Two-term incumbent Dina Lampiasi and perennial outsider candidate Craig Gaetani are facing off in the contest. The debate was hosted by Pittsfield Community Television and iBerkshires.com.
While Ward 6 is a sprawling area that includes large swathes of residential and rural land, it also covers the Westside neighborhood — the heart of Pittsfield’s Black community long subject to disproportionate levels of crime and poverty in the wake of redlining that left it underinvested in for decades.
“Through my tenure as the word counselor and more recently knocking on doors, it is obvious and apparent that the issues in 6A and 6B are strikingly different, and the concerns on most families’ minds’ are different. But there are a few unifying topics," said Lampiasi. “Homeowners are concerned about the taxes, they're concerned about infrastructure, and most notably, increasing taxes and shrinking household incomes is a big concern. As a millennial shouldered with student debt, new family, and homeowners, I understand this, especially when I talk to our aging residents. We're more similar than we are dissimilar in that way. To me, we need to focus on attracting revenue sources, we need to focus on things that will bring families like mine to Pittsfield. We need to attract business, we need to clean up downtown, and we can't stop focusing on our historically neglected neighborhoods.”
“Some of the things that are important to everybody in the city, not just Ward 6 is the taxes in the city of Pittsfield," said Gaetani. “We have seen last year a tax rise of 9%, which was the highest tax rise during the, for the whole history of the city of Pittsfield. And of course, there's other things that I'm very concerned about in Ward 6. And specifically, I'm concerned about the roads. If you remember what the roads looked like in the past winter, no matter where you go, you would hit a pothole. I myself, on a couple of my cars, lost control arms on my car that I had to have replaced because of the bad situation of the control arms. Now, potholes, I guess you could refer to the city as Potholes City, but Ward 6 has its number of potholes.”
Gaetani, well known as an outspoken critic of Pittsfield’s leadership, said he disagrees with traffic calming measures being employed on West Street after a pedestrian crossing it with her toddler was killed by a driver.
“Where the individual got killed, that intersection hasn't had really any accidents for over 100 years, and because there was an accident doesn't mean that we fly into a tailspin and go out and do something that's going to cost $8 million or $10 million," he said. "The narrowing of the road is definitely not the right thing to do, because by narrowing the road, what you're going to do is you're going to increase the number of head-on collisions during those narrow areas that you're trying to pass through. And so consequently, if I become Ward 6 councilor, I'm going to go back to the drawing board and try to build a consensus on the city council to do something better there, such as good signage, cautionary signage, and blinking yellow and red light at all times there.”
Lampiasi backed the city’s plan.
“Residents have been asking for this for a very long time," she said. "It doesn't matter to me how frequently we have a death. What matters is that people don't feel safe driving on West Street or walking on West Street. We've had three public meetings to discuss the first proposal that was put forward, and those were incredibly productive. The opinions that were brought to the table were diverse, and the engineers in the room were listening. I am hopeful that as we move forward in the process, we will have another round of similar input sessions with a second proposal, and in the end, by coming together and having these conversations with the community and with the people who use West Street the most, we will end up at an end product that most resembles the expectations of the residents.”
You can hear the full debate here:
The election is Tuesday.
