Incumbent North Adams Mayor Jennifer Macksey won her second two-year term on Nov. 7.
Macksey received 1,728 votes, while challenger Aprilyn Carsno, who also ran for mayor in 2021, received 163 votes. Voter turnout reached around 20 percent.
Macksey told WAMC Northeast Public Radio that the election affirmed the voters’ trust in her leadership.
“It says that I’m doing things right in my first term, and it tells me that I need to continue on the path that I am,” she said. “I am really excited about the results, and I think it just proves that my work is paying off.”
Macksey became the first female mayor of North Adams in 2021. Before becoming mayor, she served as the assistant superintendent of operations and finance at the North Berkshire School Union. She also previously taught at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts and Southern Vermont College and served in various financial oversight capacities for the city of North Adams.
During her first term, Macksey’s priorities included infrastructure, public safety projects, and economic development.
She moved the North Adams Police Department out of its aging station, which was not compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and temporarily relocated its officers to the Berkshire Plaza.
Through funding from the federal 911 Grant Program, the department hired new officers and invested in new dispatch equipment. Macksey told The Berkshire Eagle that the move was “huge for morale on the police side.”
Macksey also worked to allocate state and federal funds toward infrastructure repair, according to the Eagle. Ongoing infrastructure projects include the Walnut Street wall collapse, the Galvin Road culvert, the YMCA roof, the Brown Street Bridge, dam inspections, and sidewalk replacements, Macksey told the Eagle.
Additionally, Macksey has closed a million-dollar deficit of grant accounts, created when expenditures exceeded city grant accounts, impacting the availability of funds for projects. Macksey told the Eagle that closing the deficit was a flagship accomplishment.
Looking ahead to her second term, Macksey said she plans to focus on schooling.
“Education is top of my priority list — making sure our schools are safe, we’re getting adequate education, [and] we have adequate facilities,” she told WAMC.
Macksey also added that she hopes to attract new businesses and residents to North Adams.
“We’re still very focused on economic development and attracting new people [and] new businesses to our community, [while] at the same time, making sure we keep our existing businesses,” she said to WAMC.
This summer, Macksey approved a tax break for the Tourists Hotel to develop the Blackinton Mill into an additional hotel in an effort to bring visitors to North Adams. Tourists, owned by Eric Kerns and Ben Svenson, invested $17 million in refurbishing the mill into a luxury stay. The new hotel, which plans to open in 2026, will create 25 new jobs and generate an additional $230,000 in tax revenue for the city each year.
Macksey told the Eagle that she is hopeful that the Hoosic River revitalization project, the renovation of the Mohawk Theater, and the continued promotion of MASS MoCA will bring more tourists to the city — though she added that the immediate needs of her constituents will remain her primary focus.
Above all else, she told WAMC, her priority will be “making sure we’re responsive to the citizens in the city.”
