Gardner Magazine spoke with Gardner Mayor Michael Nicholson on July 17, 2025 about Basic City Services.
Basic City Services
Question: Talking about basic city services with Gardner Mayor Nicholson: You’ve singled out basic city services as a priority. Can you explain what your vision is and what have you been able to improve since 2020?
Answer: I think there’s a lot of work that we’ve been able to do just to make it so it’s easier for people to interact with City Hall. Expanding our online permitting system so that if you need you know the services of City Hall you can get those from the comfort of your home on a 24-7 basis rather than only when City Hall has working hours. We’ve increased our veteran service offerings not just for Gardner but for the region by adding two additional staff members to that department and then taking on the veteran services for not just Gardner but also the towns of Ashburnham, Westminster, Ashburnham, Westminster, Winchendon, Princeton, and Ashby. And we’ve got other communities that are also looking at joining our district here too. And it’s one of those things that these smaller towns didn’t have the resources to have a full-time veterans agent. So a veterans agent in somewhere that was a smaller community may only have someone there two hours a week where right now those veterans that are in that community have access to two veteran service agents on a 40-hour per week basis during the work week. And it’s something that it increases in some cases 20-fold the access to those services that these veterans have. So I’m very proud of the work that we’ve been able to do there. Our outreach services that we’ve done through our prevention coordinator and domestic violence advocate and then just some of the ways that we interact with the public here too and cutting back the red tape that we have in our ordinance code and going back and looking through those and the big administrative legislation package that we did last year. There’s a lot that’s been done and there’s a lot that we still plan to do and I’m really happy with how we’ve been able to increase our access to the public, our transparency to the public as a result of that and really work towards setting us up so people know what we’re doing in city hall each and every day on their behalf.
Question: If you were to ask many city residents about what they like best about the services that the city of Gardner provides what would show up in the top 10 list?
Answer: You know I that’s a great question Werner. I’d like to say they’d be able to see the investments that we’ve made in the city. I’d like to be able to say that they’ve seen how we’ve worked to grow our programming and work to increase the ways that we can have access to the public but you should never be satisfied with that either because there’s always ways we can improve, always more that we you know could be thinking outside the box on and that’s exactly what we’re doing.
Question: So do you wake up every day saying okay how can I improve upon this and how can I improve upon? You’re never satisfied are you?
Answer: No, no and you shouldn’t be in these jobs. Your goal is to build a community that people feel proud to call their home and find the ways to do that each and every day and that’s exactly what you wake up trying to do is how can this be fixed, how can this become better, how can we can improve this and hopefully you find the right spot.
Question: Do you have something on your list in the coming few years that you’d like to see improved as far as city services?
Answer: I’d like to see all of the departments put on the at least the online permitting system right now because that really helps get everyone on the same page. Right now we’ve got it in the clerk’s office, the fire department, the building department, and the health department. We can really expand on how we have that service there. Different ways that people can interact with the public where in terms of right now we have a city feedback form on the website that residents can go on and directly input you know their questions, comments, and concerns and it gets sent directly to the individuals who oversee those those projects there too. How can we increase and bolster that support that’s there but also just there’s different projects that we have in the pipeline right now that I’m really excited for that are too early to announce right now but I think they will make some big differences around the city.
Question: So if I had to describe it I would say that before it was kind of clunky and now if you want to apply for a building permit it’s somewhat seamless. Is that right?
Answer: Yeah it is it is and honestly you get better feedback too because you you get directed to the right people automatically through the system rather than trying to guess who you have to reach out to.
Comment: Thanks for talking to us about basic city services.