Great Barrington — Resident Ben Elliott (D) is running for a Selectboard seat currently held by Ed Abrahams (D). Abrahams has decided not to run again for the Selectboard seat, which is a three-year term. Elliott, who has not served in town office before, is running against Sharon Gregory.
He grew up in both Housatonic and Great Barrington and earned an Associate of Arts degree from Bard College at Simon’s Rock. Elliott eventually moved away from the Berkshires when he attended Columbia College in Chicago, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in film, cinema, and video studies.
“I spent most of the last 15 years in Chicago and New York, but I was back here for about two years in between,” Elliott told The Berkshire Edge. “I was in Chicago during the pandemic when my wife and I had our first child. My wife is from Lenox, and after a few months, we realized that we wanted to be close to our families, which is why we decided to move back home.”
Elliott said, “Even when I lived in those other cities, I always thought of the Berkshires as my home.” He explained, “I’m a fifth-generation Great Barrington resident. My great-grandparents grew up here, so I have some deep roots in this area. This area is an amazing place to be, and all of my closest friends are still here.”
While he has not held political office before, Elliott said that he has been involved with volunteering for candidates. “I volunteered for U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Senate campaign, President Barack Obama’s first campaign, and I volunteered for a phone bank for President Joe Biden’s campaign,” he said. “But my involvement with local politics started when I moved back to Housatonic,” Elliott said. “I live directly across the street from the Housatonic School building. I started attending Housatonic Improvement Committee meetings as they were discussing the future of that project. I became so involved that I am now a member of that committee.”
But Elliott said that the real issue that made him run for a Selectboard seat is the continual problems the town is facing with Housatonic Water Works. “I’m an HWW customer, and in the summertime, I have to give my daughter baths with brown water,” he said. “We are all constantly worried about the safety of our water, which is why I want to have a voice.”
As for a solution to the ongoing problems with HWW’s water quality, Elliott said that “I think it will be hard, but our best option is creating a public utility.” He elaborated, “I think if there is a lot of money on the table and if we can create a public utility, we can make sustainable long-term fixes to the water system that will help people without having to pass those costs onto the ratepayers and taxpayers of the town,” Elliott said. “If HWW ended up being bought out by someone like Aquarian, and if they do fix the infrastructure, I think the ratepayers would end up paying for it. Or there is a chance that we would be stuck with a subpar water system and would not have any recourse. While we have not created a public utility in town before, I think we’ve got some really smart and good people in this town who can start making a plan.”
While Elliott called the HWW situation a short-term crisis, he called the affordable housing situation in town a long-term crisis. “We have to make it affordable for families to live in this town so they can have careers that they can grow into, and to be able to afford to raise children in this town,” he said. “We need to have an economy that retains the children for them to go to our schools so we will be able to have multi-generational families. I think that the Selectboard and the Planning Board have both done a lot of great work on affordable housing. The town’s Affordable Housing subcommittee is pushing for tax credits for landlords who offer affordable housing, which is a great path forward. There is just not enough affordable housing stock for everyone, we have to find ways to make the current housing that’s available affordable for everyone.”
Elliott said that another issue he would like the town to tackle is finding ways to support affordable child care. “We know that Massachusetts has some of the highest child-care costs in the country,” Elliott said. “We have two centers in town, but only one program for infants. All of those programs have wait lists, and they can only have a certain number of kids in the room. They are operating on a very thin margin, and they can’t pay their staff that much. I think we need to find ways to offer grant money to help people with tuition. I think we also need to look for more money to help people find child care, and also find ways to bring more child-care centers into town. I know the Planning Board has it where if a new development has a child-care center, they get a tax credit. But I think we should find ways to make child care more affordable, and to possibly subsidize child-care employees.”
One other issue Elliott said he would tackle as a member of the Selectboard is pedestrian safety on Main Street. “I am not happy with the previous decision the Selectboard made on that,” Elliott said, referring to the board’s previous decision concerning Main Street. “If anything, it doesn’t address the blind spot on [crossing] into the middle lanes on Main Street. It isn’t helping pedestrians. Numerous times, someone in the outer lane of Main Street stops, but the car in the inner lane doesn’t stop and they just speed on through [the crosswalk]. I walk with my child in a stroller, and since you walk with your child your kid goes out in front. When they speed on through the crosswalk, it’s one of the worst feelings to have. I just don’t think that the Selectboard has done enough to protect pedestrians crossing Main Street.”
Elliott added that, while he has never held an elected office, he knows that the position of being a member of the Selectboard can be tough, but he is up for the challenges that it brings. “I think that, often, it is a pretty thankless job, but everyone is doing the best that they can,” Elliott said. “I think that the current Selectboard is doing good work and they have good ideas, but it’s just a matter of finding ways to work together.”
