Northampton resident Dan Breindel is the fourth candidate for mayor in the upcoming Sept. 16 preliminary election.
Photo credit: Dan Breindel
NORTHAMPTON — The fourth and final candidate to square off in the upcoming Northampton mayoral race is Dan Breindel.
Breindel is up against mayoral candidates Jillian Duclos, Dave Dombrowski and incumbent Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra.
The two candidates with the most votes from the Sept. 16 preliminary election will face off on the November ballot.
Breindel, 39, has worn many hats in media as an artist in different fields. He has experienced working in television and mostly radio and film, has also worked in multimedia and production through light installation and nightlife related events. This background and experience from his time in New York City and elsewhere was part of the reason he eventually moved to Northampton, looking to be a part of the venues and everything else in the performance arts included in the city.
“I really take it very personally, sort of the state of the venues and the nightlife because I just know what it could be and I know what it isn’t,” said Breindel.
Married and a father of two, Breindel moved to the city in 2019 looking to lay down roots with his family. Breindel explained he fell in love with the community as a child where he would visit with family and as an adult, he and his wife made a tradition years before their marriage of meeting in the city every year for First Night, as he lived in NYC and she was located in Brookline.
Now, though, as he has decided to run for mayor, Breindel said the things that have made the community so unique and special are starting to deteriorate.
“Especially in the past eight years, a lot of business owners that we think as part of the community — and essentially have been opened for decades, I think, are really seeing a bit of a downturn and are starting to feel like they’re not going to be able to stick around, which to me — that’s what I moved here for. That’s what I love about this place, the energy that went into a lot of these people opening these places in the first place and we see them closing without really getting any support,” said Breindel.
Breindel said his motivations to run stemmed from wanting to be part of a government that works with and for the people after feeling the current administration and city efforts have only been adding to a decline of what makes the city unique. Some of his main focuses are education funding, reorganization of capital investments and retaining the spirit and culture of Northampton’s downtown and night life that has been a huge part of its history and identity.
He added that he believes that City Hall has found itself committed to too many expensive, unpopular and city-transforming projects that are having impacts on the core functions of the local government. Specifically, he made clear his opposition to the Picture Main Street project, which is aiming for construction to begin in 2026 and will remake the city’s downtown at a cost of $29 million, mostly paid for by MassDOT.
“The Picture Main Street project is being simultaneously used to say, ‘well this will be how we rejuvenate the downtown,’ so they don’t do anything towards rejuvenating the downtown in real time. There’s a real dark shadow hanging over any development or entrepreneurialism in the downtown. Nobody wants to buy into a five-year lease where they’re looking at the numbers and saying, ‘well my revenue’s going to fall off. Why would I want to buy into that?” said Breindel.
Breindel said if elected he would not go through with the plans for Picture Main Street and said the way the project has been presented has been misleading.
“They brag about how it’s going to be good for accessibility and how bike riders want it, well, bike riders and accessibility activists were asking for these changes about a decade ago … in 2017 is when they first asked,” said Breindel. “We haven’t even figured out a way to get wheelchairs over the little curbs into certain stores for 10 years. We kicked it down the road, and they’ve just done it with everything. They’re not fixing roads, they’re not fixing sidewalks, they’re not dealing with the environmental stuff.”
He noted that some of the funding for the project is not forthcoming as they are still relying on federal dollars to assist in the project, and that the perception that this project is needed mostly due to the piping and infrastructure replacements below the street is inaccurate.
“Those two things are completely separable. And then the same for there being road and safety stuff. We can be focusing on the accessibility issues that people have been chatting about for 10 years. In terms of Picture Main Street, there are things we can focus on and fix and then the bigger stuff I think you can just completely put it on hold or stop. I think it doesn’t really pass muster,” he said.
He also called out the current administration for its approach to school spending, calling for more investment in the district. The last two fiscal budgets have increased spending, but still led to reductions in staff and other services. Breindel said, if elected, the underfunding of school balances will end.
Like the schools, Breindel said many other issues ongoing in the city could start to be resolved through better management and proactive approaches to the problems, and would help the city’s long term prospects.
“We just create these compounded problems by not just spending a little bit of money and doing realistic budgeting. We create these larger and larger issues,” said Breindel. “We’re very wrongheaded about how we prioritize those things.”
Breindel added he felt it was “gross mismanagement” that has led to many of the city’s current issues in the schools and for its pending capital investments, both for the Picture Main Street project and for the influxes of luxury housing projects.
“I’m not against all capital projects, but I want to look at them and say ‘these are the ones that make sense, these ones will make their money back, this is a valuable investment.’ And doing this stuff on credit makes so much more sense. Our mayor hoards cash and then spends cash on everything. We have a great credit rating. We could be doing things on credit, and it would cost us less.”
He continued, “I think this administration and this city have not been making basic fixes and upkeep as a way of creating enough leverage with the public that they can say, ‘oh, these big projects have to be done.’ The venues are closed, Main Street is emptying out, college kids don’t like to come, and tourism isn’t going up, their solution for that is, ‘OK, let’s totally remake downtown.’ And that would have seemed crazy 10 years ago, but at this point, it’s starting to make a little bit of sense because it seems so dire. But I’m here to tell you it’s because they haven’t done anything. They’re allowing it to get dire. It’s their neglect, and frankly they’re sort of Republican fiscal policies are exacerbating or creating many of these problems now that they claim they have to do these big public investments to solve. I don’t think these are going to be solutions, and they created the problems in the first place. Again, its mismanagement.”
Breindel said if elected he plans to be more transparent and communicative than the current administration and support the revival of the downtown concert and venue scene.
“To me, I’m very intimately aware of what this town’s sort of cachet was, how it was pulling people in. How it hit you when you first got to town, and how different it was from everywhere else,” said Breindel. “People coming to visit on the weekends and all the people coming to see the shows were sort of cool and wanted cool stuff and respected cool stuff, and it created this really unique culture where around the rest of the country you see so much brick and mortar dying, or becoming very corporate or aiming for a very affluent audience and consumer base. This is a community that didn’t do that for a very long time.”
He added that if continued in this direction, it could be the end of the Northampton so many have grown to love and appreciate for its history and culture.
“There are not many communities where these things exist anymore let alone thrive and this is the kind of community where it did and that’s so important,” said Breindel. “These big plans they have in store for transforming the city I think is going to be the end of that. And then we’re like every other community. You already see it, our neighboring towns, they’re doing nightlife and venues. They’re eating our lunch and taking the cachet.”
To learn more about Breindel’s campaign as well as other issues he is running on, visit “Dan for Mayor” on Facebook.
“Nobody moves out to the Pioneer Valley to hear construction sounds for five years straight or to breathe in exhaust. Nobody’s here for that,” Breindel said. “It’s more and more an endangered species kind of a culture and I hope people kind of recognize this is sort of one of the last outposts of it.”
