Taking a Human Approach to City Innovation in Northampton, MA

This week we welcome Alan Wolf, the Chief of Staff at the Office of Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra, in Northampton MA.

In this episode you’ll hear how the Northampton government takes time to listen to their community and implement, or not implement, city development projects. Listen in to find out what makes Northampton special, how they can accomplish projects quickly, what innovations they’re most proud of, and more.

Read the full transcript:

Alan Wolf: I think there is this really not true impression of municipal government and how slow it can be. But we can be really fast when we need to be, too. And I, and I think so someone in my seat somewhere else, I would say, yes, you can just surround yourself with really smart people who want to get a thing done.

Ally Peters: Welcome to Bridging the Digital Divide, a smart city podcast from Soofa, where we explore the places where urban landscapes are intertwined with technology to see how connectivity thrives, innovation sparks, and sustainability grows.

Hello. Welcome to another episode of Bridging Digital Divide. I'm Ally Peters. I lead Content Marketing here at Soofa, and I'm joined, as always, by my colleague, Kiel Hauck. Hello, Kiel.

Kiel Hauck: Hey. So great to be here. excited for another great episode.

Ally Peters: Today we are talking to Alan Wolf. Who is the Chief of Staff at the Office of Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra in the city of Northampton, Massachusetts. I'm very excited to talk to somebody, in a town from Massachusetts, because that is my home state, and I've been to Northampton before. It's a beautiful area, in Western Massachusetts, and it is surrounded by many natural resources and farmland, and it's known as an academic, artistic, musical, and countercultural hub. And a little bit about Alan. He has been working with the city of Northampton for over five years to implement new projects, maintain the city's collaborative efforts, and more.

So, yeah. So excited to get into our conversation today. We hope you enjoy.

Kiel Hauck: Alan Wolf is the Chief of Staff at the Office of Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra in the City of Northampton, Massachusetts and we are so excited to have Alan on the show today. Alan, welcome. Thanks for taking the time to chat with us.

Alan Wolf: Thank you so much for having me.

Ally Peters: Alan, every conversation, we love to ask people questions about their background. And so, considering you've also had a background in media and digital media, I'm curious, what drew you to working with Northampton?

Alan Wolf: So, I was born here. I graduated from high school here. went to the University of Massachusetts Amherst down the road, and then I left. I fell in love with a Smith College student and headed for Washington, DC, where I spent about 18 years working in national politics. And then I started having children and came back to raise them here. and, yes, I wound up working for a digital marketing firm for a while in that time. And then I had a friend who became the Mayor of the next City over East Hampton, who said, how about you come be my Chief of Staff? And so I had never before thought I would work in municipal government. But that experience started me there and I got more involved as part of that with Northampton stuff.

And then at some point, Mayor Narkewicz, the last mayor of Northampton, his Chief of staff, left and I moved over to be his in my own town, which, honestly, is the best thing ever, working for the people you know and love in the place that you identify with so personally, have I helped elect a couple presidents. I was a political pollster in DC, and I worked on Clinton's campaign, Obama's campaign, Gore's campaign and Biden's campaigns. But there's nothing like filling a pothole for somebody and having totally, that's, I'm simplifying it, obviously, but the stuff we do here, I know the people that's helping, and it's been a wonderful experience.

Ally Peters: I feel like that is so common with a lot of the people that we've chatted to, too, is they have such deep roots in the community that they work in. And I feel like that makes people and you that more qualified to do it. And because you already have such a good understanding of what the community is like.

And, it's funny too, because it seems like everybody that I have chatted to from Northampton really loves it. And, even just from the Northampton website, too, it seems like people take a lot of pride in being from Northampton. And so in your opinion, what makes Northampton so special and what sets it apart from other communities in Massachusetts?

Alan Wolf: It is an incredible place. When we still had county governments, it was the county seat for Hampshire County. So a lot of things got aggregated here over history. At one time it had a state hospital, we still have the VA. We have the fairgrounds for the annual three county fair. Sorry. In Northampton, we have a courthouse, we have incredible theater and music venues. We have Smith College. We have a prison. Like all of these sort of big municipal facets are stuffed into this city. Which means that we have a pretty stable population base, a stable employment base.

But it has many of the trappings of the cultural diversity of a larger city in a pretty, I wouldn't call us rural. I don't even know what the name is for a city like Northampton. We're not a suburb, we're a small city surrounded by rural areas. We're 29,500 people. And honestly, that's been a pretty stable population since I was a high schooler. But around us, the towns are 5,000 people, but yet we have Monets in Smith College Art Museum, and we have world class musical acts coming to our music venues. And it just has a terrific feel, away from the hustle and bustle of the big city, but yet enjoying some of that quality of entertainment, food, shopping.

Kiel Hauck: Yeah, that's fantastic. Well, in terms of, you mentioned growing up in Northampton, moving away and coming back. I'm sure that in the time since you grew up and now, there's probably some progress that's been made in terms of technology in the city. And I'm wondering, are there common uses of technology that you've seen and experienced recently in Northampton that kind of shows that forward movement?

Alan Wolf: So I think city government has gotten a lot more technologically savvy. Clearly things like just having a good website that actually you can do things, you can pay your bills on Unipay, we have parking kiosks and park mobile downtown. We have counters, that count, folks, so that we can see downtown and your signs, the Soofa Signs do it. But we also have other ones. And it's a very active conversation about technology, because it's such an educated and foreign population, there's a lot of conversations about privacy. So we have a downtown ordinance that there can't be cameras downtown. And that grew out of a conversation that was sort of a little bit of a proto policing conversation. And then that got codified. So, in the central business district, there are no cameras.

But then just most recently, conversations about dash cams and police cars. But that is something that is generally accepted as something good for both defendants and the police to do. Soofa is great. That has been a democratizing way to make sure that people know about all of our city meetings. I mean, that was the first thing, honestly, that we spend a lot of time trying to get the word out because invariably, and I'm sure other municipal folks you've talked to have said, we have a huge project working on redoing our downtown right now. And we had 30 meetings about this thing. And it's kind of heading forward at this point. And people are saying, but wait, I didn't get any chance to have input on this. And so to the extent that we can find every way possible to communicate what the city's plans are and make sure that you cannot credibly say you didn't hear about this, we are trying to embrace technology.

So we have an Instagram account, a Facebook account, a Twitter account. We've got the website that does like news. We use a robo calling program that sends texts, voicemails and email, in every way possible. We have a constituent service program that we sort of track how people are thinking about issues and who is the most concerned about it over time. And so we can see if things we tried to do, to fix a given problem, like, say it's too loud in one part of town, then we can see if, gee, wow, this is happening every six months. And it's usually right around the weather getting nice again. We're trying to bring other lenses of analysis.

The other thing we're getting, actually, Annie, who you also know, is working very hard to get all of our permitting online. And we're working with a software company so that ideally, soon, any permit you need, not only will you be able to apply for it online, but then everybody who touches that permit will know you're asking about it. So, one thing that can happen in municipalities is the siloing of. So the building department does not always know what the health department. So we have literally had cases where the mayor is cutting a ribbon in front of a restaurant that the health department has not been to yet. That only happened once. But that's a nightmare scenario, right? Because they shouldn't be open, but the mayor just opened them on camera. So this will hopefully start to eliminate, that being possible, because technology will help all the departments talk to each other, and then it'll be a little bit serial. Right? Like, I sign off on this as the fire marshal, and now it goes to health. And not only will a resident who's trying to get something through the permitting process know what to do next, the city will know whether or not it's been effectively covered.

Ally Peters: Yeah. That is also a common thing that we've been hearing in our conversations, is, communication is so important. I mean, it's generally an important thing, but especially when working in cities, like, the relationships that you have with different departments or the community makes a big difference. Considering that Northampton is surrounded by rural areas, do you find that there is a bit more pushback towards technology? Or do you feel like there can be a good balance between natural spaces and rural areas and also technology that can help?

Alan Wolf: So I don't think we have a lot of pushback on technology. I think our rural areas, like, they're desperate to get broadband implemented everywhere. So there's really been the mass broadband initiative. Everyone is scrambling to ask them for money and run fiber and municipal broadband is a big conversation we're having here in the city as well. Us being a little bit, we're sort of trying to decide if it's the right way to go, given that we're neither very rural nor are we as needy. We do have a city right to the south of us, Holyoke, which is one of the poorest cities in Massachusetts. And they could probably use MBI money more than us. So we're trying to figure out how to do that.

I think people here are ready to embrace technology. I mean, you always have Luddites who I'm going to go down with my check and give it to the treasurer. That's always going to be part of what we do and why we exist in this building. And we don't work remotely, because we are a customer service organization, and we need to be here to serve our folks. And we ultimately are run by a bunch of elected officials who'd probably like to get reelected. So we want human connection wherever we can. But to the extent that we can save people time in the modern, busy world, I think we would consider just about anything.

Kiel Hauck: Yeah. Well, as I'm sure you know and all of our guests work through daily, the list of things that are possible that you could do to improve the community is always going to be infinitely longer than the amount of things that you can actually do today to move the needle, right? And so I'm wondering, as the city considers different technologies or things that could solve a specific problem, how do you go about prioritizing what it is that you're going to do next so that you're ensuring that each step forward you're taking is the right step at the right time, to help bring that connectivity, just make it stronger in the community.

Alan Wolf: So, Northampton, we have a lot of projects and innovative ideas that we want to do as a municipality. And you must have heard this from others as well. But I think right now, in the post pandemic era, municipalities are being asked to do more for their residents than ever before in history. There is a perception and maybe a reality that the state and federal levels are struggling in their own ways to make a direct impact in people's lives. And so they are turning to the folks whose offices they can walk into and say, please help us with these things.

And so I will tell you, my municipal career has been marked by getting involved in stuff I never would have said was a municipal government role. And we are just doing it, left and right now. And it was true about the pandemic itself. At some point, I think this is well documented. The feds were a little slow, and so was the state. And so we had to stand up a bunch of services and vaccination centers and homeless sites and all these things to protect our community and then ultimately our region, because we all finally banded together.

But we were humming along with solutions to these problems well before federal money started flowing and the state started having functional apparatus. And they came along and it was great, and they reimbursed us for a lot of it. So, thanks for that. But local government's being asked to do a lot these days. And so when we look at technology solutions, I'm advising the mayor. Northampton is highly dependent on local receipts revenue, because we're a destination city. So about 15% to 20% of our annual budget comes from meals tax, hotel tax, cannabis, things that are driven by people who visit and spend money here. And so we were disproportionately affected by the pandemic. So a lot of when we're thinking about how we choose a technology thing is, is it going to help us be a more successful city? Is it going to make people want to live here? Is it going to keep our schools strong? And, is it going to generate local receipts, revenue? So when we're talking about that building department or the permitting thing, there's a professor, an Eastern Mass college, who did a regression analysis of the things that tend to generate new growth in a city. And having a streamlined permitting system was like top four. And so let's invest in some permitting software to make sure that this is, so that builders and entrepreneurs, when they come to the city, it's easy and they want to do it.

And they tell the next one down the line, because they know each other. Doing business in Northampton is easy. and you can just sort of go from there. The Soofa Sign thing is, we want people, when they're walking downtown, to see this cool little thing that tells them something. And maybe they do the poll and it's a little engaging, but they also look up there and they can see that First Night is coming, and oh, gosh, I'm going to go buy my button. Because that is a huge thing for our city every New Year's Eve. And it's just a little extra way that passively, really, because it doesn't take much management. We are just getting the word out there about cool stuff that's going on in Northampton.

Ally Peters: That's actually a really good segue into our next question for you. We're always curious how communities collect feedback from the community, because obviously that's such a big part of decision making and thinking of new projects to do. So how does Northampton collect feedback from the community?

Alan Wolf: That is maybe lower tech? For the most part, honestly, phone calls to them. I can really mostly speak for the mayor's office. We monitor, it's mayor@northamptonma.gov, that's the mayor's public email address. Phone calls in here, people walking in. And I mentioned that software we use where we track what's happening there.

Certainly we're all out in the community a lot. It's a small town, so the mayor literally gets told by people everywhere she goes what they think, as do I, as does everyone in every department. On our website, we have feedback and complaint routines that you can fill out. Instagram, Facebook. We follow Facebook probably more than is healthy to do, given that it skews, less than productive. Most of the time. That's.Those are pretty much the ways. I mean, it's pretty traditional the way, honestly, anybody follows their communication stuff, they get calls, texts, emails, and they follow their social media.

That is really where most of it. And then meetings, obviously, if there's an actual project, we hold an inordinate number of meetings on everything and we try and in every case craft a communication strategy for whatever the thing is that reaches everybody. We go to the senior center, we'll do it in the morning, we'll do one in the evening. We'll get the business community together.

So, whatever it is, we try and make sure that every constituency in Northampton has a chance to have weighed in and that as much to just cover our own base as anything. In fact, now with this picture Main street project I was referencing earlier, we're taking fire from folks who just sort of lately realized that this was happening, and yet we have this body of communication that we can point to, to say, allow us to explain this project to you and convince you that it's great, knowing that it's happening.

Kiel Hauck: Yeah, that makes total sense. You've mentioned a few different initiatives specific to Northampton in terms of rolling out new technology. Are there any that jumped to mind of recent projects that you've been a part of that you're especially proud of, where a problem was identified, a plan was put into place, a solution was provided, and now you can kind of see the results of what was done.

Alan Wolf: So we're engaged in an enormous radio project at the moment. And that's millions of dollars in upgrading our radio right now. If the police walk, get out of their police car and walk into our junior high, the radio stops working. and it's also not a secure radio line anywhere. There's a bunch of things with seemingly an old technology that needed to be upgraded.

So we're really doing that. we're really working on a computer aided dispatch system right now, that will do a lot more record keeping of what kinds, of calls we get to public safety, and then what the outcomes of those calls were, so that we'll be able to have more data to effectively plan and fund and build our public safety responses. And as part of that, we are working on, and we haven't really gotten to the technology piece of it yet, but you may know that Northampton is developing an alternative to policing, in the public safety department, called the Department of Community Care.

They are probably the first one in the country that is housed in the health department, which is now the Department of Health and Human Services. They have a very advanced database and tracking system, trying to really keep careful track of everything that's happening as we build this, because we do think it might be a national model at some point. The next step, and why it came from the dispatch, is how we dispatch that service. And it's really complex, because dispatch is designed to, when someone calls, quickly send a service out to them and get whoever it is that called off the phone. The DCC kind of wants to keep you on the phone because usually you are stressed. It's more like a hotline. And we don't want to send the armed professional anymore. So it's keep you on the line while we maybe figure out, do you really need a police officer or an ambulance, or can we send one of our community responders who might be able to help you with whatever your issue is, which is probably based in addiction, mental illness, or childhood trauma.

Right. And those are sort of the magic space we're trying to help with, because those folks, there is some evidence to show that police are not always the best response for them. So how we assist all that work with technology is very much a work in progress.

Ally Peters: That's great. Yeah. From this entire conversation, I can really tell how special and unique Northampton is, especially in Massachusetts, too. I feel like Massachusetts has so many different. I don't know, the communities feel very different, like wherever you go in Massachusetts. but I'm curious, how have other communities inspired Northampton to make, maybe technology advancements or certain changes, at a government level or community level.

Alan Wolf: So Amherst also has been working on. They have what's called cress, which is their community responder, ESS, whatever that stands for. That is housed in the police department. And we, I think, have inspired each other, as we both have these very vocal populations really interested in doing things in a better way.

And so I think the fact that two communities on either side of the Connecticut River are both trying to figure out this new world of municipal government has been really great. We certainly have high environmental goals. We're trying to be municipality carbon free by 2030, and as a city, carbon free by 2050. So we just created a new department called Climate Action and Project Administration. And so they are trying to figure out, and less like motherboard technologies, but heating and cooling and energy technologies, trying to figure out how we are kicking around in this Downtown Main Street project.

I keep coming back to, maybe running a line down it for broadband, as we dig up the street, but also maybe digging boreholes to potentially create a utility to have geothermal be like the first geothermally heated downtown in America. And there probably are ones because I'm sure somebody's got a thermal pool somewhere that's heating their downtown and melting the snow. But we could maybe do this. We have a resilience hub that we're building that's going to be a clearinghouse for social services that we're trying to absolutely put this geothermal in. but it's part of downtown. And maybe as we do this, if we could come up with the 15 million or so it'll probably cost, that would be a really innovative way to meet our climate change goals with new heating technologies. so I don't know if that one will happen, but it's a pie in the sky wish right now. And very smart people are really taking a hard look to see whether it's possible.

Kiel Hauck: Yeah, well, I'm sure, you know, Alan, the sustainability angle and carbon free is very dear to our hearts, since our product is kind of built around being solar powered.

So we love to hear, obviously, I mean, you've been at this for a while, and, you've obviously done some great things, both in D.C, and now back in Northampton for somebody else sitting in your seat in another city, across the country, somewhere else that is maybe new to this and new to understanding how to begin to think about technology as a solution for the challenges their community faces. What are some bits of advice that you would give to kind of be able to take those first steps.

Alan Wolf: I think the first step, and the thing that struck me when I started working for Northampton, is to make sure that your municipal team is an amazing group of people. I really learned in the pandemic, we had a team of 14 people that met twice a day, every day, at the very beginning. What can be done in the shortest amount of time? I think there is this really not true impression of municipal government and how slow it can be.

But we can be really fast when we need to be, too. And I think, so someone in my seat somewhere else, I would say, yes, you can just surround yourself with really smart people who want to get a thing done. And there's always money and really just hammer away, because, have a vision. And for us, the other thing, I think Northampton has been really good under this mayor and the last is, everything fits together. The downtown project will help the folks who are panhandling, which in turn helps the economy, because some people are disturbed by panhandling. We could not solve that problem without doing the right things as humans for people who need help. And we can't make the street better and more desirable for people to come shop there unless we make it wider sidewalks and more trees and more benches and cool areas, which then work on preventing heat islands and make it a cooler space that is more environmentally friendly.

And we have bike lanes that are protected from the traffic, which is going slower because of the design. And people bike and walk to work because some. I'm not going to throw the percent out. A huge percent of Northampton lives within a mile and a half of downtown and could walk or bike easily. So all of it fits together, in trying to solve some of the biggest problems of our day.

Kiel Hauck: That was really inspiring, Alan, and I am so glad that you shared that. Because in thinking about the conversations we've had, it's almost like, Ally, I feel like we could have called this podcast, yes, you can. Yes, we can. Because that's really what the core of this is about. There's so many reasons, so many things that you could kind of put up as, oh, here's this challenge we face, and it's just too insurmountable. But there's so many people that are saying, yes, we actually can do this, and here's how we're going to do it. Here's the steps we're going to take to get, It's just. It's always inspiring to hear those stories and Alan, I really appreciate you sharing your time with us today. And, it's just been really great to hear about the work that you're doing in Northampton. So thank you.

Alan Wolf: No, thank you guys for having me. I'm really excited to be able to talk about it. Much appreciated.

Kiel Hauck: All right, once again, thank you to Alan Wolf for taking the time to chat with us. I really. I know I said it when we were talking to Alan, but I was really struck by just how inspiring his final words were and how much it rings true to the conversations that we've had so far on the show. Whether you're Jen Sanders working in a big city, Dallas, or you're Madeline in D.C, or whether you're Alan in Northampton, Massachusetts, really, the problems and what you're trying to solve for aren't that different at their heart, even if the scale is different.

But it just takes somebody kind of raising their hand and saying, yes, I'm going to take this on, I'm going to help solve it. And I think Alan is a really great example of what that looks like. Specific to his community. It was really cool to kind of hear how he's approaching these challenges that they're looking to solve.

Ally Peters: Yeah. And considering that he has lived in Northampton for so long, he knows it so well, and it seems like they're taking such a human approach to handling community challenges or making things in the community better. And I just really got a sense of how much he cares about Northampton and how much he cares about making the community better in different ways. So, yeah, I also was really inspired by his last point, too. And like you said, even on different scales of how big or how small a city is, all of the same things are important, and it really takes a lot of resilience and a lot of confidence and motivation to make things happen.

Kiel Hauck: Yeah, really good stuff. If you would like to learn more about what Alan and the good folks at Northampton are doing, you can visit their website at northamptonma.gov.

That's going to do it for today's show. Thank you all for joining us, and we'll catch you next time.

Thanks for listening to Bridging the Digital Divide. If you enjoyed today's show, make sure to subscribe to our podcast and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform.

Ally Peters: And then come visit us at soofadigital.com to see how we're pursuing a mission to make every city smart, social, and sustainable.