When Roxann Wedegartner takes office January 2 as the mayor of Greenfield, Massachusetts, it won’t be as a newcomer to city government.
Wedegartner served on the city’s planning board for 16 years and the school committee for six. She said those stints lend broad experience in two critical areas: economic development and education.
Roxann Wedegartner, Greenfield mayor: Education is a significant part of our budget. It's also a very important part of what government should offer its citizens, and the best education we can afford.
As far as economic development goes, I've had an opportunity over those 16 years to be a part of just about every economic development project, small and large, that have come down the pipe. And most of those projects — I would say, actually, probably all of them — continue to bring taxes in. And we need to have a stronger tax base in Greenfield.
Kari Njiiri, NEPR: One of the issues that, I guess, ties in is zoning — that's been a concern for many years. How do you plan to address those?
Well, we actually have a very progressive zoning bylaw, as it is. It has worked quite well over the years.
What we're trying to do now is to bring our zoning along with what some trends in development are — such as more ability for mixed-use, more ability to combine commercial and light manufacturing with residential, and utilize some of the space that already exists in Greenfield.
We are running out of developable land, quite frankly. So if we do anything at all with zoning down the road, it will be to make it more palatable, more easily done, to create mixed-use projects.
Homelessness has been a big issue in town. It's received a lot of attention, with a homeless camp set up last year on the town common. But limited capacity at shelters remain a problem. What is your plan?
Homelessness is sort of a two-track thing there. There's homelessness, meaning homelessness, and then there's the need for more affordable housing. And they relate, but they're tackled differently.
So the most immediate need for homeless people, I think, is a winter survival plan, for lack of a better word. We have, since last winter, had the opportunity to bring on a warming center at the Salvation Army. We still have our shelters. So it takes the burden off of them.
I would like to explore some other ways in which we can encourage the use of warming shelters. I mean, our churches are willing to provide some help.
Voters in November approved two ballot questions, one that would authorize the building of a new library. The other, the safe sanctuary question that limits city employees cooperating with federal immigration enforcement. These have been rather divisive issues in Greenfield. How are you going to address that divide?
Well, we address it in the election, for sure, that we are going to build a new library. And I worked along with the sitting mayor, Mayor Martin, with the list for the library building committee. So once the new people that are on the library building can come on board, we'll start to work on planning the library, in detail, down to the design of the library. It's pretty well set, but we just need to look at it again.
With regard to safe cities: in the end, the safe cities bylaw basically codified what we were doing — have been doing all along for two years — under Mayor Martin's executive order. Now, under my administration, it will be actually an ordinance for the town. I supported it.
And I have every confidence that where the bumps are in the road, if there are any — and I'm thinking now, because it expanded to other areas, not just our public safety — that we can work those out. And coming up with maybe stronger guidelines under public safety with what our other town employees can and cannot do.
