City Council Candidate, Ward 1
Website: micheleronco
Podcast 10/31/25: Panorama
Podcast 10/6/25: Talk the Talk
Unscripted Community Conversation
Bombyx Center for Arts & Equity
October 24, 2025
Video Clip – Question to candidates: Most of you probably share the view that the city can afford to move a good chunk of money into the school budgets that we’ve been underestimating research. I think that’s a big reason why all of you are up there and many of us are here. My question is: what happens if that can’t or doesn’t happen.? How do we galvanize this electricity in the air around taking care of our schools better? Everyone is serious about it, and I think there’s this energy that we haven’t seen in the city in a long time. Feel free to answer it one of two ways – either what else can we do, or just, how do we do a combination moving forward – maybe healing some of the disagreements and finding ways to just address the issue, even if we cannot do it via moving recurring 2.7 million year- over-year.
“There are challenges. There’s an environment around us. We don’t know how the economy is going to be, how much money. And I would say that – as a parent – I would tell you that it takes a village to raise a child. And as an engineer, a manager, and a former city councilor – I will tell you it takes a village to raise a child. So here is the village. So how are we going to do it? How are we going to do things differently? This: a conversation where we get together – and it is not any more lecturing of the voters that ‘we know better for you’ – and you hear from the city council ‘oh but I don’t like your tone’
Maybe what you say has merit, but just because someone has a higher voice, probably we should discount the merit of what you say, right?
So what we are going to change – and we are doing it tonight already – other councilors could not make it – but this is what we envision for the city, where it’s a village and we all work together.
I hope that all the people – also the ones who don’t win – will keep helping because we need the wisdom of the crowd. It’s proven. When you put together in a room – people coming from all the spectrum, right?
We pride ourselves on having rainbows in this city. But then we should respect all the colors and all the opinions. Look at all the colors and listen to all the voices. And that’s what’s not happening. That’s why we have a record number of people running because a lot of people tell me, “Michele, I wrote to my city councilor with a problem and instead of receiving an answer, I got lectured.’ That needs to change and that’s why we’re running.”
Question to candidates: Would you focus on changing the charter – with the executive power in the mayor’s office – which limits your abilities to represent the people that you’re supposed to represent?
“My prior experience was a city councilor in Italy. There is direct election of the mayor, pretty much like here. But I was surprised when I started getting involved in city council meetings, and finding out that the city council could only remove money from the budget, and not add.
I was surprised because my experience was, as a city councilor – I had to – the mayor was presenting the budget to the city council and the city council was supposed to approve it as a majority. I wrote basic amendments to the budget proposed to increase and decrease money and move money around. And of course, it was up to me to get buy-in from my colleagues and the city council.
So, I was very surprised and I felt that we did not have a healthy check and balance between nine people versus one, right? We march for no kings, but again, we don’t want no – we have a – queen, right? A little bit, right?
We want to have the same thing – I would say that this is more a philosophical point that I think is not necessarily related to the charter, but the challenge we’re going to have – and be patient for us – we’re not – nobody is an expert, right? We’re taking time from our family to do this for the community.
And also the people who are running, now to be fair to them, it’s much more difficult to run a city than a business – you need to maximize the profit and all the shareholders are happy. Here, we are all shareholders. We all own one share of the city of Northampton. It’s difficult to make everybody happy because it’s not about just maximizing profit. We don’t just want to maximize taxes on you. We want to balance all the needs. It’s very complicated.
I would say that for us, the complication for any elected official is when a piece of paper is presented to us and we need to vote. At that point, I’m supposed to represent Ward 1, but I will also affect the entire city with my vote. When I vote on something, do I vote based on what I think is right? Or do I vote based on what the majority of my Ward thinks is right?
That’s why I think we need to – more and more – do these sort of gatherings and town halls because we need to reset. We are going to have a natural bias, right? I come with my own experience and I think that this is right, but doesn’t mean necessarily that the majority of my Ward agrees with me.
Actually it struck me, one of the the people I talked to – we were at a house party – mentioned, Michele are you going to have a newsletter, right? I’m thinking about it, but what would you like to receive, right? As communication – the current city councilor sends a newsletter explaining what happened, but not why he voted in a certain way.
I would say that the process will almost be – even before voting – gathering the opinion of the people and say: how should I vote? This is this is coming – What/how do you think we should vote? Because I might think that ‘yeah this makes sense to me,’ but maybe it doesn’t make sense to the people. Then you need to manage – a lot of people are unhappy with your decision.
So it’s probably better to be proactive and collect the inputs, right? And the feedback. I just recently went through management training that said ‘feedback is the essence of intelligence.’ So we learn through constant feedback. You need to seek feedback from other people – open to especially the voices that are discording from you, that don’t agree with you. That’s where you grow, right? People who you surround yourself – of yes men or yes woman – then you don’t really grow. You don’t learn anything.”
League of Women Voters – Candidate Forum
August 26, 2025
Public Comment
Video Clip: At the March 6, 2025 City Council meeting, Michele Ronco states his children have been impacted by large class sizes at Jackson Street. He asks for increased funding for schools and notes that community members are using their evening and family time to come to meetings to offer information and makes a request to support all students in Northampton.
Video Clip – At the April 10, 2025 School Committee meeting, Michele Ronco states that last year, like this year, residents were told there was not enough funding for schools because it was important to balance city finances
He notes that residents are then told there is enough money to prevent tax increases and an override. He believes different choices could’ve been made last year, just like this year. He states to school committee members: “If you believe schools need to be strong, then it is important to vote for a budget that is strong.”
