The following update was mailed out to a few thousand Ward 5 households in July 2023. You can sign up to receive more frequent Ward or political newsletters by email here.
Dear Ward 5 constituent,
With my third year in office complete and my second term three-quarters over, it is time to update you on my work since the 2021 city elections, and what is on the horizon for the remainder of the term.
We have recently completed the FY24 budget process. By law, the City Council has almost no official role on the budget, compared to the Mayor, Superintendent of Schools, and the School Committee, who can actually move funds around. However, we do have opinions and some obligation to raise questions and concerns during the consultative process each year, and we did participate this year on the decision to slightly slow the unsustainable annual pace of pension pre-funding.
As Newtonians, we must all acknowledge the difficult pressures of rising costs in required major contracts and statutory obligations, weighed against the legal cap on property tax revenue growth. But it is also the responsibility of elected leaders to rise to such challenges by trying to find a way to say yes to offering and maintaining public services wherever possible, rather than looking first for reasons to say no. Disinvestment is fiscal self-sabotage in the long run and not prudent for future revenue strength.
As a Ward Councilor, I am one front-line interface between residents and those city services. Whenever possible, I work with city staff from many departments to see how we can help meet your requests.
For more than three years so far, I have been taking your calls and answering your emails, from matters as small as yard waste pickup delays or potholes to trying to find ways and means for the city to help you or your family if you are in crisis. Keep it coming! But in the meantime, here is a bigger picture view of what we are and have been working on in the City Council beyond the budget season.
Working for you in committee
I continue to serve on the City Council’s Finance Committee and its Programs & Services Committee.
On the Programs & Services Committee this term, we are debating issues like reducing plastic waste and strengthening protection of large trees on private property. These are, as you can imagine, extremely complex ordinances with strong opinions across the spectrum, with some people rejecting any city involvement at all and some people insisting there should never be exemptions. But our deliberative process helps get us toward compromise measures that can pass the full Council, be signed by the Mayor, and be successfully implemented by city staff with their limited time and resources.
Zoning and housing
The City Council is more than a decade into its discussions of comprehensive zoning redesign, and we now have the added complexity of complying with a new state mandate to zone the right to build thousands more market-rate housing units near some or all of our community’s 11 MBTA stations.
I do not serve on the Zoning & Planning Committee, but I have been closely following the discussions and deliberations. My objective is for us to approve a plan that complies with the state requirements, enhances our commercial vibrancy in the village centers, but also preserves a sense of place in our most distinctive streetscapes (by promoting adaptive reuse of historic buildings) and discourages the replacement of smaller and older single-family homes with merely a much larger but still single-family home. (If something is going to be replaced, the new construction should at least have additional units.)
I’m committed to only voting for a map that is in the best interests of Upper Falls, Waban, and Newton Highlands – as well as the city overall. We are getting closer as we continue to debate and negotiate, and I am confident we will get there soon, even if I still have suggested improvements I would like to see in Ward 5. However, this still leaves us with plenty of zoning work in the next term on other commercial and former industrial areas, as well as residential blocks between village centers.
Newton continues to have one of the strongest requirements for including guaranteed and permanent affordable housing units within “market-rate” development projects, and some of us are also working toward making it easier to build completely and deeply affordable mid-sized projects for our seniors, families, people with disabilities, and other very low-income individuals.
At the end of the last term, Newton’s City Council finally established an Affordable Housing Trust, which will be able to proactively study potential affordable housing development opportunities before they arise and to move quickly on land acquisitions so that affordable housing builders can line up their grants, credits, and bank financing to propose a project to the city. (Often these projects pay for themselves, but the new Trust can move faster to get them into position for that to be possible.)
Another big step forward this term was the City Council’s approval of a revised Accessory Dwelling Unit ordinance. These are often colloquially called “in-law apartments.” They will now be allowed “by right” instead of “by special permit” if they are smaller than 900 square feet (or 50% of the primary unit on a property). This will allow more multi-generational families to live together, enable new incomes for owner-occupants of older homes, and facilitate additional units of new housing across Newton with a smaller effect on the neighborhood. (Contact the Inspectional Services Department to learn more.)
The Council has also been working steadily on developing and implementing new energy efficiency (and sourcing) requirements for new construction and renovation of homes and large commercial buildings. We all want to get Newton to a point where our buildings are using less and greening the rest.
Future plans
In the remaining months of 2023, the Council will continue working on the aforementioned ongoing policy issues, among others, as well as addressing unexpected matters that will no doubt arise. But constituent services work remains a daily task, and I am always happy to help where I can.
I am seeking re-election to a third term in November to keep building on our progress. I hope you will let me know if you have feedback. And thank you again for sending me back for a second term in November 2021 with 63% of the vote!