Pamela Barberis grew up in an atmosphere of public service in Vermont, where her father was the moderator of the local town-hall meetings — the pinnacle of local government in her hometown of Dorset, population 400.

Serving on the Whitefish City Council is something Barberis has thought about now and again, but the rigors of working and raising a son consumed most extra time. When her 9-year-old son Evan recently emerged cancer-free from a 2 1/2-year battle with leukemia — “he’s totally in remission,” she eagerly shared — Barberis felt a kind of seize-the-moment call to action.

“It kind of wakes you up to a lot of things,” she said about her son’s struggle with cancer. “It’s about taking action today and not letting things go by.”

Barberis said she and her family were the recipients of a huge outpouring of generosity as their son underwent treatment. “We felt very well taken care of,” she said.

Now it’s time to give back, and making decisions about a city she cares for deeply is one way to do that.

Barberis is pleased with the outcome of the downtown streetscape project that widened sidewalks and added more pedestrian friendliness to Central Avenue.

“I think all the upgrades to the streets have been worth it,” she said. “We have a nice, vibrant downtown because of the hard work” of groups such as the Whitefish Convention and Visitor Bureau and Heart of Whitefish.

As an avid bicyclist, Barberis would like to see continued improvements to the city’s bike and pedestrian paths.

She has taken a look at both the update of the downtown master plan and the recently adopted Depot Park master plan, and believes parking is a pivotal part of the downtown infrastructure.

Although three future parking structures proposed in the downtown update may seem hard to imagine right now, Barberis said she’d hate to see Whitefish’s tourist-based economy negatively affected by a lack of parking.

She likes the idea of a pedestrian mall near Depot Park that’s proposed in the downtown plan update, and said the popular park needs infrastructure improvements such as restrooms that perhaps could be tied in with expansion of the O’Shaughnessy Center.

Barberis supports a recent proposal to create the state’s first urban nonmotorized waterway on a six-mile stretch of the Whitefish River from the railroad trestle to the Montana 40 bridge. With so many recreationalists on the river it would be difficult to police a lower speed limit for motorized watercraft, she said.

“We just got the river cleaned up so beautifully, and I think there’s a danger to the shoreline” from the erosion caused by motorized vessels, she said.

Barberis wants the city to “be completely on top of” monitoring water quality in Whitefish Lake and wonders if there’s a way the city could provide some level of assistance to help residents who have septic systems hook up to city sewer, particularly around Whitefish Lake.

“Perhaps we need area-by-area consideration,” she said. “The overall goal should be best septic practices. The city should do this in a way that’s financially feasible and achieves a clean lake.”

As for the proposed annexation of some 50 properties along Houston Drive and East Lakeshore Drive, Barberis said she doesn’t know to what extent connecting those properties to city sewer would help the overall water quality picture in Whitefish.

Regarding the ongoing legal battle between Whitefish and Flathead County over planning control of the two-mile “doughnut” around the city, Barberis said she would hate to see the door closed on negotiations.

“In any situation, mediation is the way,” she said.

While she said she believes doughnut residents need representation, Barberis also said it’s “pretty important” for Whitefish to have a say in how the city grows into outlying areas.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.