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Clark J. Billings*
Candidate For City Council - North Adams NORTH ADAMS - Clark Billings has seen the city go from the Dark Ages of the Sprague Electric closings into a Renaissance era of Mass MoCA and the beginning of a Reformation, maybe even Enlightenment, with new development projects looming.
The Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts professor of history and political science is one of the longest serving members of the City Council with 21 total years dating to the early 1980s. He ran for mayor in 1983 and state representative in 1984; he left for awhile in 1983 to be town administrator for Wilbraham and was off the council for a few terms in the 1990s. He's seeking re-election to a 12th term.
Billings, 67, has been president four times and thinks the council's current composition works very well.
"I think the mayor trusts this council. We can go back a number of years when there were five who wanted to be mayor - it was like a gang of mini-mayors," He said. "We [councilors] see he's done a wonderful job."
He noted the movement on the Notre Dame property and Clark Biscuit, along with the major retail development planned for Curran Highway.
"Nothing that comprehensive has happened all at once," said Billings. "People from the outside want to invest in North Adams. ... You go back a few years, you couldn't get anybody to invest a dime in North Adams - you couldn't even get people in North Adams to invest."
Empty storefronts on Main Street are still a problem, he said, "But it doesn't bother in terms of the bigger picture."
He remembers going to a municipal association meeting and seeing empty stores across from his hotel in downtown Boston. He and his wife ate at a couple nice restaurants in Wilmington, N.C., when visiting one of his two sons. A couple years later, both were closed. The first three years is tough for any small business, he said, especially in the hospitality field.
The bigger picture is the condominiums created on Main Street and the housing projects at Notre Dame and Clark Biscuit that will bring traffic - and investment - downtown and generate tax revenues.
"I think we've always done that," Billings said about the city taking properties to facilitate development, pointing to its involvement with the former Sprague plant that created Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. The city has also taken older buildings and torn down dilapidated buildings, and turned the properties over to Habitat for Humanity.
He doesn't think the city is unfriendly to business. "I think what you have in some cases are people who want to do it their way and when the Planning Board says you do it our way because we've got the big picture in mind, they get their noses out of joint and blame the Planning Board and the mayor."
He does think the city could draw more tourists to the downtown by creating an art walk along Marshall, Main and Eagle streets. Billings envisions bronze or marble sculptures in a juried show that would encourage residents and visitors alike to linger along the downtown area.
He is a supporter of putting benches on Main Street though would prefer they be privately owned.
"I can certainly feel for people who are less fit than I am," he said, referring to his own need to sit down at times. But people complain "why doesn't the City Council do something?"
"Well, we can't order benches, we can't appropriate money for benches," he continued. "If businesspeople want a bench, work it out with the city."
He doesn't disagree that some city departments are operating with tight staffing, but said, "that's up the mayor."
He makes decisions based on greatest good for the greatest number, he said. Allowing the temporary asphalt plant at the West Shaft Road landfill for work on the Mount Greylock roads was one such decision.
He thinks municipal wireless Internet access, or Wi-Fi, will be brought during the next term. Billings doesn't think it's something the city should be concerned with. "Businesses aren't being denied high-speed Internet. It is available. It shouldn't be the city's purpose to offer it."
He also doesn't think the city should bother with an expensive master planning process: "Master plans are worthless."
That's because they really can't predict future potential, Billings said, noting the city spent money on one the 1970s that envisioned a bridge to the Hairpin Turn. Would anyone have predicted Sprague pulling out, Mass MoCA, the dot.com boom and bust or a wind farm on Florida Mountain? he asked.
"You can't plan for the unknown. You've got to be prepared make adjustments," said Billings. "The Planning Board can look at individual things, but you don't know what somebody's going to propose."
Billings and his wife live on Corinth Street. He is a native of Manchester, N.H., and graduated from the
University of New Hampshire and holds a master's degree in international affairs from Florida State University.
"I'm excited to be here," he said. "I've been excited since 1966 [when I moved here.] |
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