He's a grandstander. A panderer, covering his own lack of significant accomplishments by carping at the mayor and his colleagues on the City Council as they do their best to guide the city through difficult times with ever-diminishing resources and an increasingly cynical public.
That's the worst thing I've heard about Michael Bardsley—a decidedly unflattering view that came from people who vehemently objected to a speech he made at the Sept. 7, 2006 Northampton City Council meeting.
Some people will tell you that Bardsley can't make a decision, that he's always got his finger to the wind. Others will say that he dances fairly lightly around the issues of the day, rarely championing a cause of his own, usually going along with the majority and quibbling only about marginal matters that don't amount to much. Yet others will say that as city Council President he was often unresponsive to his fellow councilors, failing to return phone calls and remaining generally aloof except when he was due to preside over regular Council meetings and scheduled subcommittee hearings.
Talk to people who've known and worked with or against the Northampton city councilor, now a candidate for mayor, at some point in the last 16 years and you're likely to hear other, not entirely dissimilar criticisms, even from people who've supported him politically in the past.
Bardsley's supporters—those who've remained unwaveringly loyal to the city councilor over the years, as well as those who've been attracted to his insurgent campaign against incumbent Northampton Mayor Clare Higgins—paint a different picture. Supporters credit Bardsley with being an independent thinker, a careful listener and a cautious politician who remains faithful to his obligation to represent the people who elected him. They say Bardsley has shown courage by gradually separating himself from the City Council and the mayor, siding with residents who feel ignored or marginalized by the Higgins' administration and the Council majority who invariably supports her.
Although it's impossible to know exactly when he won over some of those now supporting him for mayor, his Sept. 7, 2006 speech before the City Council was, in many ways, the beginning of Bardsley's open courtship with identifiably disaffected voters in the city. That speech marked a crucial turning point in the relationship between Bardsley and Higgins.
The next-day reaction—including a phone call to the WHMP morning show by then-City Councilor Ray LaBarge and a commentary later that day by former City Councilor Bill Dwight, both decrying Bardsley's speech—made it clear that Bardsley was no longer comfortably ensconced in the majority. Though newspaper accounts at the time gave no special emphasis to Bardsley's lone dissenting vote on the night's key legislation, special zoning for Smith College, or his statement that the proposed overlay district was the by-product of a "flawed negotiations process," the Daily Hampshire Gazette resurfaced his speech 16 months later, when it appeared that the Council was preparing to oust Bardsley as president.
"Regardless of the outcome today," the Gazette reported on Jan. 7, 2008, "many city residents say they would like to see the City Council play a stronger role questioning the initiatives and motives of the city's executive branch, which includes the mayor. And while Bardsley says he's tried to fill that role during his tenure as Council president—even playing the devil's advocate at times—it may have come at a price. His lengthy speech during a vote on the educational use overlay district for Smith College early in the last term alienated some of his colleagues. One veteran councilor described Bardsley's talk as 'a tongue-lashing.'"
In a June 9, 2008 story about the new City Council president, James Dostal, the Springfield Republican added further context: "Bardsley's ouster had been brewing for several years, with some councilors commenting privately that he was positioning himself to run for mayor."
Whether or not Bardsley intended it, his 2006 speech on the Smith overlay effectively kicked off his current campaign for mayor. Undoubtedly, it also antagonized many if not all of his fellow councilors, the mayor and her planning department. Heard today, much of the speech would sound applicable to any number of Northampton issues—the proposed expansion of the municipal landfill, the redevelopment of Hospital Hill, the planned Hilton Hotel downtown—that have caused friction between citizen groups and city government. While its tone and substance might appeal strongly to people who object to the policies and practices of the Higgins administration and the majority of councilors who support the mayor's policies, it is equally likely to inflame passions on the other side, among people who suspect Bardsley of purely political motivations and accuse him of being all talk and no action.
Beyond its specific criticisms of the mayor's agreement with Smith College, Bardsley's 2006 speech is, at heart, a rhetorical rationalization for his dissenting vote against a measure based in large part on what he viewed as bad process rather than bad policy. With a long track record of supporting the mayor and her policies, Bardsley in the speech foreshadowed a mayoral race in which he would attack the mayor's methods rather than her specific initiatives. That line of attack has since come to define Bardsley's campaign, inspiring enough voters to give him a sizeable victory in September's preliminary election and leaving supporters of the incumbent mayor to counterattack her challenger by questioning his motives and his leadership abilities.
Large parts of that one speech and the recriminations it inspired echo in each of this season's mayoral debates, in on- and off-the-record media interviews and in various online forums, tending to frame the race as a contest between a decisive and competent if sometimes heavy-handed incumbent and an empathetic and courageous if sometimes overly cautious challenger.
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If Bardsley had known that he would be the headline act at the Sept. 7, 2006 City Council meeting, he couldn't have asked for a better bunch of opening acts. By the time he spoke about two hours into the meeting, the Council had already heard vociferous complaints and criticisms from residents opposed to the mayor's agreement with Smith College. In turn, city councilors—six of whom supported the mayor's request for special zoning, with Councilors David Murphy and Paul Spector abstaining and Bardsley alone in opposition—were offered a chance to speak by the mayor. Bardsley followed councilors Marianne LaBarge, who defended the overlay district, and David Narkewicz, who concluded his remarks by eliciting laughter with a line about a shuttle service driver who told him to vote for it.
Bardsley sobered the mood, saying that he, like his fellow city councilors, had had contact with his constituents about the Smith zoning issue for more than a year—"whether they be phone calls or emails or stopping me in the produce section of Stop and Shop"—with a growing number of calls pouring in recently. "In the last two weeks alone," Bardsley continued, "I've counted—actually, I've lost count—but I'd say at least 50 contacts from 50 different people, and of those only four people expressed their support of the overlay district, and one of them was very tentative. Everybody else has been in opposition to it."
From the outset, Bardsley's speech sounded extemporaneous, although he said in a recent interview that he was "working from notes, following an outline but kind of jumping around." Though filled with "ums" and "ers" and employing "ands" in the place of periods—a Bardsley habit of talking in endless run-ons—the speech was carefully crafted.
After establishing that his calls from constituents had been running solidly against the special zoning, Bardsley said, "I want to make a statement about what this vote is not. … First of all, this is not a referendum on Smith."
Despite the college's many fine qualities and wonderful contributions to the city, Bardsley continued, "that is not what we're discussing. That is not part of the argument. … We're supposed to look at the issue on the merits of the issue… Many of the people who are opposed to this that I've heard from are supporters of Smith, graduates of Smith, employees of Smith…. This is not a vote for or against Smith."
Bardsley said the vote also "does not allow nor does it prevent the destruction of the neighborhood on Green Street and Belmont Street." The overlay district had no impact on Smith's plans to build a science building off Green Street, he said: "The overlay district allows something else. It allows comparable projects in other areas surrounding Smith. But that project has already been signed, sealed and delivered, quite frankly."
Finally, Bardsley said, "This does not stop Smith from spreading out. There is this misperception that there's been a trade-off, that they can build up instead of out. It allows them to do both, quite frankly. … There is a misunderstanding from many people that that's what this agreement does, that it stops their sprawl and the trade-off is building up. Not the case. Sorry to disappoint some people, but if that's what they think this is about, they're mistaken."
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If Bardsley had stopped there, having reframed the issue and corrected what he characterized as "misperceptions" about the agreement with Smith and the Council's certain approval of it, he might have been able to straddle the fence, appeasing some of the residents who passionately opposed the new zoning and its impact on the neighborhoods without questioning the mayor's negotiation skills and portraying fellow councilors as out of touch and indifferent to public opinion.
Surely Bardsley's opposition to the special zoning came as no particular surprise. Since November of 2005, Bardsley had publicly questioned the educational use overlay district and the agreement between Higgins and Smith College President Carol T. Christ to which it was linked. Bardsley repeatedly insisted that it needed a full public vetting before he could support it. In a Nov. 12, 2005 story about an early joint hearing of the City Council's Ordinance Committee and the Planning Board on the issue, the Gazette reported, "City Council President Michael Bardsley, who is on the ordinance committee, urged caution. …. 'If the reason why we should pass this is because it is a part of this agreement, then I think it's incumbent on all of us around here to know every aspect of that agreement and be convinced that it is the best,' he said."
By Sept. 7, 2006, Bardsley's opposition had become a potential problem for supporters of the overlay district and Higgins' 12-point pact with Smith. A month before, a group of citizens opposed to the overlay district had submitted a petition to require a three-fourths vote of the Council to approve the zoning—a steeper climb than the usual two-thirds vote. With Murphy and Spector declining to vote because of possible conflicts of interest—Murphy owned land in the district and Spector had done business with Smith in the past—Bardsley's lone dissent would have been enough to sink the special zoning.
Much to the ire of opponents, however, city officials announced that the petition did not have enough signatures to force a three-fourths vote. Several of the opponents who spoke out at the public comment session on Sept. 7 had harsh judgments of the city for not approving the petition—frustration that, in turn, opponents aimed at the City Council.
Jonathan D. Black, a resident who had long opposed the special zoning, told councilors that he felt he was "casting pearls before swine… Is anybody listening? I'm embarrassed that you guys are my leaders."
In an extremely charged atmosphere, Bardsley launched into a pointed attack on the Council for not heeding public opinion and taking more time with the zoning issue.
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First, Bardsley emphasized that he had had reservations about the special zoning issue for a long while: "It wasn't until the vote on the Ordinance Committee [on June 13, 2006] that I actually voted in opposition to this, but I've been raising concerns over a period of time and asking questions about it." He said his concerns intensified months earlier when "there had been an outpouring of protest from the neighbors and in response to that [Planning Director] Wayne Feiden came in and said he had spoken with Smith and that they had made a compromise and they had changed some of the boundaries in the proposals and moved one of the setbacks."
While some of his colleagues saw Smith's compromise as a sign of responsiveness, Bardsley said he had a different reaction: "It was a very clear example that this was a flawed process because up until that moment we had heard that this agreement was all or nothing, that it was a set agreement that was not flexible. … And then it came back to us, and this was a representative of Smith who said this, [the initial boundaries and setbacks were] not something Smith asked for. It was something that was proposed by the city. Smith neither wanted it nor needed it and that was why it was willing to compromise. And I think for many of us that raised questions about the integrity of the whole process." (Higgins and Feiden later disagreed with Bardsley's characterization of what Smith wanted; Feiden said the college insisted on a uniform set of zoning rules for the entire district but had offered to compromise on certain boundaries within which it had no intention to build.)
It was at that point in his speech that Bardsley began to compare his own capabilities as a negotiator to those of the mayor he was now criticizing—a rhetorical turn that began to sound like a campaign speech: "I'm somebody from a labor background. I have negotiated many a contract. … When you negotiate something that is very, very tight, a tight agreement, it is unheard of for another side to come back and say, 'Well, that was something we were given that we didn't really want.' To me, that's a sign of a flawed negotiations process, quite frankly."
Bardsley then turned to his growing perception of widespread public discontent with the process that had produced the pact with Smith. "My concern is with the process," he said. "What we have heard a lot about is how the agreement came about between two entities, the city being represented by the mayor and Smith being represented by the president… it became very clear to me that there wasn't [sic] two entities in this whole affair. There were three. And the third entity that began to emerge… it's the citizens. The citizens feel, it's their perception, and maybe it's based on misunderstanding and maybe it's based on those people who are in opposition not knowing all the facts, but it is very clear that the citizens do not feel represented by the city in this agreement."
Bardsley pressed the point: "In this, I see a growing division between the city's interest and citizens' interest. And that alarms me. It alarms me greatly. And I think to dismiss that is a flaw of this Council. …when people come before us," Bardsley said, pausing when the gallery exploded in cheers, "when people come before us and feel that they haven't been responded to. I think we need to take time and listen."
As the speech, which clocked in at just shy of 32 minutes, wound to a conclusion, Bardsley's tone turned increasingly acidic: "The citizens of the city feel that they were excluded from the process. It's that simple. And I think we really need to pay attention to that, because we're missing the point if we're taking pride in how many meetings we sat through." He then backhanded his fellow councilors with a rhetorical question:
"I don't know how many of my colleagues have visited any of the homes that are being demolished. I don't know how many of you have actually talked to the residents there and sat in their homes and seen how they're feeling, what the experience has been to them. It disturbs me that so much emphasis is being put on [Smith's agreement to preserve affordable housing] and those residents feel ignored and basically feel like they're being pushed out by Smith and have been not well represented by the city. Not one city official has talked to any of the residents that I have spoken with. No one has gone into their homes to look at their homes to ensure that they're getting comparable housing, as is allegedly guaranteed. … Alternative housing has not been offered. That's a huge misconception, at least to the several folks who I have spoken with. …Most of them are very despondent about the situation, very depressed, very angry, very upset…. Many of them are leaving town because they can't afford to live elsewhere… I think the way they have been treated has been absolutely outrageous. … For those of you who are patting yourselves on the back and thinking that the folks who are being displaced are being taken care of, you are wrong."
Bardsley concluded his speech by rebuking his colleagues for not working harder to satisfy the public's need to be heard—comments that clearly hit a nerve and triggered a swift and pointed rebuttal by Councilor Ray LaBarge and others.
"My vote is more of a symbolic protest," Bardsley said, "but this agreement does not deserve a unanimous vote. There is enough wrong with this, there are enough folks in our city upset with this, and believe me, the discontent with this runs very deep. I think the Council could have taken its time to work harder, to increase the understanding, to listen to the concerns and do some work on our own. By going forward with this, I think we have really created a greater division between the citizens and city government than needed to be."
For many people in and around the city who follow Northampton politics, the idea of Bardsley running against Higgins came largely as a surprise. Prior to the Smith overlay speech, there were few signs of trouble between Bardsley and Higgins. Indeed, Bardsley and Higgins' were widely viewed as birds of a feather, two openly gay progressives who came up through the ranks together, supported each other and agreed about almost everything.
Less surprising, however, was Ray LaBarge's reaction to the overlay speech, which he called "a bunch of baloney." After Bardsley finished speaking on Sept. 7, LaBarge spoke for just a few minutes, blasting Bardsley for lecturing the Council when he, as Council president, had ample clout and ample access to the mayor to have negotiated an outcome more to his liking. The next day, LaBarge amplified his objections on WHMP's morning show, arguing that Bardsley had failed to act as leader of the City Council, that his tongue-lashing of his colleagues was the height of hypocrisy.
"I think he lost it," LaBarge said. "To save face, I think [Bardsley] should resign as Council president."
Later that day, Bill Dwight delivered a scathing commentary on his WHMP show, accusing Bardsley of pandering to angry voters at the 11th hour rather than providing them with leadership throughout months of public hearings. Dwight said that Bardsley's suggestion that the city had rushed through the zoning process without listening to the public was disingenuous. There had been plenty of public hearings at which Bardsley could have led a debate, but he didn't.
As it turned out, LaBarge and Bardsley would reach a rapprochement. When LaBarge died earlier this year, Bardsley was one of his pallbearers. LaBarge, who had long waged war with Bardsley, ultimately supported his old nemesis for City Council President in 2008, a race Bardsley lost to Dostal in a 6-3 vote.
For others, apparently, old wounds haven't healed. Even as other issues have inspired deep criticism of Higgins and her supporters on the City Council for failing to include the public in important policy-making decisions, the knock on Bardsley by his critics remains largely unchanged since the immediate aftermath of his Smith overlay speech. Whether the characterization of Bardsley as a calculating opportunist is believed widely enough to keep him from beating Higgins remains to be seen; it is, at best, a limited criticism, one that calls his motives into question without addressing the substance of the concerns Bardsley raised on Sept. 7, 2006 and that have formed his platform in his race for mayor.
