City Council Candidate, Ward 5
Website: rotelloforward5.com
League of Women Voters – Candidate Forum
August 26, 2025
“My name is Vincent Rotello. I go by Luke. I’m running for city council in Ward 5 to succeed Alex Jarrett. I’m a 24-year-old working-class organizer, co-chair of the Western Mass Club of the CPUSA, nearly lifelong valley resident, and a product of public schools.
With Donald Trump in the White House, we are facing a profoundly dangerous political situation. ICE raids target our most vulnerable community members while MAGA’s federal budget threatens millions of lives. The billionaires and black shirts running our federal agencies have stripped queer and transgender Americans of our legal identities, impounded billions of dollars, and further jeopardized the future of our planet. These most reactionary, most terroristic sections of monopoly capital rooted in Confederate heritage have set out to destroy democracy and civic life as we know it.
This is a moment that demands the clearest articulation of strategy and a redoubling of our social commitments from the ground up. To chart our path out of fascism, Northampton must stand as a bulwark. And it’s on us as a community to organize ourselves as such.
This starts with fully funding our public schools where our educators have already faced years of uncertainty and cuts. Our students have lost necessary and legally mandated support systems and working families have struggled to keep up with busing fees and limited out of school resources. Our city council must opt in to assert its position as a legislative body and a check on executive power. With federal support for public school students on the line, it is more than more important than ever to dedicate our city’s recurring revenues to our most urgent popular needs.
Likewise, our practices of capital planning must be subject to public oversight and accountable to the broadest interests of our community. Constituent services and regular communication must be prioritized. With our federal government moving to smash unions across the country, we must see strong representation of the labor movement and working people in political life, including by establishing a municipal labor standards commission.
Workers, tenants, and unhoused residents must likewise be empowered to seek a robust program of protections, including rent controls, a strategic plan for affordable housing, and continued funding for the PBTA to ensure a universal right to live and work in Northampton with dignity. And with war profiteers like Alfred Harris operating in city limits, funneling spoils of the genocide in Gaza toward MAGA insurrectionists here at home, it is urgent to seek a just transition to civilian production that upholds our city’s commitments to peace, justice, and denuclearization.
Our present situation is dire, but our city’s traditions of abolitionism and civil rights struggle show us that there has always been another way. to our new neighbors in Ward 5 and across Northampton who have sought refuge from the Republican governments which have sought to deny rights to bodily autonomy, to suffrage, to live, and to love freely. Know that you are welcome here as many like you have been before.
We stand on a proud and unfinished legacy of progressive struggle and have much work still to do. It’s a long road ahead, but we will walk it together. I ask you to join me in taking that first step on September 16th and November 4th.”
Video Clip – Vincent (Luke) Rotello introduces himself at the Candidate Forum sponsored by the Northampton League of Women Voters.
Luke Rotello states that the use of recurring municipal revenue needs to fund recurring social needs, particularly schools. Luke Rotello feels that politics and civic institutions must be democratized in the city, including matters of capital planning, which have occurred behind closed doors. Luke states that he is an advocate for all citizens rights to live in Northampton with dignity and his commitment to defending working people and civic life in the city.
Video Clip – Do you support providing more money for the schools? How do you propose to do so (or why not)?
“I would actually start by concurring with Ms Davis on the matter that we do need strategic planning. And one of the actual issues that we have seen certainly in the course of this term of the city council and the school committee has been a reticence of the city council in particular to meet with the school committee and to move in the direction of establishing a longer term strategic plan.
Of course, we are under a number of pressures, you know, with certainly the federal government moving to sort of tear out the floor from underneath many of our most fundamental social institutions. But we must within our means here as a community, as a city, we must work collaboratively to strategize on this matter.
We’ve seen nearly 30 positions cut from the school department in the past three fiscal years. That is a crisis. It’s a crisis that is understood as such by our teachers, by our parents, by our children, by our superintendent.
Widespread across the city, it is understood, and this is incurring enormous social costs which are compounding year over year. It is opening the city up to litigation and we are not meeting the fundamental needs of our children. Understanding there is limited time to answer this, there are a number of directions that I want to take this.
I’m hoping to find more time later in this conversation, but I believe we need to look into, for instance, seeking out a pilot program with Smith. That’s one very important angle for raising more revenue. We also need to dedicate the recurring revenues that we do have to our schools.”
Video Clip – How do you respond to recent views/criticisms of lack of transparency in city government? What is your communication plan if elected?
“I should just briefly note that Mr Murphy is on record as opposing the practice of what is known as opting in, which is a measure by which, it’s encoded in state law, where normally city council is only able to remove items from a budget, remove components of a budget, it allows the council to actually add to, specifically, the school budget, turning the budget itself into a site of negotiation.
I would very much – back to the point of the question – I would consider myself to be one of those critics and I would say one of the most important tasks that we have in terms of the council as a democratic body, is to make it a more robust site of political life to ensure that constituent engagement is at the core of what we are doing to ensure that Democratic engagement is at the core of what we are doing.
I think that’s that is our most profound obligation in particular in this moment. We should understand more than ever the necessity of checks and balances and that is something that the city council has the ability to do and so far has not. So I would like to see that as well.
One final point very briefly on the matter of capital planning, it takes place with a what is known as a CIP committee. This committee has met behind closed doors and put forward capital planning that is then more or less rubber stamped by the city council. I believe that we need to change that and open up these processes in the name of the vast majority of our community.”
Public Comment
Video Clip: At the May 21, 2025 City Council meeting, Luke Rotello shares concerns that the Mayor disregards the legitimacy of the school committee and city council has not functioned as a check on the administration of the Mayor. Luke states that a budget based on removing resources from teachers, families, and students is not a model of stability for Northampton.
“My name is Luke Rotello. I’m co-chair of the Communist Party USA in Western Massachusetts and I’m a candidate for City Council in Ward 5 of Northampton.
This austerity budget is an insult to the intelligence, the dignity, and to the livelihood of our community.
A model of fiscal stability built on the back of our public education system, our teachers, families, and students, is no model of stability at all.
A model for democracy, where our mayor disregards legitimacy of our school committee and our council majority refuses to act as a check on her administration, is no way to stand up to the MAGA movement.
I remember a meeting a few months ago where Councilor Klemer demanded, in lieu of funding public education, that our educators find a way to, quote, “teach differently.”
We have a more serious proposal, which is apparently also a radical idea. Let’s govern differently.
It is long past time to put the needs of educators, families, students, workers, and tenants first.
We have a crisis not of cash, but of priorities, and is long past time for a change.”
Video Clip: At the May 21, 2025 City Council meeting, Luke Rotello speaks about the decorum of city councilors and the Mayor during public testimonies and the lack of consulting with teachers, staff, and paraeducators during a school funding crisis.
“My name is Luke Rotello. I live in Ward 5 of Northampton and I’m the co-chair of the Western Mass Club of the Communist Party USA. We have a lot to cover in 2 minutes, so I’ll start with the matter of decorum raised by Councilor Klemer at the February 20th City Council meeting.
It is interesting, Councilor, to be chastised for perceived disrespectful behavior in council chambers, considering your support for a mayor who sends emails and browses the Internet during public comment.
Are you sure this is the moment you want to start setting ground rules for conduct?
Why don’t we start right there?
But I think the question of respect is an important one, so let’s stick with it for a second. It is, after all, a matter of public dignity that our schools have come under attack in this way.
In failing to fulfill IEPs, in stranding our ELL students, in defunding of essential programs, and consequent expansion of local charter schools, we are indeed facing a profound crisis of respect here in Northampton.
This crisis has many facets.
It’s an issue of respect when decisions on budgetary matters are made in deference to the mayor’s appointed group of technocrats, without once consulting teachers, staff and paraeducators in our public schools.
It’s an issue of respect when the primary representative of the schools in these decisions is a superintendent in whom 96% of NASE members voted no confidence, who advocates against their adequate funding and dares to lecture our teachers on their work attendance.
When working people are excluded from the municipal process and our public officials think that their emails are more important than our lives, that is an issue of respect. And you better believe you’re going to feel it come November.
While I have the floor, I would also like to address the issue of methodology. I should note that the questions of process that were never once raised about the $18 million capital improvements program that was developed behind closed doors, as Councilor Elkins and Mayor Sciarra can certainly attest.
Recall that SOS (Support Our Schools) originally sought an appropriation of roughly $2 million for Level Services. Well, some elected representatives seem to believe we should apologize for it.
I am proud of our community.
We’ve been clear in presenting the urgency of the situation in human terms as a crisis of democracy, racial justice, women’s rights, disabled justice. And we have also told the truth of how our sky high budget surplus has come from systematic underfunding of public services.
Tonight is yet another chance for our council to take a preliminary step in correcting its course. I urge you to vote yes on the midyear appropriation.
As we all know, the struggle for respect did not start here and it’s not stopping here either.”