Mandi Jo Hanneke For Amherst Town Council

What makes you an interested and qualified candidate? 

I believe community service is important. I am motivated to serve on the Council because I want to help improve Amherst. I am running for re-election because I have enjoyed the challenge of governing in Amherst and have more I want to accomplish. Amherst is a great Town, but there are always things that can be improved. As a legislator, I will propose legislation to address the residents’ needs and ensure that the community’s priorities remain at the forefront of municipal decision-making.

Most of my adult life has been spent living in rental housing in Amherst and Somerville, MA, Boulder, CO, and Cleveland Heights, OH, all towns that have large college student and employee populations. Boulder has shaped my views on waste hauling, climate action, transportation networks, and rental housing programs. Having experienced renting housing in these different college and college-adjacent towns allows me to offer different perspectives and evaluate programs.

Professionally, four years as a litigator required finding compromises between parties to settle matters to the mutual agreement of all, where each party believed the outcome beneficial to them. That experience continues to guide my work on the Council. I know being a successful Councilor requires compromise, working with others you don’t always agree with, and putting aside differences to get things done.

My volunteer service as a Court Appointed Special Advocate shapes how I work with, think about, and advocate for those individuals who are generally left out of government deliberations.  The training I received in recognizing and navigating cultural differences in a system that isn’t always tolerant has allowed me to ask the right questions and consider the needs of all, not just those who know how to navigate the system.

Civically, my service on the Amherst Charter Commission shaped how I approach transparency in government. I oversaw publishing all written public comments on the Charter Commission webpage, as well as all drafts of the charter. In addition, I sent a regular newsletter out about the Commission’s work to subscribers and was the administrator of the Commission’s Facebook page. I saw how outreach and transparency results in better outcomes.

What are your top priorities if elected to Town Council?

My top legislative priority would be housing. We must address our housing crisis. Our housing is too expensive for many residents and potential residents to afford without being burdened. And we do not provide the variety of housing types that our residents desire. Our housing crisis (high tax bills, lack of affordable housing for families, low housing-supply as compared with demand, public-private partnerships, etc.) causes many spill-over detrimental effects in Town. It is why families cannot afford to live here and our schools are suffering from declining enrollment. It perpetuates inequality and hampers the presence of a more diverse Town. It causes town-gown strain.

The Council and Town have begun addressing this crisis. As a Councilor, I voted for the Comprehensive Housing Policy, a smart revision of the Inclusionary Zoning bylaw, allowing Accessory Dwelling Units by-right, and revising the Residential Rental bylaw to require town inspections of all rental units. I have supported funding for purchasing land for and constructing affordable housing projects.

This term, Councilor De Angelis and I proposed a set of zoning revisions designed to provide more pathways to homeownership and increase the diversity of housing types in Town. Unfortunately, we needed to withdraw the proposal, but if re-elected, I plan to propose new legislation that learns from the legislative efforts and continues to address the Goals of the Comprehensive Housing Policy. Other options include net-zero and green building requirements for both new buildings and retrofits; guiding new housing growth to areas that minimize the impact on Amherst’s open space; and collaboration and partnerships for student housing in appropriate locations.

The Council also needs to identify surplus property that can be used for affordable housing, support funding affordable housing developments, monitor and provide funding for the development of the old VFW site for shelter opportunities, and advocate for passage of state legislation I co-sponsored with Councilor Devlin-Gauthier to impose a property transfer fee to help fund affordable housing development.

Other top priorities are finding a fiscally responsible means of funding the remaining two major capital projects amidst rising construction costs and interest rates, and a desire to have all projects completed as soon as possible; and moving Amherst towards being a carbon neutral Town by 2050.

How do you plan to increase racial and economic equity in Amherst?

Amherst faces many social justice challenges. A significant portion of our residents do not feel safe in the community. We have residents who do not have homes and many other residents who are cost burdened in the homes they do have. We are facing a climate crisis that will disproportionately affect our most vulnerable residents. Some of our residents do not have access to broadband internet or computers at home.

Fortunately, the Council is addressing these issues. I co-sponsored the Resolution in Support of CRESS and the Resolution in Support of H.R. 40 / S. 40 Bills in Congress (national reparations bills). I have consistently supported re-evaluating the meaning of community safety and how the Town approaches community safety. And, I have made addressing our housing needs a priority (see above response). That work must continue.

I support the Jones Library project, which will provide necessary additional meeting space for the ESL tutoring program, a dedicated teen space, and additional computers for accessing the internet and computer programs. All of these additional benefits support equity and social justice, especially for those that are new in Town, whose primary language is not English, who do not have the funds to hang out after school at a business, and who do not have access to broadband, or even a computer, in their home.

The zoning legislation I co-sponsored with Councilor De Angelis aimed to remove the exclusionary single-family only zoning practice in Amherst. Historically, these zoning rules have been used to exclude BIPOC and low-income individuals from neighborhoods. If re-elected, I will continue to propose zoning legislation that seeks to dismantle racially and economically motivated exclusionary zoning in Amherst.

These actions are only the first steps. We must continue working together to address climate action, housing costs, and community safety in a holistic manner, so that we can make Amherst a better place for all.

What can the Town Council do to electrify Amherst’s buildings and vehicle fleet?

The Town Council’s primary means of aiding in electrifying Amherst’s buildings and vehicle fleet is through the budget, particularly capital funding. It must continue to support the Jones Library Expansion and Renovation Project, which leverages state and municipal funds to remove fossil fuel use from a major public building. And it must closely evaluate yearly capital expenditures to ensure the Town is purchasing electric vehicle technology where available and capable for its intended purposes.

I was a co-sponsor of the Council’s resolution supporting state legislation to provide state grants for retrofitting existing housing stock to address climate sustainability and resiliency. The Council must continue advocating for state legislation such as this that will provide additional state and municipal funds to help move our housing stock onto more efficient and carbon neutral systems.

The Council can also find ways to promote and/or fund retrofitting for heat pumps existing housing stock in multi-unit buildings, but in doing so, we need to ensure that if money is spent in this manner, the utility bill savings from such conversions are proportionately passed on to the tenants, not just used to increase the profits of the owners.

How do you plan to advance and accomplish recommendations in the Climate Action Adaptation and Resiliency Plan?

The good news is that the Town has made significant progress in reaching its 2025 Climate Action Goal of reducing carbon emissions by 25%. But, we’re not there yet. The Council needs to continue to monitor progress on implementing Community Choice Aggregation, continue closely evaluating yearly capital expenditures to ensure the Town is purchasing electric vehicle technology where available and capable for its intended purposes, and find ways to promote and/or fund retrofitting for heat pumps existing housing stock in multi-unit buildings.

It must also continue to support and fund major building projects like the Jones Library Expansion and Renovation Project and the Elementary School Building Project, which leverage state and municipal funds to remove fossil fuel use from major public buildings, helping us make major strides towards our Climate Action Goals.

The Council must continue advocating for state legislation that will provide additional state and municipal funds to help move our housing stock onto more efficient and carbon neutral systems.

Further, the Council can also support the Manager’s proposed use of American Rescue Plan funds for projects that would help meet our Climate Action Goals. This includes supporting the installation of a solar canopy on the Amherst Regional High School parking lots.

As a Councilor, I regularly propose resolutions and legislation that further our Climate Action Goals. One example this term is the dark-skies streetlighting policy I co-sponsored with Councilor Devlin-Gauthier. If re-elected, I will continue to look for opportunities to bring measures forward to the Council that further action on our climate goals.

How do you plan to address the condition of Amherst’s roads? 

The Council has passed Budget Guidelines and annual capital budgets that prioritize adding additional funds to the state funds we receive for repairing and resurfacing roads in Amherst. The Council needs to continue encouraging the Manager to maintain this practice, which has resulted in the highest level of road funding in Amherst in decades.

How do you plan to support equitably increasing the wages and working conditions of Amherst’s town employees?

We must continue to fund capital building maintenance projects to ensure that all employees work in healthy and safe buildings.  Addressing the working conditions in the DPW headquarters and the downtown Fire Station are necessary. Our Fire Department and DPW employees are working in buildings that do not allow them to operate at their best.  I eagerly await the Manager’s proposal for a site for a new DPW building. I hope that in the next two years the Town Council will be able to vote to move both of these projects forward.

What will you do to support the expansion of the Community Responders for Equity Safety and Service (CRESS) Department?

Keeping every resident in Amherst safe is one of the primary roles of municipal government. As a Councilor, I have consistent supported re-evaluating the meaning of community safety and how the Town approaches community safety.

I supported the steps taken to change the way the Town ensures the safety of its residents. I co-sponsored the Resolution in Support of CRESS and voted to create the CRESS department. As a Town, we need to better serve our residents who are experiencing crisis situations and our residents who do not want armed officers responding to non-violent, non-criminal situations, especially our BIPOC residents. I worked to ensure the adequate funding of the CRESS program over at least 18 months (fiscal years 2022 and 2023) to ensure that the Town has sufficient data and information to determine how many calls can be appropriately transitioned away from police response and into CRESS response. This will allow the Town to determining an appropriate level of armed policing into the future, which is essential to the successful transformation of what community safety means in Amherst. Although the initial evaluation will need postponed due to delays in integrating dispatch and CRESS, I will continue to support gathering sufficient data to be able to determine appropriate levels of staffing for all of our public safety departments.

What do you plan to do to address Amherst’s housing affordability crisis?

Addressing Amherst’s housing crisis is one of my top priorities, as can be seen in my answer to a previous question. Expanding on that response, in order to address the affordability crisis, we need to keep three goals of the Comprehensive Housing Policy at the forefront of discussions: promoting a variety of pathways to homeownership, increasing the supply and variety of housing types; and finding resources to support affordable housing.

If re-elected, I intend to propose legislation and other measures that will address each of these Goals, beyond what I have already done.  As a Councilor, I co-sponsored resolutions supporting state legislation to provide funds for creating, supporting, and developing deed-restricted affordable housing, to levy a fee on transfers of property to support affordable housing, and to seal eviction records so residents can better maintain housing security. The Council must continue to advocate for bills such as these at the state house.

I have also co-sponsored legislation that would allow Amherst to impose a fee on property transfers that would provide funds for affordable housing in Amherst. This law will provide funds to our Affordable Housing Trust and Town operating and capital budgets for developing deed-restricted affordable housing in Amherst.If enacted at the state level, I will sponsor the local bylaw to enable the special legislation.

The Master Plan provides a good framework for some of the zoning changes Amherst should consider:

• guiding new housing growth to areas that minimize the impact on Amherst’s open space;
• encouraging a greater mix of housing types, sizes, and prices to serve a wider range of income levels and special populations;
• promoting infill development; and
• public-private partnerships for student housing.

This term, Councilor De Angelis and I proposed a set of zoning revisions designed to provide more pathways to homeownership and increase the diversity of housing types in Town. Our proposal contained ideas drawn from the Master Plan, including duplex development by-right, increasing infill development, promoting triplex development, and increasing the locations in Town where town houses can be built. Unfortunately, we needed to withdraw the proposal, but if re-elected, I plan to propose new legislation that learns from the legislative efforts and continues to address the Goals of the Comprehensive Housing Policy. Other options include net-zero and green building requirements for both new buildings and retrofits; guiding new housing growth to areas that minimize the impact on Amherst’s open space; and collaboration and partnerships for student housing in appropriate locations.

The Council also needs to identify surplus property that can be used for affordable housing, support funding affordable housing developments, and monitor and provide funding for the development of the old VFW site for shelter opportunities.

Would you vote for a town budget that cuts ARPS educational services and why?

As a Councilor, I am tasked with voting an overall dollar amount to allocate to the Amherst Public Schools for operations and another overall dollar amount to allocate to the Amherst-Pelham Regional Public Schools for operations. I also vote on the assessment method for the Amherst-Pelham Regional Schools and separate capital requests for the Amherst Public Schools. For operating budgets, my role is to allocate a sufficient amount of funding that permits the Amherst School Committee and the Amherst-Pelham Regional School Committee to provide a high-quality education for the students enrolled in each of the Districts. It is the School Committee’s job to ensure that the funding provided is allocated appropriately to achieve this goal.

In more general terms, budgeting is about tradeoffs. There are many constraints on our budgets – including legal limits on how much property tax revenue the Town can collect, the residents’ desire for many, many services, and the need to split revenues between operating essentials and capital requests.

The annual operating budget for the Town must be for the benefit of all residents. These municipal funds are intended to allow the Town to maintain high-quality services that essential and desired. Sometimes we focus too much on “maintaining level services” and not enough on what the trade-off of starting with that focus means. For schools experiencing declining enrollment, “level services” must be seen through the eyes of the students, which sometimes means lowering staffing levels due to smaller grade enrollment, while maintaining class sizes within adopted ranges. Such an action is not a cut to educational services or “level services”, despite what is sometimes claimed. Further, when nearly all of the increase in revenue each year is subsumed by increased salaries, we rarely have money to begin new programs or hire new people.

In addition, we cannot continue to ignore the detrimental effect on our municipal finances that the large swaths of non-taxable land have. This is not just a problem created by the presence of three institutions of higher learning in our Town. It was also created by our own municipal government purchasing so much land in Town for open space, agricultural preservation, and recreation. We must acknowledge that part of our inability to raise enough revenue is of our own doing and the choices we have made in constraining land use. I support diversifying the tax base by growing businesses.

I also support the recent Strategic Partnership Agreement with the University of Massachusetts which provides contributions for K-12 education services provided to students living in tax-exempt housing.

Would you vote to redistribute funding from the Police Department to prevent cuts to ARPS educational services and why?

See my answer to the previous questions about CRESS and ARPS educational services.

How do you plan to increase the financial contributions of major colleges and universities towards the town budget?

I support the recent Strategic Partnership Agreement with the University of Massachusetts which provides compensation to the Town over five years of $5.5 million, nearly double the University’s previous investment. This agreement includes support for our Fire and EMS services, K-12 education, healthy and safe neighborhoods, as well as general support for other Town services.

With this Partnership Agreement complete, the Council must now prioritize the Manager’s negotiation of a strategic partnership agreement with Amherst College. If given the opportunity to influence this agreement, I would like to see:

• Fair compensation for ambulance and fire services provided to the campus;
• Cooperation and collaboration between police departments;
• Cooperation agreements for public works services, such as public street and sidewalk paving and clearing; and
• Agreements regarding evening and weekend use of institutional parking lots by residents.

What can be done to make homeownership in Amherst an affordable reality for our low- and middle-income municipal employees? (Ex. teachers, firefighters, DPW employees)

Please see my responses to the questions about my priorities and the housing crisis. I am hopeful that the initiatives discussed there would result in more homeownership opportunities that are affordable to lower income individuals and families.

Do you support the waste hauler bylaw? 

Other: In general, I support a bylaw that would require waste haulers in Amherst to provide curbside composting. At this time, it is my understanding that the “waste hauler bylaw” is neither complete nor finalized. Until I see final language, I cannot say whether I will support it, as it depends on the language proposed.

Would you support using town and American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds to install solar panels on the Amherst Regional High School Parking Lot? 

Other: Yes, as long as the Town’s investment is properly protected, since such installation would not be on Town-owned property.

Do you support moving forward with the Jones Library project before the Fire Station and Public Works Headquarters? 

Yes

Would you support a user service fee for affluent college students to use town services? 

Other: I would need more information on this before forming an opinion.

Do you support increasing Fire/EMS staffing?

Yes

Would you support racial equity training explicitly for Business Improvement District and Police employees?

Other: The Business Improvement District is not a Town entity and it is my understanding that Town employees, including Police Department employees, already receive training related to racial equity.

Would you support a minimum distance requirement or zone between non-owner-occupied investment properties?

Other: Although my economics training leads me to believe that such laws would harm the very residents they claim to help, I would need to see an actual bylaw before rendering an opinion on whether I could support it.

Would you support a commercial tax rate on property owned for commercial purposes including taxable college/university property and excluding local small business?

Other: Generally not, because others more knowledgeable than me on these issues have indicated that a small business exemption in property taxes would generally not apply to the small business we think it would (because they most often rent property, not own it), legally State-owned property is exempt from municipal taxes, and a separate commercial tax rate would be more harmful to businesses in town than it would be helpful to residential property taxpayers. Despite this, I generally support state-level bills that would permit Amherst and other municipalities to impose a local option tax on certain non-profits.

Do you support the Amherst Pelham Educators Association (APEA) in their request for a fair contract?

Other: The APEA and the Regional School Committee have both approved a new contract. As a Town Councilor, I do not believe it is appropriate to weigh in on contract negotiations of Town, District, or Library employees.

Thank you for filling out this form and for your interest in Sunrise Amherst’s endorsement. If there is other information you would like us to have, please include it here. 

My voting record as a Councilor demonstrates my consistent support and advocacy for Sunrise Movement’s priorities, including specifically, climate justice and affordable and attainable housing.