NORTHFIELD — Alex Meisner wants to bring a new perspective to the Northfield Selectboard.
“When you have people who have been in town for a long time, they sometimes have a ‘that’s the-way we’ve always done it attitude,’” Meisner said. “My attitude is that we should try something new. We’re not gonna know if it fails or works unless we try it.”
Meisner has lived in Northfield since 2012. He came to town at 18 years old after moving out of his parents’ house in Bernardston. At the time, he was working toward an associate’s degree in criminal justice at Greenfield Community College.
After earning his associate’s degree, Meisner worked as a corrections officer at the Greenfield jail for a year, then enrolled in a bachelor’s program in criminal justice at Westfield State University. He is now working on a master’s degree in public administration with a focus on criminal justice administration, also at Westfield State.
Meisner has been involved in town government since May 2017, when he was elected as one of three sewer commissioners. He describes the job as a leadership role in that he is responsible for overseeing the department’s staff and finances. Decisions on both are difficult, he said, because they immediately affect the staff and townspeople.
“No one wants to see their sewer rates go up,” Meisner said.
The experience has also taught him about the functions of bureaucracy, he said — “what works and doesn’t work about it.”
Meisner sees Northfield’s declining youth population as one of the town’s most serious problems. After graduating from Pioneer Valley Regional School, he said, most young people go elsewhere to find work or to attend college, then do not come back.
“There’s no reason for people to want to come or stay in Northfield because there’s no work, there’s no resources, there’s not even a gas station,” Meisner said. “There’s nobody my age who wants to stay in the town, and there’s over a third of the town that’s made up of senior citizens. What I’m worried about is that, when they eventually pass on, there’s gonna be a huge population decline. Because there’s nothing available for people in the town anymore, and people don’t want to stay in a town that has nothing to give them.”
Meisner said one of his ultimate goals is to attract younger people to Northfield. He also hopes to increase political participation in town, especially among younger people.
“I’m probably one of three or four people (in their 20s) at the Town Meeting that is interested in moving the town forward,” he said.
Meisner also hopes that, as a current graduate student, his perspective on education would be valuable for the other two members of the Selectboard as the Pioneer Valley Regional School District works through its budget crisis.
In general, Meisner sees the job of the Selectboard as working as a team while acknowledging and understanding public opinion.
“The only way the Selectboard is going to function correctly is if people put their differences aside,” Meisner said. “The only thing that I promise is that I want to be able to do the job and do it with honesty, as genuinely as possible, by listening to what the residents say and being able to accept and understand public opinion.”