Overview:
Josh Chernin, a resident of Petersham, is running unopposed for a seat on the Selectboard. Chernin, who has a background in manufacturing and a master's degree in business administration from Harvard Business School, has been actively involved in the community since moving to Petersham in 2022. He wants to improve the town's information systems and expand the town's volunteer base.
PETERSHAM – Since he first moved to Petersham in 2022, Josh Chernin has been actively involved in the community.
His participation at town meetings and various committee and board meetings, he said, prompted a number of people to urge him to run for an open seat on the Petersham Selectboard. He’s the only candidate for the seat.
Born in Cambridge, Chernin said he grew up in Newton. After graduating from Newton North High School in 1977, he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from UMass/Amherst. After working for three years as a research assistant at Cambridge Research Institute, Chernin earned a masters degree in business administration from Harvard Business School.
“I have spent pretty much my entire career since then in manufacturing, running a variety of different plants, mostly here in Massachusetts,” he said. “But in 2011, I got the opportunity to actually build and run a plant in Germany, in a little town called Stade.”
In 2018, he and some associates founded Business Improvement Group, headquartered in Boston.
Chernin said that, while living in the city, “What I wanted was a workshop and some land and peace and quiet. I started looking around and wound up out here in November of ’22.”
Since moving to Petersham, said Chernin, “I’ve been involved in a fair amount of stuff. I got involved in the Historical Society and I’m on the board of directors now. I’ve volunteered on the wood bank, fixing up the back side of the library.”
In addition, he said he has attended a number of Finance Committee meetings, as well as meetings of the Open Space and Recreation Committee.
“I’ve been attending all of the joint meetings of the Selectboard and FinCom over the last couple of months because this is the budget season,” he said. “And I also just started teaching a personal finance class at the library, a four-part class.”
Chernin said several people urged him to run for Selectboard last year, but he felt he wasn’t ready.
“But when a seat opened up again this year, again, several people asked if I’d be interested and this time I said I would be,” he added.
Chernin said there are a pair of issues at the top of his priority list.
“As you know, we’re a very small town with limited resources,” he said. “The people who run the guts of the operation, they work very, very hard; they’re very dedicated people. But I get the sense their jobs are harder than they should be because the systems aren’t keeping up. That’s an issue I’d like to dig into.
“My background is in manufacturing and I came to appreciate the power of good information systems in manufacturing,” he said. “The power to cause improvement is usually in the system, and I think the same principle applies here. So, that’s one thing I’d like to dig into.”
Chernin said he would also like to expand the town’s volunteer base.
“A huge part of the town is run by volunteers,” he said. “It’s really impressive the number of people who volunteer….I would like to get more people involved, but first they need to know that volunteers are needed.”
To do this, he said, would include improving the use of social media, reaching out to high school students, and working with local media “to the extent that we can. It’s going to take a variety of methods.”
Petersham’s town election is set for Monday, April 6. Voting will take place from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. at Town Hall.