Northampton Mayor Gina Louise-Sciarra
Reminder Publishing file photo
NORTHAMPTON — Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra said her second term at the helm has been much busier than her first.
In a sitdown with Reminder Publishing, she shared that she has picked up from where she left off post-Election Day.
“I went to work the day after the election, and in many ways, nothing really changed, so it’s just been the constant of the work of the job,” she said.
Northampton’s City Council and School Committee saw quite a bit of turnover from the previous term. Despite the change in representation, Sciarra said she is committed to working with the newly elected officials on behalf of constituents.
“As the chair of the School Committee, there are seven new school committee members out of 10, and we also have a lot of stuff on our plate as a committee for the next six months to a year, so getting things up and running and assigning subcommittees, answering the questions a chair would get from new people has been a lot, but it’s exciting to work with these new folks,” said Sciarra.
Sciarra said she suddenly feels older after realizing she is the lone person who has served more than a few terms at this point between the bodies. Sciarra was a city councilor for four terms before being elected mayor in 2021, and nobody on the current School Committee has been serving more than four years.
While this turnover brings a level of institutional and historical knowledge loss to the city’s officials, Sciarra said as mayor, she will strive to be there for newly elected officials through her role as School Committee chair and as a partner with city councilors while they prepare for the upcoming budget season.
“Immediately after the election, I invited the new incoming councilors to meet with me if they’d like to and talk about what their interests were, how I can help them with what they want to work on, and I think all the councilors took me up on that offer,” said Sciarra. “I always view it as a collaborative relationship since I came from the council and had eight years on it, I understand that body very well and enjoyed the relationship … that the council had with the mayor. It’s productive when we are all interested in working together and collaborating. And so that’s always the angle I take with it, and I’m happy to work with folks. We’re not necessarily always going to agree on things, but I like to be able to have real conversations with people.”
Sciarra said that with budget season officially underway, she hopes to see councilors and committee members come together to do what is best for constituents.
Sciarra said early conversations with councilors and committee members have indicated to her that many of the new members really want to dig in and understand the process in full, and specifically in regard to the school budget.
“They see the bigger picture; they see what other communities are going through, and they want to understand how we can best weather this in Northampton,” said Sciarra. “Everybody would like more school funding, we all wish there was more funding for our schools, and that has certainly been expressed, but I see a real interest in trying to kind of understand how the school budget works, how programs work, and what we can address in this moment in time. But also what we want for the future and how we can work together and achieve those goals, and take the temperature down a bit, because when it is at that high level, it’s hard to really talk about things and really have substantive deliberation about things. How can we have more detailed conversations that are really looking at reality and what’s behind the rhetoric.”
Sciarra added, “We’re going to go through this budget season, and I hope we all can work together and be able to respectfully talk about the reality of the situation and address it. We all have been elected to do this work, so I think we can all work together to do that.”
Looking ahead, Sciarra said one project she is passionate about this year is the road safety improvements outside of Northampton High School. An issue she has been focused on since her first term began, Sciarra said the project will narrow the road, and the current jersey barriers in place will be replaced with permanent, dedicated bike lanes with bollards. There will also be two signals installed in an effort to stop traffic so pedestrians and cyclists can better cross the road.
With regards to the Picture Main Street project, Sciarra also said POP: Pardon Our Progress will continue to connect with businesses and formulate a marketing campaign to accompany the project’s progress. Currently, the city is awaiting the finalization of design plans from MASSDOT before the project moves forward.
Sciarra said her economic development team also meets monthly with downtown business owners to listen to any concerns about the pending project. She shared that there is a concerted effort from her administration to focus on and listen to the businesses about their concerns with the project.
“I think since this project hasn’t started yet, people get frustrated, and they’re like, ‘we’re not hearing anything,’ and that’s hard. There’s not something to report on in the moment, but we have a really robust communication strategy that we’re working on as we get closer to construction and have all these different ways we will be communicating with people, including daily on what construction is looking like every single day,” said Sciarra. “People should always contact us if they have concerns or questions. There’s a lot of misinformation out there about this project. I have gone business-to-business at times, correcting misinformation. We will continue to talk to businesses. We started a newsletter over a year ago, where we put updates in there as well. People can always ask me questions through there.”
In the same line of thinking, the mayor said she has begun monthly office hours where Northampton residents have the opportunity to meet one-on-one with her. Starting this month, Sciarra will host a two-hour block of individual meetings, happening once a month.
Appointments are scheduled in 15-minute time slots, giving residents the chance to discuss any topic of their choosing.
“I’m happy to do it. I love talking to residents, so I’m excited we’re going to be setting aside some time every month for people to be able to come in and have a little one-on-one time as well,” said Sciarra. “People should always feel okay to ask us questions. We’re always happy to answer them, we’re always happy to point them in the direction where the answer is. That’s what we do here.”
Sciarra also highlighted the high school’s geothermal project. The new geothermal system will allow the building to cool thanks to the high-efficiency ground source heat pumps.
The high school’s current chillers are well past their expected useful life and will need to be replaced within five years at the latest, according to Climate Action and Project Administration Director Ben Weil, who explained the project at a December City Council meeting on the item.
On top of the chillers, the high school’s boilers are also nearing the end of their expected useful life if continually operated. Weil explained that ground source heat pumps are protected from the elements and have an equipment lifetime of 25 to 30 years.
“That’s a capital project that has to happen because the chillers need to be replaced in the high school, and it’s an amazing opportunity to do geothermal, which will last much longer than these chillers,” said Sciarra. “That’s a project that’s really exciting that is going to serve the high school for generations. It will, over time, save not just energy, but of course money, so that’s an exciting project that I’m happy we’re moving forward with.”
Sciarra added that she is looking forward to this next term.
“In general, my vision and what I’ve been focused on, and continue to focus on, is all the work that makes Northampton strong,” said Sciarra.
