Letter: Mayor Macksey Deserves Our Vote

Letter to the Editor06:30PM / Saturday, November 01, 2025Print Story | Email Story

To the Editor:

This November, the North Adams voters have big decisions to make. We have several new, enthusiastic candidates for City Council with diverse areas of focus and the desire to serve the city as it moves forward. It's wonderful to have a choice among so many qualified individuals.

We also have a challenger for the mayor's office: one who speaks about transparency and the need for change. Mr. Berglund has only lived in North Adams for about two years. According to his resume on LinkedIn, he's held various positions as a sales representative. He has no management experience to lead a small city's government and no financial experience to qualify him to deal with its budget. What he does have is a list of problems he sees in the city, though he offers no solutions.

It's easy to point out what needs to be fixed. There are many instances of maintenance and repairs that have been passed along by prior administrations. We need someone who will not only listen to the people of North Adams and understand their concerns, but who also has the know how to do what needs to be done.

Jennifer Macksey is a lifelong resident who knows the struggles North Adams has been through. She possesses an educational and professional background that enabled her to get to work the day she took office.

It's not enough for a candidate to be a nice guy or to have good intentions. The mayor of North Adams must have education, experience, ideas, and a plan to put those ideas into action. This is not a position for on-the-job training. The stakes are too high. Mayor Macksey has proven she is up to dealing with the challenges North Adams faces.

I believe that Mayor Macksey is putting her skills to work for what she believes is the best course for North Adams and has shown she is willing to listen and adjust course when the people of North Adams disagree.

Mayor Macksey has proven her ability to be an effective mayor. She has my vote, and I hope you'll cast your vote for Jennifer Macksey for mayor of North Adams.

Deborah Benoit
North Adams, Mass.

Tags: election 2025, municipal election,

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North Adams School Project Awards $52M Bid

By Tammy Daniels iBerkshires Staff
05:10AM / Friday, February 13, 2026

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The School Building Committee has awarded the Greylock School project to Fontaine Bros. Inc. of Springfield.

Mayor Jennifer Macksey said she could "breathe a little better" with a bid contract that comes in nearly $2 million under budget.

The committee approved a bid of $50,498,544 on Thursday night that includes two alternates — the rebuild of the Appalachian Trail kiosk and the relocation and reconstruction of the baseball field.

"I will say, all in all, for us to have overall the number of bidders that we had interested in our project, and especially to receive the GC bids that we did, the team Colliers and TSKP certainly did a good job attracting people to us," she said. "But this project ... really shows the testament of the good work that Colliers and TSKP and all of you have been doing throughout this process."

Fontaine had the low bid between Brait Builders of Marshfield and J&J Contractors Inc. of North Billerica.

The project had been bid out at $52,250,000 with three alternates: moving the ballfield, the kiosk and vertical geothermal wells.

Committee members asked Timothy Alix of Collier's International, the owner's project manager, about his impressions of the bidders. He was most familiar with Fontaine, having worked with the company on a half-dozen school projects and noted it was the contractor on the Mountain View Elementary School in Easthampton that the Massachusetts School Building Authority has held up as an example school. He also had some of his colleagues call on projects that he had not personally worked on.

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