North Adams Council Seats New Councilor Riehl
New Councilor Virginia Riehl was accompanied by her daughter, Emily Riehl-Bedford.
Virginia Riehl, 10th candidate in last year's election by 41 votes, was elected 5-3 to fill the vacant seat until next election.
She will sit on Community Development and Public Services committees.
"I feel called to serve North Adams, and North Adams has made me a better person," she said after being sworn in. "And then I have one announcement, which is that any compensation I receive in this position, will be donated to the Affordable Housing Trust."
Riehl had had the most public support for filling the seat, including a petition with hundreds of names and letters to the editor encouraging the council to vote her in. She thanked her supporters who were in the audience and at home.
She was sworn by City Clerk Tina Leonesio with her daughter at her side.
The other candidates were Peter Oleskiewicz, a past councilor and current member of the Planning Board and Hoosac Water Quality District; Jesus Leyva, a community activist in his previous hometowns of Greenfield and Northampton; Joseph Ousterhoudt, a hardware store manager; and member of the Democratic City Committee; and Ronald Sheldon, a past candidate for City Council.
Riehl said she has been a civic activist since sixth grade, when she protested that only boys attended the Latin School.
"Those protests taught me that by coming together and not accepting the status quo, each of us can make a difference," she said. "The citizens of North Adams look to the city council to advocate for the changes needed to address the challenges they face every day. I will be that advocate."
Riehl founded the North Adams Community Housing Organization with Councilor Lillian Zavastky and has attended nearly every council meeting and numerous committee meetings since moving to the city. While housing has been in the forefront of her activism, she's pushed for the Capital Improvement Plan and for the council and the Planning Board to be more proactive.
She did feel the council should be paying more attention to housing because it is such a large problem and the issue that residents most often raise.
Riehl said she has had to modify her perspective on housing as she's learned more: "I think I would say my approach is always to research, research, research, and talk to people and better understand the realities."
When asked why she had resigned from the Planning Board, she it was because she felt her skills didn't match with the board's needs since it focused more on zoning than city planning.
"I worked for 15 years in local government. My consulting work started in a psychiatric hospital, where I saw the failure of mental health services and how well-intentioned reforms did not achieve their goals. Over the years, I have worked with every VA hospital, the DoD healthcare system, and all the components of the Department of Health and Human Services," she told the council. "All this work focused on improving the lives of the people our government serves. Civic leadership is about being part of the solution. When I came to North Adams, I committed to being a contributing member of the community."
Each candidate sent a letter of interest and were given three minutes to state why the council should choose them. The council is responsible for filling its vacant seats rather than holding a special election.
The candidates were queried by councilors on such topics as changing your mind when given new information, dealing with disagreements, what as councilor they think they can achieve, what committees they would like to serve on, and how they would approach challenges.
Councilor Keith Bona announced he would not be running for election next year and asked each if they would run in next year's election if they weren't selected: three confirmed, one said maybe and another that he might be interested in another office.
Ousterhodt described some of the issues he's dealt with in a management position and how the recent national election had encouraged him to "get off his butt." As a councilor, he would focus on affordability, especially pointing to underutilized properties
"I think finding ways to use those to just kind of increase the overall housing inventory here would help just bring some costs down, and I think that's a big first step to do," he said.
Oleskiewicz, who did not win re-election last year, spoke to his experience on how the city is funded and operated and his support for public safety and the Department of Public Works.
"Our public safety departments, they need tools to operate, and we've got to ensure that they have the proper tools to do what they need to do to keep us safe, keep the streets safe, fight fires, drugs, anything that happens in the city," he said. "So I always took great pride when I was on certain committees as being part of public services and public safety, because honestly, those are two of the biggest departments that make this city tick."
Sheldon, who uses a wheelchair, has run before on making the city accessible and standing up for people who are disabled, and said he might run again.
"I believe in having a disabled person on the City Council and fixing these sidewalks that are up and down like a roller coaster, and I hope to do whatever is necessary to make the city better," he said, adding if elected he would "Work with the Department of Public Works and try to get money for the town to do things."
Leyva has recently been advocating for more state Chapter 70 funding and noted other organizations he's worked with before coming to North Adams. If not selected, he said he might consider School Committee.
Still, he said, education is not his singular interest but "the city is always limited by the budget, and when you look at the size of the budget, a large portion of it is devoted to schools. ... So, if there is to be the ability to fund other things, we have to make sure that we're getting an adequate."
Councilor Bryan Sapienza nominated Oleskiewicz and Councilor Peter Breen nominated Riehl. In a roll call vote, Sapienza, Lisa Blackmer and Marie McCarron (remotely) voted for Oleskiewicz and Breen, Bona, Andrew Fitch, President Ashley Shade and Lillian Zavatsky for Riehl.
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