Meet the candidates: Northampton City Council Ward 7

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On Tuesday Nov. 4, Northampton residents will cast ballots in the general election for mayoral, City Council, and School Committee candidates. Early voting begins on Saturday Oct. 18, and scheduled voting hours can be found on the city’s website.

There are currently two candidates running for one City Council seat to represent Ward 7. Their League of Women Voters debate is taking place on Monday, Oct. 27 at the BOMBYX Center for Arts & Equity. The Shoestring asked each candidate an identical set of questions in preparation for these profiles, which are listed in the same order as they’ll appear on the ballot.

Susan Timberlake

Susan Timberlake hopes to bring her “data-driven” perspective to the City Council to help Northampton navigate turbulent times.

Timberlake said she spent most of her career “reengineering” organizational logistics for greater efficiency. “I’m one of those people that works behind the scenes to get it done,” she said of her work in roles such as director of administrative systems at McLean Hospital in Belmont.

Before moving to Northampton over a decade ago, Timberlake said she consulted for the Select Board of Belmont, Massachusetts, where she lived, on finding a new town administrator, and served on five municipal boards and committees. It was a time of strife for the town government, she said, which taught her the importance of bipartisan collaboration. 

“You need to be open and act like a community instead of armed camps,” she said.

Since retiring in 2015, Timberlake said she has worked at the housing nonprofit OneHolyoke CDC and as a co-producer of the show Civil Politics on Valley Free Radio.

Timberlake said that residents who have been in Ward 7 for generations are “getting squeezed” by high tax rates and the stretch code, which requires all-electric heating systems for newly constructed buildings. In spite of her misgivings about this sustainability measure preventing new housing developments, she thinks that deteriorating infrastructure in the face of climate change is another major issue for residents. 

“Some of the basics are falling apart,” she said, citing sidewalks and storm drains in need of repairs. “[The taxpayers] look around and go, ‘Well, where’s my money going?’”

Timberlake praised how careful she said the City Council has been with money, and the resulting boost to the city’s reserve funds, but said that the budget needs to be “redirected” towards different priorities. If elected, she would want to enhance communication between the City Council and department heads during the budgeting process. She would also try to redirect some of the city’s revenue from the cannabis industry to the schools and reduce the Community Preservation Fund to make it more targeted.

“We end up with a lot of money, and then we go searching for projects,” she said.

Timberlake described her opponent Rachel Maiore, who has served as city councilor for Ward 7 for six years, as “delightful” and said she has voted for her twice. Yet, she said now is the time for a candidate who is tough. 

“I’m highly trained and very rigorous,” she said, “Northampton is going to need it because we’re going to get into trouble when the feds cut off all the money.”

Timberlake identifies as a moderate Massachusetts Republican who is socially liberal and fiscally conservative, and said she has supported statewide Republicans like former governors Bill Weld and Mitt Romney and former U.S. Sen. Scott Brown.

“My party at the federal level is scary,” she said, “I shouldn’t even say that, but I’m scared of my party at the moment.” She said that she differs from the stereotypical Republican party by being gay, pro-gay rights, pro-choice, and “pro-intersex.”

With, she estimates, about 800 Republicans across Northampton (the official number of registered Republicans as of 2024 is 620), she said she knows that progressives will not vote for her. Nevertheless, she wants to “show people that a Republican doesn’t have to be crazy” and can enjoy living in the politically engaged community of Northampton.

Rachel Maiore

Rachel Maiore is the incumbent in the race, having been the city councilor for Ward 7 for three terms.

Before her election to the City Council, Maiore was a community health organizer in Latin America and the United States and a regional organizer for Jobs with Justice. She is currently a community organizing trainer for MoveOn and first ran for office to represent her community after serving as co-director of the Pioneer Valley Women’s March.

“I’m a low-income solo parent of three school-age children,” Maiore said. “I understand folks who live here, who feel like [their] struggles to get by aren’t seen in a place like Northampton, but I’ve seen them.”

Maiore said that during her most recent term, she was proud of the City Council’s focus on affordability and eliminating real estate brokers’ fees, a resolution that Gov. Maura Healey implemented statewide later in the year. Going forward, she’d like these discussions to transcend affordable housing alone and include topics like public transportation. 

“We are losing good people,” she said of the rising cost of living in Northampton.

In a fourth term, Maiore said she would work to counteract the “fiasco” at the federal level by shoring up “bread and butter services” such as maintaining sidewalks, supporting a growing senior population with senior services, and sustaining a strong Department of Health and Human Services.

As parts of Ward 7 are far from downtown, Maiore said that her residents have different priorities, like land preservation, as opposed to high-visibility projects like Picture Main Street. 

“It’s my job to keep Leeds and the part of Florence I represent in the forefront of these conversations,” she said.

More broadly, she believes that Northampton has the “moral obligation” to protect community members’ civil liberties from abuses of power at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, for example. 

“I don’t think shrinking down protects us,” she said. “Mobilizing, which by its nature spirals and gains more voices and more power, is what we need to be doing to counter some of the terrible things that are impacting our residents.”

With tense debates over the school budgets in recent years, Maiore wants to improve communication between City Council and the public. As finance committee chair for two terms, Maiore said she began hosting listening sessions earlier in the budget process to hear from residents about their priorities.

“The best resource we have in our city is our community members,” she said. “They want to be part of the decision-making, and the way to do that is to really lay it out more clearly to everyone and have more transparency.” 

Maiore, who the Support Our Schools PAC has endorsed, also emphasized her support for budgeting that will strengthen schools, saying that the city’s schools “need to be seen as an investment [and] core to the health of our community.”

“If we do not do a good job in general education for our children, we’re going to produce more children who need specialized and more expensive education,” she said.

Maiore believes that her years of experience set her apart from her opponent. The more years she’s spent networking within City Council, the more flexible and efficient she has become in carrying out initiatives and bringing forward the pulse of her ward.

“I have a track record of leading on tough issues: safe consumption sites, divesting from Israel, crafting a policy order to protect reproductive and gender-affirming health care data,” she said, “We’re having a big turnover on council, and I look forward to working with the new folks and to provide some foundation.”