Kim James 
GREAT BARRINGTON — A new contender has entered the select board race to mission its incumbents. Leigh Davis, a former finance committee member, has tossed her hat into the hoop for one of the seats on the select board. The seats are held through board members Daniel Bailly and chairperson Steve Bannon. But before citizens forged their ballots at the May 14 metropolis election, they can hear from the candidates during a public forum at 6:30 p.M. On May 1 at the Claire Teague Senior Center. The event might be hosted via the town Democratic and Republican committees.
Leigh Davis: As director of Eagle Mill Redevelopment and Mill Renaissance in Lee, Davis says she’d want to bring her to enjoy Great Barrington. “I’m engaged on each day foundation with problems surrounding economic improvement, less expensive housing, neighborhood, state and countrywide investment, process advent, the restoration of historical residences, environmental conservation, community engagement, and town government,” she stated. “The towns I currently paintings in are Lee, Adams, and South Egremont. I’d love that allows you to bring the revel in and understanding I ought to Great Barrington wherein my kids had been raised and go to school, and where my heart is.” If elected, Davis hopes to paintings with the board locate creative methods to cut costs via sharing services and offers. She also mentioned the significance of defining some of the obstacles to monetary development, especially in Housatonic.
the highlighted some of these boundaries: lack of excessive-pace internet, herbal gas, transportation alternatives, and low-priced housing, stated Davis. “The Housatonic School, Ramsdell Library, Cook’s Garage — it’s all there the people have spoken — now we want a selectboard with the intention to concentrate and carry out the wishes of the residents of Great Barrington,” she stated. Public carrier changed into a large part of her existence growing up, she stated. Davis’ father became an African American civil proper activist, and honest housing recommends efficiently lobbying Congress to set up the Martin Luther King Jr. Federal excursion. Her mom turned into the assistant to R. Sargent Shriver, who led Peace Corps, Job Corps, Headstart, Special Olympics, and his spouse Eunice Kennedy.
Davis moved to town nearly a decade in the past after locating herself stranded in a snowfall on Main Street. A year later, she moved to the town together with her three children from Ireland, in which she turned into a tenured professor at the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology in Galway. There, she became a professor of film and video modifying, screenwriting, and movie history. Before that, Davis worked as a film and television editor for Hollywood and was hired via Paramount, DreamWorks, and Universal. Had she no longer been riding via the network while on vacation, she says she never would have determined Great Barrington.
During her first few years in Great Barrington, she started her own errand service commercial enterprise, Errands via Leigh. She became licensed as a patient volunteer with HospiceCare in the Berkshires. When her children have been more youthful, she volunteered as a muddy Brook Elementary School Council. Membership’s also served as a member on the improvement committee for the loose health facility Volunteers in Medicine. As an advertising and marketing representative for Construct Inc., a consultant of The Nonprofit Center of the Berkshires, the board of directors of Saint James Place.
The first few years in town, where a chunk of war, stated Davis. “I did the ‘Berkshire Shuffle’ like many others here do – seeking to hold my head above water and look after my children,” she said. Davis worked as an advertising director for the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, a columnist for the Berkshire Record, and The Berkshire Edge, in sales at Barnbrook Realty, editor of the Berkshire Film and Media Collaborative, and an advertising director to The Berkshire Eagle.
Steve Bannon: Bannon has been a select board member for nine years and served as the board’s chair for the remaining yr. He decided to run for the post in 2010 for the equal reason he’s walking this year: he wanted to assist the city. “I enjoy what I’m doing, and there’s still a few unfinished enterprises to take care of,” he stated, including that despite there continually being an unfinished commercial enterprise, he desired to continue helping the metropolis thru it.
Like Davis, he diagnosed the metropolis as struggling with economic improvement and, specifically, low-priced and a team of workers housing. The answer, he says, will need to be finished over the years through public and personal partnerships in addition to builders. It’s critical to develop a possibility for human beings that paintings on the town to have the funds to live on the town. In addition to the lower-priced housing issue, Bannon also cited the need to have excessive-velocity internet during the whole metropolis.
Though a fiber-optic device is in the works for downtown organizations to have a possibility to opt in to an excessive-velocity carrier, areas like Housatonic nonetheless do not have that choice. It’s not perfect, and that desires to alternate, he stated. In addition to the select board, Bannon has been a Berkshire Hills Regional School Committee member since 1997 and has served as its chairperson considering that 1999.
When he first ran for the put-up, he still had children within the faculty district and felt that becoming a ranks member became the least he should do to help out, he said. He’s remained a member of the committee for seeing you later because he feels it’s properly to have a stability of human beings with youngsters inside the district in addition to an outside point of view, he delivered, noting what a mission it can be to discover dad and mom inclined to commit the time to serve to the regional committee.
