Sheffield — The Town of Sheffield Democratic Committee hosted two of the Democratic candidates for state representative in the 3rd Berkshire District on July 25. After opening statements, candidates Leigh Davis and Patrick White fielded questions from a packed audience at Dewey Hall. The predominant theme of the concerns expressed by residents, and echoed by the candidates, was preserving the environmental, aesthetic, and economic integrity of the Berkshires, despite its limited state representation.
Leigh Davis, in her fifth year as vice chair of the Great Barrington Selectboard, opened with a story of falling in love with the community after getting stuck in a snowstorm and wandering around Great Barrington on New Year’s Eve in 2007, while she was still living in Ireland. After moving here and struggling to support her three children, she eventually became the development director overseeing the $80 million revitalization of Eagle Mill in Lee.
Davis works for Construct, raising money for the affordable-housing nonprofit, and secured the purchase of the Windflower Inn for workforce housing. As chair of the Selectboard Housing Subcommittee, she fought for a short-term rental bylaw to ensure long-term housing availability in Great Barrington.
Patrick White began with a word of support for his fellow Stockbridge Select Board member Jamie Minacci, who couldn’t attend due to health reasons. “I think we’ve got four great candidates,” he added, “and whoever you choose, you can’t go wrong.”
White highlighted his ties to the Berkshires; his parents moved here in 1957, and he graduated from Monument. Having also worked for many years in Boston, he said he had the contacts there that he needs to be effective on day one.
The role of government, White said, is on one hand aspirational—“thinking big.” He cited working with the Stockbridge-Munsee band of Mohicans toward various reparations, and using emergency appropriations to treat a rare remaining strand of old-growth hemlocks in Ice Glen and save them from the wooly adelgid.
On the other hand are the practical needs of the people—aging volunteer fire and ambulance squads that need to be professionalized, as well as the housing measures and bridge repairs he fought for as a Select Board member.
When asked about a measure that streamlined large-scale solar arrays, as part of the recently passed Massachusetts Climate Omnibus bill, both Davis and White emphasized the necessity of local control.
Davis said clean energy needs have to be balanced with local control when it comes to permitting and siting solar arrays. She supports the net zero climate goal, but “not at the expense of local communities having mirrors on their mountains.” She cited a loophole she fought to close that similarly removed local control in the case of proposed horse racing at the Great Barrington fairgrounds.
Davis also said she was interested in the possibility of putting subsidized solar arrays on farms, so that the land could serve a dual purpose, but noted that could raise problems for farmers down the road, too.
White, who serves on the Community Climate Advisory Board for the state, confirmed that the bill overrides most local control on solar. Even if you put solar on every roof in Massachusetts, he noted, that only gets a third of the way to the goal.
He said the state needs to recognize that Berkshire County is driven by a tourist economy, and so we need to “start with the worst land, and preserve the best land.” The idea of developing mountains worries him. State Sen. Paul Mark (D – Berkshire, Hampden, Franklin, and Hampshire District), he believed, had a good idea that didn’t pass: to start with the brownfields. White stressed that he would, if elected, be representing our interests, including advocating for offshore wind over sacrificing forests in Berkshires, if it came to that.
In response to a resident’s concern about the Scenic Mountain Act not being enforced, Davis said the issue was “on their radar all the time” in Great Barrington and that they were using that state act to ensure that people breaking the rules replant trees or get fined. She declared that we need to protect our land in the Berkshires, which is “ripe for developers … we have to stand firm and say, ‘You’re not going to destroy our water … our mountains … our air.’”
White agreed, adding we “have to make it expensive to break the rules.” In Stockbridge, where he volunteers for the conservation commission, someone who was threatening to cut an area backed down, recounted White, when told they would be fined $300 a day per tree until the tree was replanted.
On a similar note, speaking to a question about plastic packaging and pollution, White stressed that “holding polluters accountable is critical … We’ve got to make it so expensive for them to pollute that they don’t.” Berkshire County has seen the “true cost” of environmental degradation, he said.
White recounted how when he was young, he and a friend used to wade into the Housatonic to retrieve balls next to the Stockbridge golf course. They would clean them up and sell them back to golfers. His friend died from a rare form of throat cancer, said White, and so did his neighbor.
In response to the only philosophical question of the night, about a representative’s knowledge purportedly being “a mile wide and an inch deep,” Davis talked about her deep dive to learn about carbon capture credits in an effort to “monetize the beauty we have here so that it’s worth something to the state, even though a third of our land is not developable.
Not only do we in the Berkshires care about preserving our land, and care that small-scale farmers can afford to live and work here, said Davis, but open space and forests should be seen as contributions to the state’s climate change goals. “We are the lungs of the Commonwealth, we’re sequestering carbon; that should be worth something, we deserve money for that.”
Davis is also trying to find creative ways to close the widening economic gap through such measures as subsidizing housing. “I always do a deep dive,” she added, noting that her early work as a film editor instilled an extreme attention to detail, while also keeping in view the big picture.
In response to the very specific plight of a Mill River resident whose riverfront property is continuously being destabilized by climate change-fueled flooding, White said that was “not a legislative or a grant situation,” but an emergency situation. “You’re one bad rainstorm away from losing your house.” The climate bill includes “a giant pot of money” for exactly those situations, and he told the resident he would connect him with the federal funds infrastructure office.
The final question of the night regarded how the candidates would retain and attract young people and tech jobs.
Davis said that economic development was a passion of hers and that she was on the board of 1Berkshire, among other endeavors. She spoke about improving the pipeline that would cultivate relationships between young people and potential employers, and about her own son in the pharmaceutical field, who wanted to stay in the area but was pulled away due to the a lack of affordable housing and transportation.
White stated that his background was in creating jobs, as he had founded several companies in Boston. He argued that we need to do a better job of pitching the Berkshires to small tech companies. The state has two funds that provide micro-loans to such companies, for instance. He argued that the prohibitive 8.5 percent interest rate needs to be drastically reduced.
“I know how to pitch owners of companies, and investors who fund those companies. I will make it my personal mission to recruit companies to come to the Berkshires. Why we’re not reinvigorating the Berkshires with manufacturing jobs is beyond me,” White declared.
The Democratic primary election will be held on Tuesday, September 3.
