EASTHAMPTON — A fourth candidate for the Easthampton mayoral race has emerged as longtime City Councilor and interim Mayor Salem Derby has decided to throw his name in the ring.
Derby, an Easthampton City Councilor for 22 years, accepted the role as interim mayor back in July following the resignation of Mayor Nicole LaChapelle. He joins a mayoral race already featuring City Councilor JT Tirrell, Mayoral Executive Assistant Lindsi Sekula and resident Robert Laferriere.
Initially when moving to the interim position this summer, Derby told Reminder Publishing he was not interested in running for mayor in the fall, but that soon changed once Derby was able to get a grasp on the day-to-day of his new role through the interim position.
“I didn’t think I was going to do it, but there was this moment where I was like, wait a minute, all of these things are just kind of coming together at the right moment and this is a really perfect job for me and the skills I have, and the experiences that I’ve had in my life,” said Derby. “The other part of that was knowing that, can I really turn my back and walk away when I feel like I’m probably the best candidate for the job.”
Derby was unanimously voted as City Council President earlier this year. A third-generation teacher, Derby has taught physical education and wellness at Northampton High School for the last 20 years.
Derby explained he felt his leadership skills have only sharpened over his career whether it was his initial career path or his experience as an elected city official the last two decades plus.
A self-proclaimed “mutt,” Derby explained his mother’s side is almost split between Irish and Jewish heritage, while on his father’s side he had a great grandmother who was a Native American from the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah). This cultural background, especially from his great grandmother, laid a foundation for Derby that had helped steer his path in life.
“I’m this weird mutt, which is cool because I have all these components that kind of make me who I am and they’re all very different,” said Derby. “My dad was raised by his grandmother, my great grandmother, and so he really kind of embodied a lot of the teachings of her native background, and so it really influenced me in a lot of ways.”
Derby was tapped at 18 to be one of the first instructors on the Northampton Recreation Department’s Wilderness Summer Program. From that role, he leveraged his experience and started for another company leading bike tours all over the nation and eventually the world. During this time, he went to school for his associates where he studied leadership before attending Prescott College in Arizona, a school that specializes in outdoor leadership.
“Managing groups and dynamics and interpersonal communications and all these things are really important for when you’re out in the field with groups,” Derby explained.
Derby would then leverage himself into another position when he began working for an international adventure touring company and leading backpacking trips in New Zealand, Australia and other places around the world. The experiences have him firsthand experience at leading groups in various settings.
Eventually though, Derby was forced to slow down and reassess when his wife became pregnant with their first child. After moving back to the area, Derby eventually secured a job with the Hampshire Educational Collaborative where he began steady work through different programs.
Over his time spent with the collaborative, Derby led multiple grant led programs as a project director, including working with Hampshire Regional High School where he was tasked with developing a five-day extended day program with transportation, and then another opportunity arose as a new grant led to Derby working on training PE teachers in experiential education.
Derby also explained he did work with the collaborative for emergency response and hazard mitigation practices in school. Working with five different schools Derby helped update emergency plans, policy and training for school emergency operations and lock down protocols.
“I’d learned about all the police and fire world and how that interacts with school and hazard mitigation and all this stuff. It was this really unique introduction. I went out to Denver and got trained on helping schools respond to emergencies,” said Derby.
Through this work Derby eventually found the opening to his current job as a teacher at Northampton High School.
It is this life experience that Derby says has helped sharpen and excel with leadership skills and part of the reason he ran for City Council 22 years ago. Now, with the opportunity to run for mayor, Derby feels he is taking the next step in his evolution as a public servant.
“I tell people I cut my teeth making decisions where if I make the wrong decision, I’m not the only one dying. I have a whole group of people I could potentially kill. Literally a whole group of people hanging a thousand feet up on a cliff. If I am not good at making decisions, then I’m putting not only myself but other people in mortal danger. That was a really great way for me to be able to cut my skills at being good at making decisions and its really, really served me well over my life,” said Derby. “It’s another circle. You step into the circle and see you can occupy the circle. Then you step into a bigger circle and see you can occupy this circle too.”
Derby said if elected, he intends to continue being an openly communicative mayor, something he has attempted to do even since accepting the interim position. He added he wants to be a boots-on-the-ground mayor and that transparency has always been key for him as a councilor and will continue to be if elected.
“If you’re in those situations and you’re not a good communicator, then you’re going to get into trouble. If you’re not organized, if you can’t think creatively and find creative solutions, you’re going to be in trouble,” Derby said. “When I got into the mayor’s office, I found myself leaning into the interpersonal part. Being able to communicate with people, being able to listen to people. Being able to share ideas and really process what people were telling me and then let them know that I was hearing what they were saying and was responsive to that. So that’s really a huge piece, the ability to communicate and listen.”
Derby said another piece needed in taking this position is being able to provide creative solutions to difficult problems and that being in the mayor’s office through his interim role had given him new perspective on what is possible and what can be accomplished.
“You have to think creatively and be able to pivot in an instant and be able to triage and figure out what’s the most important thing — how do I solve this problem. So, when I was in the mayor’s office, it sort of just dawned on me,” said Derby. “The reason I kept doing it [serving the council] was because I saw the amazing impact that some of the choices that we make as a City Council can have on the city.”
As an example, Derby cited how at one point in time during his tenure as a councilor, the city was struggling to get restaurants in town. Derby was part of the effort to go over quote from legislative liquor licenses which eventually allowed for the city to secure more new restaurants for business.
“We got all of these restaurants that just would not have come here had it not been for those legislative liquor licenses. So, you see those things, those tangible things that you can do to really improve the community and really drive growth in a positive way,” Derby added.
Derby also noted that his 22 years of experience on the council gives him familiar relationships with those in the city and will help make for a cleaner transition. If elected, Derby would resign from his position at Northampton High School to be full-time in the position.
“That was a tough decision for me because I really love teaching. But, like I said before, I can’t just walk away and turn my back on the city that I care about. Sometimes you have to be a little selfless, even if it means you have to sacrifice a little bit for the common good,” Derby said.
Derby added his platform is fairly simple as he said he is a believer in supporting the commons, which includes fire, police, open and public spaces, and schools.
“The things that we all think are so important that we don’t allow them to be privatized,” he said.
Derby shared that he also wishes healthcare and housing were considered more generally as “commons” and that they will be challenges for the city moving forward. Derby did note that he felt he had an interesting perspective that could be beneficial for a potential mayor having been part of the city government process for so long.
Derby explained that about 20 years ago he and former City Councilor Mike Tiskus led an effort to establish an affordable housing trust fund for the city, where if any development over a certain number of units went in and didn’t have affordable housing, they would have to pay a surcharge. That money would go into a fund strictly used to fund affordable housing projects in the city.
“I can’t even tell you what that fund would probably look like right now after 20 years. It would probably be huge, and we probably wouldn’t be talking about rent control or affordable housing because we would be able to give mini grants to people to help offset their rent, and to developers to develop more parcels of affordable housing,” explained Derby. “We could’ve done so much, and hindsight’s 20/20, but me and Mike were the only ones that voted for it. It’s great to be able to have that perspective. I think it’s important for a mayor to have that perspective to say well, if we had done this back then what would it be now? And it helps you shape what you want to do next.”
As Derby enters the race right when election season ramps up, he reiterated now was the right time for him to take the chance and that he hopes to continue to be as transparent and open as possible and take his leadership skills to the mayor’s office.
“One of the things I pride myself on is I never as a city councilor sat at that podium or that table and said things that I knew to be untrue. I feel like that level of integrity is really important for elected officials. You need people to be honest and upfront because there’s going to be tough times, and you need people to trust you. You shouldn’t give people any reason to not trust you,” said Derby. “If I wasn’t a person of integrity, I wouldn’t have lasted 22 years. If I was difficult to work with, a problem or drama, I would not have lasted 22 years. So, I think that what my job is, is to share that with people and let them know. Even if you don’t know me, I’m a known quantity.”
