Bill Dwight, 56, has dedicated his adult life to keeping Northampton a rare and special place.

He represented Ward 1 on the Northampton City Council from 1996 to 2004. Some of his accomplishments as a city councilor were:

• Helped, established and served on the Northampton Youth Commission, a forum created to advise the Mayor and Council on issues effecting citizens 18 and younger and for promoting civic engagement among the younger members of our community.

• Promoted the creation of a city web site, to facilitate access to city services, to enhance transparency and to promote Northampton, Florence and Leeds.

• Led the two-year community process that established zoning regulations for King St. highway business. which allowed Northampton to determine the scale and scope of retail that is appropriate to the community.

Since stepping down from the City Council, Bill has remained deeply engaged in Northampton civic life, most prominently in his role of radio show host on WRSI, WHMP and Valley Free Radio.

He is a friend to local nonprofits, lending his talents as a host, volunteer, or speechmaker at numerous functions each year, as well as serving on the boards of directors of Fisher Home, Media Education Foundation, New Century Theatre, and Northampton Community Television. Boards he formerly served on include the Commonwealth Center for Change, Girls Inc., People’s Institute, and the Performance Project. 

Outside of his civic pursuits, Bill acts in local theater, dabbles in carpentry and photography, struggles to work out at Northampton Athletic Club and talks to everybody he meets.

He’s had an eclectic job history including stints as a bouncer, bartender, truck driver, crew foreman for a pheasant farm, pizza oven installer, clown (The Amazing Rodney), farm worker and natural gas pipeline worker.

Bill had worked at Pleasant Street Video for 25 years, a small, independently owned downtown retail business, until it closed this July. He spearheaded the fundraising effort that saw the entire video collection transferred to the Forbes Library, thus creating a peerless movie collection for the citizens of the Pioneer Valley to access for free.

Bill grew up in neighboring Holyoke. He and his wife, Lida Lewis have lived and owned a home in Northampton since 1987. They attended the University of Massachusetts. Their son Eli, 25, who attended Northampton schools, is a Land Steward at Franklin Land Trust in Shelburne Falls.