“Tough Questions” Interview with Gardner Mayor Michael Nicholson
Gardner Magazine Publisher Werner Poegel spoke with Gardner Mayor Michael Nicholson on September 25, 2025. Listen on any device, CLICK PLAY.
We asked tough questions because it is almost impossible to get Mayor Nicholson to say anything bad about anyone, let alone his opponent in the upcoming Mayoral Election, Kimberly Blake. The subject was a false post in Blake’s Rogue Facebook Group about thousands of gallons of water being pumped out of the Waterford Community Center basement. There was a truck there doing work, but not to pump out water. In the event there ever was any water, there are 2 new industrial grade sump pumps in place which would take care of the water. So again, the post was completely made-up nonsense yet again.
UPDATE 9-25-25 8pm: At this hour, Kimberly Blake has not yet removed the anonymous post Blake knows is completely false. No truck was at Waterford removing thousands of gallons of water. In our interview, Gardner Mayor Nicholson explains how issues at Waterford were remediated and how 2 industrial sump pumps had been installed in the event there was any water at all coming in due to wet weather. The pumps would take care of any potential problem before there was even close to an issue.
Here’s what Mayor Nicholson said about the Waterford basement: “There are two sets of sump pumps that are there in case it does get any water, it pumps it out. Now, this is New England. When it rains, just like several other houses that we have in the city, there may be times that the sump pumps do pump water out of there. And is it 100% bone dry? No, but neither is any basement here in the city. But we’ve had air quality reports done on the location. It shows that it’s safe. The air is safe in there. The basement is safe in there. There’s a lot of stuff that we’ve done to that building to remediate a lot of those concerns that have happened, and it’s all taken care of. Was there some work that was being done on the pumps earlier this week? Yes, there was. In fact, it’s a dirt floor sub basement that’s in there. So there was some filth that clogged up one of the pipes. So we had someone come in and unclog the pipes, install some filters, and now we’re ready to go, and everything’s working fine.”
With respect to Blake’s bold-faced lies the Mayor was reserved: “My job isn’t to deal with the random lies that someone has for desperate click bait here and there. My job is to run the city, and that’s all we’re doing here….We’ve got a job to do, and that’s what I was elected to do here, to do the job, and that’s what I’m going to be doing.“
Gardner Mayor Nicholson answered a number of questions centered around some of Kimberly Blake’s ridiculous suggestions, which if implemented, would cut out essential services like Fire, Police, and DPW due to lack of funding. We went over Mayor Nicholson’s efforts to reduce increases on property taxes through for example, the aggressive pursuit of grant funding which has brought in $60 million, and through efforts to increase revenue in other ways to soften the impact on property tax payers. Once again, Nicholson explained his efforts to put much more money in to paving roads than those who held the office before him. The Mayor also spoke about his efforts to bring a homeless shelter to Gardner and how he has been actively working with a number of non-profits towards that goal.