Overview:
The town election in Petersham will see a two-way race for a three-year seat on the Board of Health between Carole L. "Carly" Hutchinson and Cindy Hopper. Both candidates have experience in public health and a strong connection to the community. The election will take place on April 6 at Petersham Town Hall.
PETERSHAM – The town election will see a two-way race for a three-year seat on the Board of Health between Carole L. “Carly” Hutchinson and Cindy Hopper.
The election will take place on Monday, April 6, at Petersham Town Hall from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Cindy Hopper
Hopper and her husband Brian, who runs a bar in Worcester, bought land in Petersham, built a house and have been living in town since 2018. The couple have two grown children. She said building a home in the community gave her first-hand experience dealing with municipal boards.
“Most people don’t build houses on a regular basis,” she said jokingly.
Despite some of challenges, she said, “I found that the people there were there to help us, not just to keep telling us ‘no, no, no.’ They were there to help us through the process and complete the right paperwork. We had to re-do our septic design twice; we had to re-do it and go back to the Board of Health. They were all so great.”
Hopper said she grew up in nearby Rutland, graduating from Wachusett Regional High School in West Boylston in 1993. She went to Quinsigamond Community College, where she earned an associate degree in biotechnology. She later earned a bachelor’s degree in applied biology from UMass Amherst.
Her experience includes working as a lab manager, testing blood, growing cell lines, preparing test articles, preparing buffers and testing blood samples. In 2020 she became the wet lab director for a startup company begun by several colleagues. She later took a position at UMass Medical School, teaching medical students about flow psychometry.”
Since becoming a resident of Petersham, Hopper and her husband have regularly attended town meetings. She began looking for ways to become more involved and thought the Board of Health fit what she was looking for.
“I think it’s an important role, especially now, since we’ve had some changes with our building permits,” she said. “We’re probably going to have more people looking to build and we have to make sure we’re protecting our waterways and protecting our environment. I think most people in Petersham would like to protect the open space and protect the Quabbin watershed. But really, I’m just looking for a way to be more involved.”
Carole L. ‘Carly’ Hutchinson
Hutchinson has been an active member of the Petersham community, served on the Open Space & Recreation Committee, the Cultural Council, and as a volunteer at the Harvard Forest Fisher Museum. She currently sits on the town’s Zoning Board of Appeals.
She was born and raised in Petersham and attended Petersham Center School and Mahar Regional High School, where she graduated in 1976, before moving with her family to New York City. She spent 30 years in the Big Apple before returning to Petersham in 2019.
“I’ve been working in public health for so many years and have been looking for an opportunity, for an opening on the Board of Health,” she said. “That just recently happened and so I thought it was an area where I could contribute something from my own personal experience.”
After earning a bachelor’s degree in English and women’s studies from UMass/Amherst and working in communications in Cambridge and Boston, Hutchinson moved to New York in around 1990, and worked in publishing for about 10 years. She later earned her master’s degree and a PhD in anthropology from Columbia University.
After working at a research center for about a decade, Hutchinson began teaching grad-level public health classes at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, a job she continues to do remotely from her home in Petersham. She said her background should mesh nicely with the other two members of the board.
“Right now, Dr. (Rebecca) Jackson, coming from a clinical perspective, has done a lot of work with federally qualified health centers supporting marginalized populations,” Hutchinson said. “And Mr. (Rich) Nicoletti, he has an engineering background….I thought I might be able to bring another perspective, giving the board a really well-rounded perspective.”