Kelliher elected MMA president; Mayor Higgins is VP
Brookline Town Administrator Richard Kelliher is the new president of the MMA Board of Directors, and Northampton Mayor Mary Clare Higgins is the new vice president.
The MMA board endorsed Kelliher and Higgins following the association’s Annual Business Meeting on Jan. 8 in Boston.
Kelliher succeeds Chicopee Alderman William Zaskey. He has been town administrator in Brookline for 11 years and spent the previous 10 years as chief administrative officer in Newton. He is a former associate director of the MMA and was the assistant to the deputy mayor in Boston.
Kelliher, also a member of the board of the Massachusetts Municipal Management Association, is a former chair and current member of the MMA’s Revenue Sharing Task Force. Earlier, he headed the MMA’s Policy Committee on Personnel and Labor Relations (1993-94) and the MMA’s Group Health Cost Containment Committee (1991-93). He has also served on the MMA’s Fiscal Policy Committee.
In an interview, Kelliher identified what he sees as the MMA’s top priority: “We need to do everything we can to help cities and towns to continue to bounce back from the local aid cuts.
“More long term, the association needs to ready itself for the state’s grappling with education reform,” he said. This means not only ensuring that there is adequate state funding for school systems, but that funding is equitably distributed among the cities and towns.
Kelliher also cited affordable housing as an area of particular interest. He said he would like to see the MMA play a role in addressing the issue in the Legislature as well as being part of a broad-based campaign, including leaders from business, academia and other fields, that would seek to resolve “the conundrum of affordable housing in the broadest sense of that term.”
Additionally, Kelliher stressed the need for unity among officials from all Massachusetts cities and towns, whether large or small, rural, suburban or urban. He encouraged MMA members to contact him with questions and suggestions.
Higgins, who has served as Northampton’s mayor for five years, is chair of the MMA’s Revenue Sharing Task Force. During the past year she was president of the Massachusetts Mayors’ Association.
Higgins spent more than 20 years working in early education. Prior to assuming her mayoral post, she headed the Hampshire Community Action Commission, which was responsible for overseeing more than 200 early-childhood programs in Hampshire County.
“There is a tremendous sense of excitement and a feeling that the MMA could not be in better hands,” said MMA Executive Director Geoff Beckwith. “Rich Kelliher and Clare Higgins are two of the most able and respected municipal leaders our state has seen, and we are very fortunate to have them step forward at this crucial time for cities and towns. I know that our members will be proud of their leadership team, and we will all benefit from their guidance and judgement.”
Written by MMA Associate Editor Mitch Evich
