Ward 3 Councilor Nicholas Caccamo will not run for re-election this year.

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The number of open ward seats for City Council in the November election has now ticked up to three.

Ward 3 Councilor Nicholas Caccamo will not be running for his fifth consecutive term so he can focus on the next step in his career.

"It feels good to make this transition now and it's exciting to have been in that position, certainly," he said. "It's been a remarkable learning experience, something I have never taken for granted."

Caccamo was first elected to the council in 2013, succeeding Paul Capitanio, who did not see re-election. Ward 2 Councilor Kevin Morandi and Ward 4 Councilor Christopher Connell simultaneously announced last month that they would not be running for re-election.

For three years, Caccamo has been a full-time student at University of Massachusetts at Amherst, working on a dual master's degree in public policy and regional planning. The degree program will come to an end this spring and during the last year of his term. 

Caccamo feels this is a good opportunity for the transition.

"I'm getting to that point where I need to be thinking about my next career choices and I have some ideas, things I'd like to be doing, but I haven't really started that deep dive into the application process and job openings and so forth, but that's a major occurrence I need to kind of resolve," he said.

In the decade proceeding his return to college, Caccamo worked in county public schools. He holds a bachelor's degree in education with a concentration in high school social studies from Champlain College in Burlington, Vt.

"I'm sort of a non-traditional student in the sense that I'm just going to grad school a little over a decade from undergraduate," he said.

The last school Caccamo worked at was Berkshire Arts & Technology Public Charter school in Adams, which he left to pursue being a full-time student at the same time as being a city councilor.

Before the pandemic, he was commuting to the UMass campus anywhere between four and five times a week depending on the semester. Caccamo said there were nights when he would leave campus around 4:30 or 5 and get home just in time for City Council meetings because of traffic.

A large part of Caccamo's inspiration for obtaining the dual master's degree was the work he both performed and observed as a councilor.

"Certainly, being a councilor was a very formative experience and it was a big role," he said. "I'm sort of looking to transition from public education to public service on the municipal level, which is really the field I want to be in long term, after UMass, and after the council."

Reportedly, the working relationships that Caccamo developed at City Hall inspired him, as they were extremely formative. Getting to know the City Hall staff and the duties they perform under their role, their backgrounds, and how they ended up in these positions were also inspiring, he said.

"The work that is done day to day is really admirable stuff and kind of inspiring in that sense," Caccamo said.

What Caccamo will miss the most about representing Ward 3 is the micro-level of representation he was able to give his constituents and the small community feels of Pittsfield even though the city is large in size.

While he wishes he could have committed more time to larger projects, being a ward councilor afforded him an opportunity to really know every corner of the ward where he was able to address very particular problems such as storm-water issues or zoning conflicts.  

Rest assured, Caccamo will obviously be staying in Pittsfield for the remainder of his term. Though he doesn't have a job location in mind, he also plans to be in the area for the foreseeable future.

Caccamo added his next location, or his next career's location is one of those big questions he hasn't really worked through yet.

Reflecting on his time as a councilor, Caccamo is grateful for all of the tools the position gave him and wishes the best to Ward 3's next representative. He said that for now, he is just enjoying his remaining time on the council and hopes that he positively impacted the community during his time.

"I look back to when I started as a councilor and this idea of what I thought it would be and it really changed into something that was a bit different than I'd anticipated, but that's sort of growing into the job a little bit," Caccamo said. "I wish I had the knowledge I have now eight years ago."

"We take things one day at a time and hope we are doing good."

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