John Barrett III, of North Adams, and Andres Vargas, of Haverhill, both of whom won special elections last week, were sworn in by Gov. Charlie Baker in the House Chamber early Wednesday afternoon.
Barrett fills the seat previously held by the late Rep. Gailanne Cariddi in Western Massachusetts. Cariddi died in June after a private battle with cancer.
Vargas won the seat vacated in July by former Ways and Means Chairman Brian Dempsey.
Before administering the oath of office, Baker said he and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito like when people with experience in local government are elected to the Statehouse, because they bring an understanding of how state-level decisions impact cities and towns. Barrett was the longtime mayor of North Adams and Vargas was a Haverhill city councilor.
Speaking from the podium on the House floor, Barrett talked about Cariddi and how, when she came to him to express interest in running for North Adams City Council, he "couldn't get her there soon enough."
"She loved you, and you all loved her," Barrett told the House. "And when she died, part of this legislative session died with her. Her legacy will live on because she embodies everything that is good about this profession."
Barrett served as mayor of North Adams for more than 25 years, leaving office in 2009, after he was not elected to a 14th consecutive term.
Vargas told his new colleagues about his advocacy work as a teenager and how lawmakers took him seriously, even though he was a high school student, an experience he said led him to public service. He pointed to the opioid epidemic and civics education as two of his early priorities.
"We had good news that the overdose rates in Massachusetts are down by 10 percent, but I think there's a lot more work to do, so I'm looking forward to tackling the opioid crisis, working together with colleagues here in the House, but also jumping on legislation that first got me started in politics, which was civics education legislation," Vargas said. "That's something that I started when I was 16 and in high school, so it'd be great to kind of close the circle on that and pass some legislation that ensures that every student in the commonwealth has access to civics education before they go on to college or to do something else."
While attending Boston University, Vargas interned in Dempsey's office and the office of Sen. Sonia Chang-D az of Boston. He also worked as a communications intern in the Obama White House. Vargas was elected in 2015 to the Haverhill City Council, the body where Dempsey got his political start in 1988.
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Serving as one of 160 members of the Massachusetts House is nothing like being mayor, the position state Rep. John Barrett III, D-North Adams, held for 26 years in North Adams. "It's like night and day," Barrett said. Adam Shanks - The Berkshire Eagle
“Rep. Barrett adjusts to political life as `backbencher'”
By Larry Parnass, The Berkshire Eagle, August 18, 2018
North Adams — If there are things that state Rep. John Barrett III, D-North Adams, would fix about his new political home, he's not saying.
Barrett laughed when asked to name three qualities he would change about how the House works on Beacon Hill.
"I'm not down there to embarrass anyone," he said from his office on the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art grounds, a week out from the close of the Legislature's formal session. "I'm down there with my experience to be constructive."
"Patience is a virtue in this particular case," said Barrett, who joined the House on Nov. 15, after winning an election to fill the 1st Berkshire District term of the late Gailanne M. Cariddi.
As mayor, life didn't depend so much on patience, or perhaps even allow it. And it certainly wasn't Barrett's style.
But in his first eight months in the House, Barrett said, he focused on building relationships with people who can help him get things done. Along with North Adams, his district consists of Adams, Cheshire, Clarksburg, Florida, Hancock, Lanesborough, New Ashford and Williamstown.
Barrett arrived in the House well into the two-year session, too late to introduce legislation but able to back other measures, as he went about learning the ropes.
Serving as one of 160 members of the House is nothing like being mayor, the position Barrett held for 26 years in North Adams.
"It's like night and day," Barrett said during a conversation this past week about the lessons he took from his first stint as a lawmaker. "I had a tough time adjusting, I won't deny that."
"I went in there as a backbencher," he said, using the English Parliament's name for certain rank-and-file members. "I'm a backbencher until I can prove to them I'm someone you can work with to get things done."
On election night last November, when he beat Republican Christine Canning 4,733-1,415, Barrett promised to be "a great voice in Boston" for the district, adding, "I'm going to let them know about us."
He will stand for re-election in November, so far without opposition.
Though Barrett demurred when invited to name fixes for the House, he bit when asked to identify three things a new lawmaker needs to get right.
Know your district. Be patient as you get to know the players. Build relationships.
"If you think you're going to go in there and embarrass the leadership and get things done, it's suicide," he said.
When Barrett arrived, he was assigned a seat to the far left and in the back from where the speaker stands when the House is in session. A reporter for The Eagle visited him there in April, during a break in the House budget deliberations, at a group of desks that are part of what's known as the fourth division.
Until a security officer put a stop to it. Offering a seat to a reporter might fly in a mayor's office, but not there. A teachable moment.
Like other lawmakers, Barrett says he was frustrated to see the session end without a plan to bulk up funding for public education. When meeting with colleagues in a caucus, Barrett says he argued that state residents would support the investment.
"I said, `There isn't a taxpayer who wouldn't like this bill,' " Barrett said.
But the House and Senate couldn't agree, in part out of concerns about the state's ability to sustain the costs.
The House version called for $100 million a year in new funding over five years, Barrett said, about twice current levels.
"To come out of there with nothing was a great disappointment to me because I'd run on that," he said of his campaign last year.
Barrett believes the measure stumbled, in part, due to uncertainty about how the federal tax reform measure enacted in December would play out in the wider economy in the year ahead.
`Maiden' speech
Five months went by until Barrett addressed the chamber in his "maiden" speech.
It was 4:41 p.m April 24 when Speaker Robert DeLeo banged a gavel and asked members to take their seats.
Barrett was there to speak to budget amendment No. 773, which would rename the Mount Greylock Visitors Center for Cariddi. She died of cancer in June 2017 at the age of 63. Before joining the House in 2010, Cariddi served on the North Adams City Council for 20 years.
For nearly five minutes, Barrett recalled Cariddi's service to people in his district, including her time on the North Adams council when he was mayor.
"I've learned more about her in the past five months than in the 25 years I knew her," Barrett told the chamber. "She epitomizes all that was good, how we should be as leaders, no matter what position we held."
He called her quiet and persistent. "Her walk through life was a short one, but she accomplished so much. We can't forget about the work of the Gail Cariddis of this world. It's only fitting we somehow honor her great legacy."
Members stood to applaud. Barrett asked for a roll call vote on his amendment. It passed 153-0. As the tally came in, lawmakers gathered in the well of the chamber to congratulate him.
Members had begun calling him "mayor." Barrett says he tried to wave that off, but the name stuck, even as he works to serve not as a chief executive any longer, but as one member of the House.
"It was a tough adjustment," he said again of the shift. "And my colleagues are adjusting to me in the Berkshire delegation."
Other representatives would counsel him to "calm down," he said. "It's probably a weakness. I want everything done yesterday."
As he and other lawmakers begin to gear up for the next formal session, Barrett says his priorities will remain job creation, funding for public education and environmental protection.
On the job front, a front-burner issue is funding for an outdoor center at the state-owned Greylock Glen in Adams.
He says his interest in the environment owes in part to his predecessor. Cariddi had been House chairwoman of the Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture Committee, now led by Rep. William "Smitty" Pignatelli, D-Lenox.
"That's one part of Gailanne Cariddi's legacy that I want to preserve," Barrett said.
Larry Parnass can be reached at lparnass@berkshireeagle.com, at @larryparnass on Twitter and 413-496-6214.
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Our Opinion: “School Funding Puzzle”
The Berkshire Eagle, Editorial, December 3, 2018
The state is underfunding education by $1 billion a year according to a report issued this past summer by the Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center and leaders of the Legislature have indicated that addressing that shortfall will be a priority in 2019. Last week, the nonprofit MassInc, acknowledging the disadvantages faced by so-called Gateway cities, of which Pittsfield is one, said more funding should be provided to urban districts facing difficult challenges but asserted there must be more accountability in exchange for that funding, which local school districts setting the parameters for this accountability. While there is logic to this approach, the difficulty will be in not penalizing urban school districts where teachers confront more students who were not adequately prepared for school than were students in wealthier school districts, resulting in lower test scores. While lawmakers grapple with this issue, we urge them not to be sidetracked by an effort to put a so-called "millionaires" tax to raise education funding on the 2022 state ballot. The state can't wait four years for a solution that will more than likely be found unconstitutional by the state's highest court, as was the "millionaires tax" this year.
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Letter: “Hopes to serve North Adams in future”
The Berkshire Eagle, September 21, 2019
To the editor:
Earlier this spring, I announced I was running for North Adams City Council while still a senior in college. Within just a few days of taking out my papers, I had surpassed the number of signatures needed to appear on the ballot. I want to thank everyone who lent me their signature, their support, or even just an encouraging word along the way.
Late last week, however, I wrote to the city clerk and asked her to withdraw my name from the election. I accepted an offer to work for the New Hampshire Senate that will, obviously, take me out of the city for the foreseeable future. This was an offer that I, a 22-year-old recent college graduate from the college known as New Hampshire's home for politics, could not turn down at this point in my young career. I am thankful to everyone who supported my campaign along the way. I especially want to thank state Rep. John Barrett III, City Council President Keith Bona and City Councilor Marie Harpin, who all gave me valuable insights and guided me along the way.
I hope to return to the city one day and give back to the great community that shaped me into who I am today and who inspired me to launch my campaign. I would not have withdrawn from the campaign if I did not think that the city would be in good hands while I am away. No matter where I live, I will always consider North Adams home.
Cameron M. Lapine, North Adams
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Patrick Fennell wrote:
Jonathon;
Let's start with public indoctrination (public education for progressives), it is overfunded. The population has gone down every decade and in many towns, the average age is over fifty.
There should be no more than four school districts in the entire county and the districts and the BRTA should be working together. Trade/vocational schools need to be highlighted and more on the job training promoted.
Sadly the clowns on Bacon Hill could care less about education. Smitty and friends want the teachers' union votes and $$$$$.
Patrick Fennell
my response:
May 27, 2020
Hello Pat,
When I studied public administration, I learned that when a family and/or small business looks at a community to live in they look at the quality of public safety and public education. I understand that it is an elitist argument to say that people vote with their feet, but if a community wants economic growth and living wage jobs, then the taxpayers should invest in keeping their streets safe and their public schools well funded.
If municipal taxpayers pay an optimal amount of local taxes, then the values of their properties will increase in value. Likewise, if they don’t and pay less, then the values of their properties will drop in value. A community should always ask itself the following question: “Would a middle class family want their children to grow up in our community?”
I believe that if the state government equitably funded public education in Massachusetts, then local governments would not have make up the difference. Wealthy suburbs like Wellesley – the 7th wealthiest city in the United States in 2018 – have mostly million dollar homes and can easily make up the difference in the lack of state funding, while Pittsfield cannot. Public education in Massachusetts favors Wellesley over Pittsfield. It is very inequitable public policy! What it really means is that there is no “public” education in Massachusetts.
State Representative John Barrett III understands that Massachusetts’ public education formula is outdated and unfair to his Northern Berkshire County legislative district. He campaigned about this important issue for the children who live in distressed economic zip codes.
Best wishes,
Jonathan
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"Paula Kingsbury-Evans, an MCLA senior, is running for the seat held by state Rep. John Barrett III"
By Danny Jin, The Berkshire Eagle, March 18, 2022
NORTH ADAMS — A senior at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts is challenging state Rep. John Barrett III in a Democratic primary.
Paula Kingsbury-Evans, 22, of North Adams, told The Eagle on Thursday that she is running because she believes “the Berkshires need a fresh, new voice in the Statehouse.”
Barrett, a North Adams Democrat who was the city’s mayor from 1984 to 2009, has served in the Massachusetts House since 2017, when he won an election after the death of former state Rep. Gailanne Cariddi.
Kingsbury-Evans describes herself as “passionate, progressive and persevering.”
“One of the biggest things that I want to accomplish as I’m running for state rep is being there for the community and being there for everything they have to say,” Kingsbury-Evans said. “That’s how I want them to view me, as a listener and a servant to them who’s going back to the Statehouse and making sure that their voices and concerns about their home and their community are being acted upon.”
Kingsbury-Evans grew up in California and moved to New Hampshire at 12, where she lived until attending MCLA. She is an arts management major and expects to graduate in May.
Working through MCLA’s volunteer center to facilitate an after-school theater program and the “winter blitz” home weatherization program, she said, has allowed her to engage with the Northern Berkshire community, which she now considers home.
She spoke positively of Barrett, although she said that she feels her age makes her better suited for the job than Barrett, 74.
“He’s accomplished great things, and he’s been a force of change in the Berkshires, and he’s helped get the really important institutions created and implemented that were the beginning of our tourism industry,” she said. “But, he’s also getting older, and he probably does not have as much energy as a 22-year-old. That’s kind of where the biggest distinction is for me. I’m a hard worker. I am dedicated. When I find a project, I am there until the end of it. I’m willing to pull all-nighters if that’s what the community needs me to do.”
Asked about Kingsbury-Evans’ challenge, Barrett confirmed that he plans to run for reelection and said that he has enough “fire in the belly” to serve another term. He has not spoken with Kingsbury-Evans, he said.
“Everybody has a right to run for office, and I’m going to run on the record of my ... basically nearly five years in office,” Barrett said. “The way that I pursue public life is that no one is entitled to anything, and I will work hard, as I always have, on behalf of the people that I represent.”
Barrett also sees his experience and vice chairmanship of the federal stimulus and census oversight committee as valuable in the context of redistricting changes that are expanding his district and shrinking Berkshire County’s four state representatives to three.
Kingsbury-Evans said that her policy priorities include climate action, government transparency and health care reform. She said she supports legislation to establish single-payer health care in Massachusetts, a bill that Barrett has supported as well. Other goals are strengthening the tourism industry, improving public transportation and repairing roads and infrastructure, Kingsbury-Evans said.
She said that voters can expect her to vote differently from Barrett at times.
“I would definitely be voting more toward accepting the bills that change the level of transparency in the government and allowing same-day voter registration and opening up more ways for community members to be knowledgeable and involved in their politics,” she said.
Barrett said that he is willing to engage in policy conversations when he learns more about Kingsbury-Evans’ stances. He said that he supports same-day voter registration and that concerns over added costs for municipalities led him to vote for Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin to analyze and report on the policy before it can be implemented.
“When she comes out with her platform, I’ll be glad to answer any of the questions that she has,” he said.
Kingsbury-Evans worked on the 2021 mayoral campaign of fellow MCLA student Joshua Vallieres, who dropped out to run for School Committee, where he now serves. During her sophomore year, Kingsbury-Evans served as a senator-at-large for MCLA’s student government association, she said.
Her campaign team includes three other committed members, Kingsbury-Evans said, although she hopes to grow the group.
As Kingsbury-Evans ramps up her campaign in the coming weeks, she plans to speak with town administrators, members of select boards and city councils, local business leaders and leaders of community groups such as the Northern Berkshire Community Coalition.
“I’m also really interested in talking with the two colleges’ political science departments and community outreach and trying to get more students and young people involved in politics,” Kingsbury-Evans said.
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March 19, 2022
“The way that I pursue public life is that no one is entitled to anything, and I will work hard, as I always have, on behalf of the people that I represent.” - North Adams Massachusetts State Representative John Barrett III
I understand the context of Representative Barrett's quote that he is not entitled to be reelected to Beacon Hill in 2022. He is saying that he will earn the public's vote by working hard on behalf of the people he represents in his Northern Berkshire County state legislative district.
I am thankful but doubtful that Representative Barrett believes that he works hard in Boston. However, Beacon Hill lawmakers hardly work. I read the Boston newspapers, and they say that in the weeks when the State Legislature meets, they only work three days per week (Tuesday, Wednesday, & Thursday) for less than a few hours. They take months off at a time with full public pay and perks. To illustrate, they will "work" from January 1st, 2022, to July 31st, 2022. Then, from August 1st, 2022, to December 31st, 2022, they will not meet in formal state legislative session in Boston, but they will still be paid their 6-figure public pay and perks for doing nothing for five months in 2022.
I wish to say to Representative Barrett that the people he represents are entitled to public safety, public health, public assistance, disability rights, equal rights, Civil Rights, and Human Rights. I wish to say to Representative Barrett that most of the benefits of big government and big business goes to the ELITES, while the people feel lucky to cut even and perhaps save a few "Biden Buck$" or they fall into our country's ever-growing larger huge underclass. I would call that a rigged system of entitlements for the ELITES, while the rest of us have to pound sand. Please note, I understand that is not the context of Representative Barrett's quote, but it is the truth.
Jonathan A. Melle
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March 19, 2022
Hello Patrick Fennell,
North Adams is the poorest city by population in Massachusetts. That makes the career politicians very powerful there. I lived in North Adams once when I was a young man in my early-20s, and the poor people told me that they were discouraged from going to college by the public school system and other community leaders. That is the absolute WORST thing to do because a community is supposed to invest in the people who live there, not keep them proverbially barefoot and pregnant.
My views of career politician John Barrett III are mixed. On the bright side, he loves North Adams, and he connects with the mentality of the people who live there. He cares about people, and he advocated for my father when Nuciforo filed multiple state "ethics" complaints against my dad to multiple Massachusetts state agencies when my dad worked in the Pittsfield District Courthouse and served as a Berkshire County Commissioner. Nuciforo's witch hunt against my dad occurred from the Fall of 1997 to the Spring of 1998. My dad supports Barrett in politics, even before Nuciforo's strong-arm tactics against him (and me too).
The dark side of Barrett is that he acts like a dictatorial bully in state and local government, which has been written about in local papers for over a generation. He sides with the political establishment too much of the time. He is a career politician for nearly 40 years. His public record in Boston includes voting to give Boston area businesses hundreds of millions of dollars in state tax breaks, but it has nothing to do with his Northern Berkshire County based state legislative district. He also voted against State House rules reforms for transparency in legislative business.
His longtime support of MASS MoCA is a big star on his political chart. In closing, one has to take the good with bad in life, including with John Barrett III.
Best wishes,
Jonathan A. Melle
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"What's in it for the Berkshires? Massachusetts House budget for 2024 contains local earmarks, education funding"
By Sten Spinella, The Berkshire Eagle, May 6, 2023
With the state Senate set to roll out its budget proposal next week, Berkshire lawmakers told The Eagle what they like about the proposed House budget, and what they hope to see from the rest of the process.
The House approved a $56.2 billion state budget in late April. Lawmakers offered amendments that included earmarks for labor, workforce development, energy, housing and the environment.
The proposal allocates more than $122 million in state aid for Berkshire schools and more than $26 million in aid for the county’s cities and towns.
The bulk of the proposed education funding for schools in Berkshire County would go to Pittsfield, which is receiving almost $61 million, North Adams, which is receiving more than $16 million, and regional school districts including Hoosac Valley at $11.2 million, Central Berkshire at $9.5 million, Northern Berkshire at $6.8 million, Mount Greylock at $4.85 million, Berkshire Hills at almost $3.1 million and Southern Berkshire at nearly $2.1 million.
The majority of the municipal aid money will go to Pittsfield at $10.16 million, North Adams at $5.22 million, Dalton at $1.3 million and Williamstown at $1.1 million.
State Rep. Tricia Farley-Bouvier, D-Pittsfield, drew attention to early education funding, and local education funding for Pittsfield.
“The House budget increased money to early education centers, so they can pay their workers, to $80 million,” Farley-Bouvier said. “Pre-pandemic, we were fighting and thought we were doing great to get to $20 million. So this is significant. The key now in early education is to help support paying the people who are educating our youngest children.”
Pittsfield has almost doubled its Chapter 70 funding for local schools in the last 10 years, Farley-Bouvier noted.
State Rep. John Barrett III, D-North Adams, listed some of the specific earmarks he secured for his district, including $100,000 for the Northern Berkshire YMCA “to help the Y remain in business,” $125,000 for the Bay State Games “which will be back in business full blast in North Adams and Williamstown.”
“The games are important to the economy, especially in the wintertime,” Barrett said.
Barrett also nabbed $50,000 for youth programs at the former state armory in North Adams, $20,000 for the Adams Community Youth Center, $15,000 for the Williamstown Youth Center, $50,000 for the Haskins facility of Child Care of the Berkshires, and $25,000 for Kidspace at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.
On school funding, Barrett said North County is still hurt by the formula used to allocate funds because it doesn’t have any “gateway cities,” which are medium-sized cities that anchor regional economies.
We need more money for rural schools, say Berkshire legislators to state Senate President Karen Spilka during a recent visit to North Adams
“The money that's going out is not based on need, it’s based on whether they consider you a gateway city,” Barrett said. “It’s an unfair advantage that needs addressing. [state] Rep. [Smitty] Pignatelli and I are concerned with the inequality.”
While the budget included $10 million for rural school aid, a higher amount than Gov. Maura Healey proposed, “that means we are only $50 million short of what the need is,” Barrett said. “We’re hoping [state] Sen. [Paul] Mark will try and correct some of this when it gets over to the Senate.”
Mark said he is trying to get rural school aid up to $15 million, which would be double Healey's 7.5 million proposal. Mark said that would still be a win even though it falls far short of the projected need.
“Five years ago this line item didn’t exist,” he said.
Mark said the delegation wants to double the amount of money that goes to the opioid task force run by the Berkshire County Sheriff’s Office. The current amount in the House budget is $100,000.
“The Rural Recovery Center in South County, the Northern Berkshire Community Coalition, they all benefit from this, so they asked the delegation to try and double that,” Mark said.
Mark pointed out that the April tax collections came in under benchmark, which has thrown some caution on spending levels.
The budget is in the Senate now, then legislators from both chambers will form a conference committee to negotiate it, after which the Gov. Healey will have the chance to veto or make reductions. If she does, the Legislature has the chance to override the governor’s vetoes.
“We all got our individual earmarks, things that we supported locally, but the House version is just the first step of a multi-step process, so I never get too excited,” Pignatelli said. “We’ll see what our new governor’s priorities are and what she’ll veto, if she’ll veto anything.”
Pignatelli said he is pleased the budget contains $75,000 for Community Access to the Arts in Great Barrington, $50,000 for the Nonprofit Center of the Berkshires, as well as funds for the Mass Cultural Council.
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Letter: "To me, Rep. Barrett is 'kingfish' of the Berkshires"
The Berkshire Eagle, June 27, 2024
To the editor: Through my studies of North Adams political history, I have concluded that one person has had the most influence on the city.
That person is John Barrett III. I wish to share my observations.
For a little context, I was not a resident of North Adams when Barrett was mayor. I was only 7 years old when Barrett left office in 2009. Because of this, I am writing from the perspective of someone attempting to research a time before me rather than describe my personal experience. I will also be omitting Barrett’s post-mayoralty activities including his current tenure as state representative, as I believe it would be inappropriate to make conclusions about a chapter not yet closed.
While the “strong mayoral system” predates him, I believe Barrett defined what it meant to be a strong mayor. The centralization of power during his era was unprecedented in North Adams and akin to that of Depression-era Gov. Huey Long, whose rule in Louisiana was one where the “Kingfish” used his immense accumulated power to “make every man a king” through his economic projects.
Barrett, to my knowledge, might not have promised to make every man in North Adams a king, but he was the “people’s mayor.” After North Adams was abandoned by Sprague Electric (whose downfall was unavoidable by Barrett’s inauguration in 1984), Barrett fought hard to save the city from the economic collapse that was affecting much of the “Rust Belt” with his direct involvement in economic developments such as Heritage State Park and Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. His methods might have been controversial to some, but in all likelihood without Barrett’s willingness to “crack a few eggs to make an omelet,” Mass MoCA would never have come to fruition and the creative economy would not have rejuvenated the city.
Four hundred words aren’t enough to scratch the surface of the astounding 26-year tenure, but I hope to at least contribute to a conversation we should start having as a city. Whether people agree with my assessment that Barrett through his achievements and governing style is the “Kingfish of the Berkshires” doesn't matter to me. What matters is that others my age investigate and learn about our city’s “recent” history. In my opinion, North Adams history matters and should be learned.
William D. Shanahan, North Adams
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Loved reading thhis thank you
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