Newsletter Vol. 1, Issues 20 & 21: Emergency Rental Assistance is Now Available - Please Spread the Word!

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As discussed in previous newsletters, I’ve been working on covid-19 emergency rental assistance in Newton because so many Ward 5 residents along and south of Route 9 are renters. The program is now up and running with a budget of $2.5 million in federal and Community Preservation dollars. 

This program could be critical not just to keeping many Newton families affected by the pandemic or economic crisis in their homes during this precarious time but also to preserving our economic stability as a city. A sudden increase in vacancies could spell disaster for our local economy, already in a dire position.

You can find out about the details of the rental assistance program – including eligibility and how to apply at newtonma.gov/housingrelief. The deadline for initial applications is June 3rd, which is coming up quickly!

(There are also small business recovery grants too with a deadline of May 27.)

I spent last weekend and much of last week on foot in Ward 5 going door to door (with appropriate social distance and protective gear!) among some 400+ rental properties to drop off leaflets from the City of Newton to try to get the word out to as many constituents as possible.

While I was not knocking or ringing the bell, it was nice to get back out onto the streets of Ward 5 like I did so often last year, and I actually ran into quite a few people I know.

I would encourage all of you reading this newsletter to spread the word to your own email lists, to your Facebook pages and groups, and to other social media. And if you are a resident of one of the medium to large apartment complexes and can help distribute leaflets inside those buildings to your neighbors, please let me know.

Thank you to everyone who has already assisted in this time-sensitive effort.

Budget Season continues

As I outlined in my last newsletter, most of the work of the City Council right now is focused on reviewing the proposed FY21 city budget, which had to be scaled back sharply and quickly in light of the economic devastation related to the pandemic. We are expecting an even more alarming budget situation next year, but we can’t reliably project the situation far enough ahead to anticipate it now, so we’re hoping the revised budget proposal for this year at least carries us far enough to make a longer-term plan for how to handle next year when we have more information.

As a reminder from my previous newsletter note: “We [on City Council] can vote yes or no on the entire budget, we can reduce line items (but not increase them), and we can pass resolutions to the Mayor about specific ideas or recommendations we have, but they are not binding. We cannot add to the budget, unlike Congress or the State Legislature.”

So far, the committees on which I sit have reviewed the proposed budgets for the following departments: Historic Newton, Veterans Services, Health and Human Services, Parks Recreation & Culture, Assessing, IT, Purchasing, & Executive/Sustainability, Law, Senior Services, the Library, and the City Clerk's office.

The theme for most of these departments is small cuts or virtually no change and a lot of deferrals of projects or hiring for 6 months if not an entire fiscal year. A few departments (like Health and Human Services unsurprisingly) saw budget increases. Some departments would have seen decreases anyway, but many had to scramble to make changes in the weeks following the pandemic lockdown.

The two departments (of those above that I’ve reviewed so far in committees I’m on) that will likely have the biggest sting for the public will be the last-minute cuts to Parks Recreation & Culture and the closure of the Newton Free Library on Sundays for the whole year. The Library had been hoping to restore year-round Sunday hours after a period of Sunday hours only being gone during the summer season. Unfortunately, the course was reversed when the budget was re-drafted to account for the changed economic situation.

One bright spot, however: Start putting in your library item holds online now because we are going to start having curbside pickup (already being planned before this pandemic!) within a week or two, and library staff are expecting it to be very popular!

Finally, I have also been appointed to a working group to undertake a comprehensive review of the Council's standing rules. The other members are Councilor Brenda Noel, Programs & Services Chair Josh Krintzman, and Council President Emeritus Lisle Baker, who will chair the working group.

Memorial Day

This year is an exceptionally strange Memorial Day (especially without the traditional parade), and it is a particularly difficult one for many of our friends, neighbors, and relatives with some 100,000 deaths nationwide so far from this pandemic. Memorial Day holds a special resonance in places like Massachusetts because of its partial origins among African-American veterans and freed slaves honoring those in the Union Army who gave their lives in the American Civil War to end slavery; many of them, White or Black, came from Massachusetts, filled with a particular sense of purpose and sense of obligation to our fellow humans, even when not everyone in charge or in the ranks even agreed on the ultimate objective of the war. Today we still honor the many Massachusetts abolitionists who volunteered for the great war of liberation, giving their lives in the belief that we are not free until all of us are free. That sense of duty to one another, even at great cost and sacrifice, is a good reminder in a pandemic situation where the lives of those around us depend so heavily on our own actions from moment to moment and day to day, often at great cost to ourselves and our families.

In Lieu of Office Hours

Constituents are always welcome to call me (or email me) during this crisis when we can’t do in-person office hours. And I appreciate those of you who have reached out with questions, concerns, or ideas for what the city can be doing during this crisis. In some cases, I’ve been able to get individuals or businesses directed to various higher-level government officials who can tackle their cases. Let me know if I can help you, too.

I have also been continuing to sit in on the (virtual) meetings of the Upper Falls, Newton Highlands, and Waban Area councils each month.

Newsletter Vol. 1, Issues 17, 18, 19: Budget Season Begins Amid Unpredictability

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The Phase One trail restoration project in Cold Spring Park is done (and it looks and feels great!) and the Friends of Cold Spring Park is working to raise private and public funds to finish the rest of the park’s trails (at an estimated cost of $73,800).

Construction resumed last week on many home construction projects, following another change in state emergency directives. Mayor Fuller stated that: “Effective Wednesday, May 6, 2020, all construction projects can resume but only if they comply with physical distancing, hand hygiene, employee health protections, and site risk prevention measures detailed in the state construction guidelines. Workers must wear face coverings indoors or outdoors whenever workers are unable to maintain a distance of less than 6 feet apart. Before commencing work, the contractors or owners must sign and send to Newton’s Inspectional Services Department the form that they acknowledge they understand and will follow Newton’s COVID-19 Safety Guidelines for Construction Sites. Newton’s inspectors will do unannounced visits to job sites as well as routine inspections to ensure compliance.” For some of you this news is critical relief if you had projects in mid-swing or nearing completion, while for others of you, it might be a disappointment or a cause for concern. I’ve certainly heard from people in both camps.

More Emergency Funding: Programs & Services 4/22 / Finance Committee 4/27

The City Council, as a whole body, and also through its Programs & Services Committee and Finance Committee (I sit on both), recently held debates on a request by Mayor Fuller’s administration for an additional $750,000 in emergency funds for COVID-19. The Council had a thorough debate last week (5/4) on the amount of money that should be approved (the initial request was for a smaller amount) and what it would be used for or what oversight there would be. Unfortunately, the nature of this particular crisis has been extremely unpredictable in terms of what emergency purchases will be needed, and the nature of municipal spending laws in Massachusetts are such that it would be difficult for the City Council to approve funds quickly enough to parcel them out over a longer period if a specific need arose suddenly and unexpectedly. In the end, the consensus position was that we approve the full amount, subject to regular updates to the Finance Committee on what the money is being spent on. The good news is that the city staff are keeping very close track of all the expenditures related to this crisis in order to be eligible to recover most, and ideally all, of the money from the federal government in the form of disaster relief down the line.

Docket Review: Mail-in Voting Resolution

The Newton City Council voted to approve #246-20 Resolution to the State Legislature in support of mail in voting (sponsored by Councilor Danberg with the support of all of us and the support of our City Clerk / Election Commissioner David Olson. We have elections coming up this year in September and November and we want the elections to be conducted by mail (or at least enough by mail that we can significantly reduce the physical polling process and the number of people required to operate it). This has the added bonus of strengthening participation in our electoral democracy, as other states have shown for many years. Oregon has been holding federal elections 100% by mail since 1995!

The City Council also voted last week to approve a resolution in support of capping online third-party delivery service fees that are exploiting our locally-owned restaurants during this crisis. (Restaurants that don’t use them can find themselves shut out of the market, especially by being shut out of search results online.) It is clear to me that the stakes on this are greater than just the current Covid-19 crisis because failure to rein in predatory and exploitative "tech" delivery companies is likely to force many of our restaurants to reorient their business permanently toward food preparation for delivery (perhaps exclusively and under contracts with tech companies) instead of primarily providing sit-down service, based on previously emerging trends. This would destroy our remaining village life and make our local restaurant industry just the last victim of the tech industry's decimation of local brick-and-mortar businesses. While many costs are to be expected in the business, third-party delivery fees are not merely an added cost, but a lever of control and influence in the market.

Also coming down the pipeline is #247-20: Request for a review on the City Council rules -- Councilors Albright AND Krintzman (Chair of Programs & Services) requesting a complete review and appropriate changes to the Rules and Orders of the City Council. This was already in the works at the beginning of the session in January, but the Covid-19 situation has made us rethink even more of the rules we have come to live under for many years without a second thought, and it’s definitely time for a comprehensive review. I’m certainly hoping to be involved in the process, as legislative rules reform is one of my particular areas of interest, going as far back as my time in high school.

Budget Process Begins: 

As of last week, the City Council has begun its process of reviewing the Fiscal Year 2021 budget submitted by the Mayor for approval. It is split into several parts, with the education budget being handled in detail by the School Committee and the rest being reviewed in detail by the City Council. 

However, it is important to note that the City Council’s powers are quite limited (by law and city charter) in this process. We can vote yes or no on the entire budget, we can reduce line items (but not increase them), and we can pass resolutions to the Mayor about specific ideas or recommendations we have, but they are not binding. We can not add to the budget, unlike Congress or the State Legislature.

• Last Wednesday, the Finance Committee and the Programs & Services Committee met jointly to hear a presentation on the broad strokes of the education budget as adopted by the School Committee, to hear how it had been revised to address Covid-19 and we took a preliminary vote in favor.

  • There will be an increase from last year’s budget of 2.9% ($6.8 million) but this proposed increase is $1.5 million less than was originally drafted before the pandemic crisis.

  • The major focus of the school department's emergency revisions to the school budget proposal has been to maintain existing programming & services from the previous budget while deferring some maintenance that would be difficult to do this summer anyway due to the pandemic.

  • Additionally, some one-time funds (including but not limited to savings from the truncated current school year) are being tapped as well to try to prop up the programming budget without big cuts, hopefully getting us through to the other side of the current situation.

  • Maintenance would NOT be deferred on measures related to health safety, such as sink upgrades for hand-washing and classroom space expansions necessary to allow greater distancing etc

  • It is probable that the budget situation will be quite difficult next year because the budget was nearly completely done when the crisis hit this year, so a lot of the effort right now was to keep it as close to that plan as possible for now, with a bigger rethink next year. (Similarly, the Newton South principal is departing, so an interim principal will be hired, because the search process for a permanent principal can't be rushed in a time like this.)

• Mayor’s Presentation of the Budget to City Council (5/11/20)

  • At the start of March, we on the City Council had already begun meetings with the Mayor on the draft budget, right before everything began shutting down. The budget proposal has been totally overhauled. While it still grows over the previous year, it's millions smaller now. The Mayor describes the revised draft budget as a "realistic" budget that "defers" many projects until revenues rebound but does not “cut into bone." The projected revenue hit for the city is a decrease of $9.55 million compared to what had been expected 10 weeks ago for the coming year.

  • The Recommended Budget for Fiscal Year 2021: $439.5 million in the operating budget, $57.4 million in water, sewer and stormwater enterprise funds and $4.7 million in Community Preservation Funds. The operating budget is $9.3 million or 2.15% more than the FY2020 Budget but $9.6 million lower than the one initially drafted before Covid-19 arrived.

  • Some specific changes from the initial draft:

    • $2.5m roads spending deferred - a tough decision with road repair being one of the top constituent concerns in the past several years

    • smaller proposed increase to NPS by $1.5m (as noted above)

    • pension funding schedule one-time adjustment for a smaller contribution but no change on expected date of full funding

    • $4m adjustment from other municipal dept budgets

  • No layoffs to any permanent employees but some "historically vacant" positions have been eliminated and some recently open positions will not be filled this fiscal year (or in some cases for at least 6 months). 100 part-time employees were recently furloughed.

  • No money was tapped from the "rainy day fund" out of caution for the possibility that we might be in a protracted economic crisis as well as a recurring health crisis, and then need to cover last-minute gaps we can’t project, but we don't know yet either way. (In particular, there are risks that state funding the city counts on will be reduced due to the state’s own crisis budget challenges.)

  • Virtually all capital improvement projects have been delayed indefinitely because of the challenge in obtaining low-cost financing (bonds) during this crisis and the concerns over what the city's fiscal situation might look like in a year.

Now we will break into our committees over the coming weeks to review specific sections of the proposed budget.

Rental Assistance Updates:

Last night all the City Councilors met in a Committee of the Whole to review the proposed program for rental payment assistance (and mortgage payment assistance for deed-restricted affordable homes) from the Community Preservation Committee and the Planning Department using federal funds and Community Preservation Act funds to create a temporary rental assistance program, as I had called for some weeks ago with the support of at least 11 of my colleagues. (You can read the DRAFT version of the proposal here -- make sure to scroll down to the latest updates at the bottom.)

While the conversation among Councilors was quite favorable last night toward approving the program, with at least $2.5 million in funding requests from Mayor Fuller (docket #250-20), we voted overwhelmingly to defer approval until at least next Monday. Many councilors who support the program (including me) still have questions about the details. Some councilors also hope to turn this rental relief program into something more permanent than this crisis, and they want to make sure we get the details right.

I sat in on part of last week’s meeting of the CPC and Planning Department, which was a productive discussion of the draft, and as I relayed to Planning Department Director Barney Heath, I’m eager to get out and begin distributing information to people’s doorsteps in Ward 5 to make sure they hear about it. But I’m not sure we have a finished program proposal yet.

My three major concerns among other things councilors and citizens have raised:

First, an overly constrained timeframe to let people know about the program and for them apply. Second, a hard cutoff on applications, when some people might not realize the extent of their financial difficulties from covid-19 until later than others, given the timeframe over which people have lost their jobs. Third, what might be an excessive curtailing of eligibility in a fairly unusual situation as well as the number of eligible people being accepted for help – the priority should be making sure we get help to all who need it, even if that means more dollars being appropriated. (I agree with those who said they don’t want to spread the program so thinly that no one receiving assistance is actually helped to make their full payments on time.)

While I’m anxious to make sure that my constituents who need this program know that help is on the way as fast as possible, the statewide eviction moratorium has bought us a bit of extra time to make sure we get the details right. And the current proposed deadline is after the end of this month anyway, so a delay this week would not push things into another month.

I would hate for us to rush through the details so fast that a great number of eligible residents don’t find out about it in time or are otherwise inadvertently precluded from participating. 

I will be sure to let everyone know when the final details are available and the application process is about to start, and I’m counting on all of you to help spread the word.

In Lieu of Office Hours

Constituents are always welcome to call me (or email me) during this crisis when we can’t do in-person office hours. And I appreciate those of you who have reached out with questions, concerns, or ideas for what the city can be doing during this crisis. In some cases, I’ve been able to get individuals or businesses directed to various higher-level government officials who can tackle their cases. Let me know if I can help you, too.

I have also been continuing to sit in on the (virtual) meetings of the Upper Falls, Newton Highlands, and Waban Area councils each month.

Newsletter Vol. 1, Issues 15 & 16: Relief still needed for renters, restaurants

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Residential rental relief still needed

The State Legislative Democrats in Massachusetts passed a state-level bill (which the governor signed into law today) “providing for a moratorium on evictions and foreclosures during the Covid-19 emergency” (and with a grace period afterward). While this is an important step, more relief is still needed: Locally in Newton I'm continuing my work on residential rental assistance, so that people aren't hit with eviction later when they can't make back rent for the same reason that they could not make rent payments during the crisis – they have no income during this time and no way to save up enough to cover multiple payments later while still paying their other monthly obligations that will continue or resume after the crisis. 

As I noted in my last newsletter, that effort is docketed as #227-20, asking the Community Preservation Committee and Planning Department to develop a rental assistance program for Newton citizens unable to pay rent during the COVID-19 emergency using Community Preservation funds of other funding programs under city control, using guidelines developed by the Massachusetts Housing Partnership and/or other appropriate guidelines.

I am the lead sponsor of this item, and I am joined by at least 11 more of my colleagues (out of 24 total), so I am optimistic about the chances for passage. I do not yet have additional details for you on what the specifications and criteria of the program will look like.

Restaurant burdens: Delivery service fees (docket item #241-20)

I have signed on as a co-sponsor to a resolution in the City Council “requesting a resolution to the Mayor asking her to work with relevant departments to determine the feasibility of restricting third party delivery services from charging restaurants a fee per online order for use of its services that totals more than 10% of the purchase prices of such online orders.” (Sponsors & co-sponsors are: Albright, Krintzman, Downs, Ryan, Crossley, Wright, Humphrey, Leary, Malakie, Bowman, Kelley, Grossman, Markiewicz, Danberg, Noel, Lipof.) 

This is in response to a growing concern across Massachusetts that many of our locally-owned restaurants, already struggling to stay in business despite the pandemic, are facing an extra burden from excessive fees by 3rd-party delivery companies they feel compelled to use, which can be so high sometimes that they eliminate any margin on the food being delivered. Whether this is price-gouging or just a broader structural problem with their delivery “app” service companies is an open question, but clearly something needs to be done about the problem in a situation where restaurants have no sit-down business anymore.

Recap of Council business since the last newsletter

• Finance Committee 4/13: We had a very quick agenda – just 4 appointments and accepting 2 grants. As usual, however, we also continued to have conversations with our city CFO about the impact on city finances and the upcoming budget process as a result of the pandemic.

• Full Council 4/21: City Council met tonight virtually at 7:45 and wrapped up by 8 PM. It was a very brief agenda with all routine/procedural items and nothing major to be voted on (lots of bigger items remain in their respective committees).

Additionally, I have been in virtual lunch meetings with various combinations of my colleagues, including my Ward 5 counterparts (and our Ward 5 School Committee member, Emily Prenner) so that we all continue to stay looped in on everything.

Other work is continuing on major items (such as the Riverside development or comprehensive zoning reform) in other committees, but I am not on those committees, so I try to keep my updates on those committees fewer and farther between.

Recap of Area Councils

I have continued to sit in on and participate in virtual neighborhood Area Council meetings of Ward 5 this month, as I did last month, both to relay information/answers on pandemic-related policy discussions and to receive information from constituents on the ground-level. The Upper Falls Area Council had the opportunity this month to talk to and hear from Mayor Fuller directly during their meeting about specific Upper Falls issues or concerns during this crisis.

More specifically, we got an update from the Mayor on status of the Northland project:

- Design work is continuing

- Geotechnical soil work in the next few months, depending on the pandemic situation

- Possibly demolition of existing structures later this year, but TBD

- No construction anticipated this year

The Waban Area Council had a good discussion about pedestrian street safety as more people are out and about walking around during the lockdown and need to remain socially-distanced. (The City Council continues to move forward on debating what to do on this matter, as not all Councilors agree with the mayoral administration’s current view. I would love to hear your general thoughts as residents, as I am undecided. This is not just about City Council matters, either, because some streets in Ward 5 are under state jurisdiction.)

Finally, on another note, if you find or see a downed tree near you due to the recent powerful thunderstorms we have had, you can and should certainly put in a 311 alert on the city website, but please be aware that dozens of trees came down in recent storms and our crews have been working as fast as they can. More trees fell on April 13 alone than all of last year!

Newsletter Vol. 1, Issues 13 & 14: My Proposal for City Rental Assistance to Residents and Other Updates

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Hello again, folks. I did not put out a newsletter last week because the City Council had a pretty light schedule the past couple of weeks, but I do have some updates for you now ahead of tonight’s City Council meeting.

As public officials and citizens, we’re all basically grappling with some combination of the following three things right now: the public health crisis of the pandemic itself, the greatest economic depression of the past century (i.e., likely eclipsing the Great Depression of the 1930s), and attempting to continue as much “business as usual” work as possible to avoid falling too far behind on everything.

I do not personally have a large role on the first of these (the public health crisis), other than passing along guidance from public health professionals and urging everyone to take this very seriously. (I am also available to check in by phone on you or someone you know in Ward 5, if you need me to. I can put you in touch with various resources if you need some help.)

On the economic front, we are in unprecedented waters, not just in the scale and scope of the situation but also because the conditions and accelerants of this recession are so utterly different from “normal recession” conditions. What needs to be emphasized at this point unfortunately is that development of a vaccine is likely to take a year and a half, and it might not be a matter of weeks or even a couple more months before isolation orders are lifted. Lifting them prematurely will likely lead to even more disastrous outcomes than what we are already locked into at this point. This is likely to be our “new normal” for quite some time, unless our public officials are reckless enough to try to “reopen the economy” at the cost of millions of lives. I hope they are not.

What I am working on during this economic crisis is supporting emergency measures to stabilize (or at least provide a safety net to) people’s finances long enough to either get us through this or get us to a more comprehensive federal/state economic response than has been provided so far. The longer we can keep people from losing all their savings, healthcare access, homes, and businesses, the more likely we are to avoid years or decades of economic losses (as well as obviously human losses, which is the primary concern as noted above).

To that end, there are three things locally you need to know about:

1. Local tax collection has been delayed in the City of Newton under state legislation passed last week:

   • Last Friday, Mayor Fuller announced the extensions in her newsletter: “I will extend the due date of the 4th quarter property tax bills from May 1 to June 1, the last day allowed by the legislation. I will extend the deadline for filing applications for property tax exemptions and property tax deferrals from April 1 to June 1, 2020, again the last date allowed. I will waive the payment of interest and other penalties on late payments that were due after March 10, 2020 and paid before June 30, 2020, for any excise tax, betterment assessment, water or sewer bill, or other charge added to a tax.” 

   • There will obviously be huge fiscal implications to this (along with our declines in many other expected revenue sources), but as we have been discussing on the Finance Committee and Programs & Services Committee regularly with our city CFO, we understand that many residents suddenly have no income with which to pay their tax bills, and we as your government don’t want to add pain to that if we can figure out how to avoid it. (We also don’t want to make huge spending cuts suddenly either because that would be taking income away from a lot of workers who need it as well. It’s a difficult balancing act.)

2. The city-approved private relief fund through United Way Mass Bay is now funded to the tune of $300,000 (and counting) and is now accepting applications for emergency assistance to Newton residents: https://unitedwaymassbay.org/covid-19/newton-covid-19-care-fund/get-help/ (If you are in a financial position to help donate to the fund, the information page is here: https://unitedwaymassbay.org/covid-19/newton-covid-19-care-fund/) “The funds will help pay for rent, food, utilities, internet connectivity for families with school-aged children, childcare, medications and other basic needs.”

3. Request for creation of rental assistance program during COVID-19 using CPC funds (docket item #227-20): I have just introduced legislation, supported by Council President Susan Albright, Vice President Rick Lipof, my Ward 5 colleagues Councilors Downs & Crossley, as well as Councilors Bowman, Ryan, Greenberg, Grossman, Kalis, Kelley, and Wright (and likely others signing on later) asking the Community Preservation Committee and Planning Department to develop a rental assistance program for Newton citizens unable to pay rent during the COVID-19 emergency using Community Preservation funds of other funding programs under city control, using guidelines developed by the Massachusetts Housing Partnership and/or other appropriate guidelines. We should have more details next week as it makes its way through committee.

While some Americans will be receiving federal stop-gap assistance of about $1200, that is not very much money to cover a family’s combined ongoing and emergency expenses, and not everyone is receiving the money immediately. Whatever we can do to address that locally, I’m happy to work on. Much of that, by law, can only be addressed at the state level. Our rental assistance proposal is one unusual exception.

And finally, as I mentioned at the beginning, the other part of my job during this crisis is trying to keep business as usual moving along to the extent practicable. If you need help tuning in to one of our virtual City Council (or Council Committee) meetings by phone or video conference, please let me know, and I will help you out. You can also refer back to my March 16 newsletter for a detailed guide on how to read and understand our Council schedule documents to know what is being discussed when.

Tonight we have a full City Council meeting at 7:45 PM. We expect to be voting on the following matters: four commission appointments, accepting a donation of athletic field light equipment for Newton South (I will be voting in favor!), several state grants to our departments, some minor utility installation matters, and various fiscal transfers (including CPC funds to allow Newton Housing Authority to acquire the CAN-DO portfolio of affordable housing units). We will also be voting on emergency funding for the pandemic (which we hope to recover later with federal & state assistance) and some funding for Horace Mann Elementary School upgrade projects (although due to the crisis we have for now unfortunately had to reduce the dollar amount originally planned, so we can focus on essential projects, but we had a thorough committee discussion on this decision).

Other Ward 5 updates:

• Sadly, the Newton Highlands Area Council’s beloved annual Village Day celebration for June has been canceled this year due to the pandemic.

• Likewise, the Waban Improvement Society has canceled the Waban Village Day that would have been in May.

One other note: we on the Council have gotten a lot of emails about non-essential construction sites, since there are serious health & safety concerns and we don’t want N95 masks being diverted away from the healthcare sector. Please be assured that I share this concern and have been emailing and calling about it to express my view that non-essential construction should be halted for the safety of the workers and others (as well as to be fair to contractors who have already halted operations), and I think “non-essential construction” should be accurately defined, not broadly defined. Like many municipal officials around the Boston region, I believe Governor Baker made a very poor decision on trying to keep most construction going and ordering cities not to stop it or regulate it. Building non-emergency housing is not an essential function right now, and I have not seen much sign so far of him getting housing-insecure and homeless residents into emergency housing.

Please let me know if you have any questions about this week’s newsletter or anything else. I’m happy to talk any time. I have also seen some of you out and about (from a safe distance away!) while I’m out walking around the neighborhoods of Ward 5, and I’m always happy to wave hello and check in.

If you need to do Virtual Office Hours with me about anything, let’s set up a time to talk. I have been doing this on a more ad hoc basis than I was in the real world in “The Before Times” before the current crisis.

Newsletter Vol. 1, Issue 12: Recap of Last Week in Virtual Council; Virtual Finance Meeting Tonight

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Today’s COVID-19 Update from Massachusetts

Effective noon tomorrow (3/24) in Massachusetts by order of Governor Baker: "all businesses and organizations that do not provide 'COVID-19 Essential Services' [are ordered] to close their physical workplaces and facilities to workers, customers and the public" for 2 weeks. Delivery restaurants, like grocery stores, are one of the industries being kept open by this order as part of the supply chain for food resources. Full details of exempt industries are listed here.

Additionally: "Gatherings of more than 10 people are prohibited throughout the Commonwealth. Gatherings subject to this Order include, without limitation, community, civic, public, leisure, faith-based, or sporting events, concerts, conferences, fundraisers, parades, fairs, festivals, weddings, funerals, and any similar event or activity that brings together more than 10 persons in any confined or outdoor space." Details/exemptions here.

Please continue to get regular and more frequent updates from Mayor Fuller, from the City’s Department of Health, from the Governor and state health officials, and from the US Centers for Disease Control.

Recap of PS&T and Full City Council Meetings 3/16

Last Monday, we held two virtual meetings that I participated in. First, there was a Public Safety & Transportation Committee meeting that I sat in on for a presentation to councilors (that I had organized) from a representative of the ACLU of Massachusetts on the subject of “facial recognition” technology and their efforts to “press pause” on the use of the tech. You can read more about this in my newsletter review of docket item #74-20. Committee chair Jake Auchincloss (Ward 2 at Large) did a straw poll of committee members to see if there was interest in pursuing a “pause” ordinance and there seemed to be plenty of interest so stay tuned for more in the future.

Second, we held a meeting of the full City Council, where there were a number of debated items, although all of them passed. Besides the new retail marijuana store approved on Washington St, there was one worth mentioning in particular to you all to explain what the vote was about and why I voted with the majority to pass it: A temporary moratorium on City Councilors applying to landmark certain Newton buildings: The current landmarking ordinance is in the process of being revised because it is no longer fully functional, with the external elimination of an appeals body. This is not conducive to a good process and not fair to property owners who can suddenly be left in a bind without straightforward recourse. My view is that it is reasonable to press pause until June on most landmarking during the current review phase to ensure that the nomination procedures are not being abused for objectives other than genuine historic preservation. I believe we will have a revised permanent process enacted into law later this year. It is important to note that Demolition Delay orders already last much longer than this landmarking moratorium will be in place, so buildings should be protected in the meantime anyway, but no buildings will get trapped unfairly in a pre-reformed landmarking designation. Also, I got a lot of emails about the historic Davis Tavern in West Newton and it should be noted that the building owners have stated publicly that they do not object to making it a landmark.

Recap of Programs & Services Meeting 3/18

The agenda for this virtual meeting included a $250,000 appropriation for pandemic emergency funds, accepting NSHS Booster Club funds for athletics lights, and a discussion regarding Senior Services outreach (we had to postpone this to a meeting in the near-future due to evolving schedules of relevant city staff responding to the current public health crisis), among other (minor) things like commission appointment hearings.

We also had a difficult conversation in committee with our CFO about what's likely to happen to the upcoming budget draft now that many of our local revenue projections are falling off a cliff as restaurant tax revenues go to near zero and interest rates drop. "We [the city government] do not want to be the ones furthering financial distress in our community" CFO Lemieux told us, emphasizing that our fiscal policies over the coming months will be aimed at trying not to cut city jobs/projects (when possible) or increase revenue burdens on struggling residents.

I expect these conversations will also be had in the Finance Committee meetings tonight and over the coming weeks and months.

Recap of Upper Falls Area Council Meeting 3/19

Sadly, there will not be a Soup Social this year for obvious reasons, but fortunately, the Area Council was able to get credits toward next year’s social on some of their rentals made before the pandemic cancelations began. The Area Council this month met virtually and appointed a community member to fill the vacant seat. Then my colleagues Councilors Crossley & Downs went over the upcoming Northland Construction Liaison Committee & Resident Parking Program. (Please email the two of them directly to find out more about these if you have questions. Since I was not on the Council when the Northland project orders were written, I have less information readily available at my fingertips on this.)

Scheduled Finance Committee Meeting for 7 PM Tonight

Virtual Finance Committee meeting at 7 PM tonight. Please watch the NewTV stream instead of joining the Zoom meeting unless you will be speaking on an agenda item. There are 11 items to be taken up tonight: 

- Accepting clean energy grant to promote "Heat Smart" program

- Accepting MassDOT grant to launch shuttle from Wells Ave & UMass Amherst Mt Ida to the Green Line

- Accepting a grant on Elder Affairs

- Authorizing $7m for FY21 water main projects

- Requesting CPA funds for the Newton Housing Authority to acquire the CAN-DO Housing portfolio

- $60k for Police HQ HVAC

- $500k for new Horace Mann improvements; $650k related reimbursement

- $250k for the pandemic

- Accepting NSHS Booster Club donations for athletic lights

- $62k workers comp settlement

Fundraisers for Newton Food Pantry and Newton Covid-19 Relief Fund

1. Newton Food Pantry is working hard to keep families here from going hungry in this crisis. Even before this pandemic, people tend to underestimate suburban poverty, especially in “wealthy” suburbs. In terms of pre-crisis statistics, 11% of Newton schoolchildren live in poverty; 1 in 8 households make do with less than $25,000 yearly income. http://newtonfoodpantry.org/donate/ (They also need volunteer help if you are able & willing. The link has info on that too.)

2. As announced recently by Mayor Fuller in partnership with United Way Mass Bay, "Newton’s COVID-19 Care Fund will help families and individuals who have been financially impacted by the Coronavirus pandemic." https://unitedwaymassbay.org/covid-19/newton-covid-19-care-fund/

In my capacity as a radio host and private individual, rather than as a City Councilor, I conducted a virtual fundraiser on Saturday night for the food pantry, using the “Twitch” interactive live-streaming platform that is popular among Gen Z & millennials and often used for charitable fundraising. I’ll probably be doing more of them this coming week. The unique “hook” for the younger audiences on this platform is that the presenters can either be on camera themselves talking and answering questions or they can play video games on screen sort of like a virtual “fun run” or charity walk where you do in-game challenges to raise charity money from fans/supporters instead of raising money from your co-workers, family members, and neighbors to walk/run 5 kilometers (for example). Since we can do those real-world fundraisers anymore due to the pandemic, I figured I would give it a shot with this virtual fundraising style, which the kids are into. It went pretty well and people were able to ask me questions about the crisis. Again, this was not any kind of official campaign/political event, as I was just doing it in my own individual capacity with some friends who don't live in Newton, but it seemed to go well, and people enjoyed it.

One final note

In light of the pandemic situation and the state of the economy, I will not be actively fundraising on my 29th birthday this Friday, as originally planned. But if you find these updates to constituents to be helpful and you are still in a position to donate right now, you can certainly do so here and it would be very welcome. One of the most common complaints residents have with local elected officials is that they only hear from them around election time, but one of the biggest reasons for this is that it’s quite expensive to communicate with even the limited number of constituents at the ward level. (There are recurring monthly or yearly costs for maintaining email lists and web hosting, but sending out even just a small postcard to the entire ward with a minimal update generally costs over $2,000 in most cases.) Thanks for reading!

Newsletter Vol. 1, Issue 11: Transitioning to Virtual Meetings (How to Follow Along), Additional Coronavirus Updates

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As you are all no doubt aware, the pandemic situation has escalated significantly since last week’s newsletter. You should be getting regular and more frequent updates from Mayor Fuller (most city services will be online for the indefinite future, if not closed outright like the schools, library, and senior center), from the City’s Department of Health, from the Governor and state health officials, and from the US Centers for Disease Control.

The CDC recommendation is now toward canceling or postponing all “public” gatherings for the next eight weeks. They say that’s for gatherings of 50 people at the moment, but it is my educated guess that this will be lowered to a handful of people or less within a matter of days. (Update: By the time I finished writing this update, the US administration said 10 people was the cap.)

I think there has been a great deal of misinformation floating around in the public that this is not a serious illness for most people, or only for some people, and that it is fine to continue your normal daily life and to continue meeting up with friends & family who are not following any sort of isolation regime. This is unwise. This is not an influenza virus. It is an acute respiratory virus from a family of viruses that has often led to shockingly high mortality rates in past outbreaks prior to this one. People of all ages can get this virus and die from it, although our senior residents are much more likely to get sick and not be able to survive. Even people who get sick but are unlikely to die from it will probably require hospitalization, and this becomes a serious capacity issue (see below). It is the obligation of all of us not just to spread this infection to each other but also to try to delay the spread as long as possible so that hospitals do not become overwhelmed.

Massachusetts is one of the country’s hotspot areas, not just in terms of confirmed cases, but also our specific connections to the rest of the nation and world.

A large group of doctors who live in Newton last night sent an open letter to the Mayor, City Council, School Committee, Superintendent, and other Newton officials with the following warning:

"At the current pace of transmission, according to the Harvard Global Health Institute, more than 225,000 people in Massachusetts may need a bed, and 1 in 5 of those (45,000) may need an ICU bed. The state has 3,600 beds and 400 ICU beds at any time."

As you can see, it is imperative that if you are able to do so, you and your family isolate yourselves, no matter how healthy you currently feel. The difference in mortality rates between Italian cities that imposed strict isolation protocols immediately and those that did not has been like night and day. We also saw similar results in US cities in 1918 during the Spanish Flu.

Feel free to call me or email me any time with further questions. (Also if you live alone, I’m happy to speak to you by phone not just to see if you need anything but also just to make sure you have people to talk to and someone to check in with you regularly in case you run into medical difficulty.) Private citizens have also established a mutual aid signup sheet online where you can offer to help or request help from your fellow Newton citizens during this emergency.

You should no longer be waiting for a government official to tell you to stay home. Just do it.

A reasonable set of do’s and don’ts was included in the letter as well, which I’m suggesting you adopt on a personal basis without waiting for instructions from the government:

Strict Social Distancing - week of March 15, 2020                    

“Strict avoidance of ALL nonessential contact with other people is currently the only available tool to prevent ongoing transmission. The symptoms of coronavirus take 4-5 days to manifest, but during this time an infected person can transmit the virus.

In simple terms, act as if you and the people around you are asymptomatically infected and capable of transmitting the virus. Social distancing can not only help you and your family but is also the best way to help our health care system to manage this outbreak.”

• Don’t host parties or play dates: The symptoms of coronavirus take four to five days to manifest themselves. Someone who comes over looking well can transmit the virus so even having only one friend over creates new links and possibilities for transmission.

• Don’t go to movies, restaurants, religious services or other large gatherings.

• Don’t go to playgrounds: Coronavirus can live on plastic and metal for up to nine days, and these public play structures aren’t getting regularly cleaned.

• Don’t share food.

• Don’t visit nursing homes or other areas where large numbers of the elderly reside: The elderly are at the highest risk for complications and mortality from coronavirus.

• Don’t use public transportation unless you have no other alternative: If possible, travel during non peak times and make sure to wash hands before and after the trip.

• Don’t hoard food, cleansers, or health supplies: Hoarding supplies negatively impacts others, including our health care workers and vulnerable neighbors. Buy what you need and leave some for everyone else.

• DO - Call, text, and use social media to connect: Check in with friends and neighbors by phone or other technologies rather than in person. Clean your phone at least once a day.

• Avoid crowds and gatherings of any size

• When you go outside to go for a walk do your best to maintain at least six feet between you and non-family members.

• Prepare your own food as much as possible: Use take-out or delivery only if necessary. Clean containers and wash hands before eating. Consider buying gift certificates for restaurants and other businesses, for future use.

• Do be in communication with the elderly in your community and offer help as needed: Our elderly neighbors are at greater risk. Check in and see whether you can help them with things like groceries and other essentials. Wash your hands prior to handling any items you are going to drop off.

• Request to work from home

• When going out for essentials like groceries and health appointments, be mindful of your exposure. Shop at off-peak times and wash your hands before and after your trip. If possible, leave your kids at home.

Further steps

Unfortunately in Massachusetts, much of what we can do as a City is limited by state law. Council President Susan Albright and I have been working on a number of these problems over the weekend and last week, such as trying to get a suspension of residential evictions in our county (which the Courts finally ordered statewide on Saturday according to my friend State Rep. Mike Connolly who is one of the lead sponsors of the effort in the state legislature, which our own State Rep. Ruth Balser is also in favor of).

It is my view that the Governor, Legislature, Attorney General, and other relevant state authorities must implement the following emergency actions to deal with COVID-19 and the consequences of the outbreak in Massachusetts:

• A suspension of all residential housing evictions except in cases of public safety (such as eviction domestic abusers) and the requisition of sufficient hotel space to provide temporary housing for every homeless and housing-insecure resident of the Commonwealth with a level of privacy allowing self-isolation for the emergency period.

• Production and Requisition of medical supplies and equipment and hospital overflow space.

• Requisition of food production infrastructure and payment to food service and delivery workers to provide coverage to food pantry users and recipients of free and reduced school lunches.

• Prosecution of profiteering and excessive resource hoarding related to the pandemic including consumer goods.

• Stronger orders to both adult and minor residents confining them at home and apart from other people.

• Until the federal government does so, the Commonwealth should tap emergency funds to pay living wage stipends to any working-age member of the public to remain home during the state of emergency so that they can continue to cover their bills and be incentivized against doing non-essential work outside the home. (A tax cut or tax refund does not accomplish the objectives of a stay-at-home stipend because hourly-wage workers and independent contractors often do not receive any benefit.)

• Medical data privacy should be maintained at all times to federal HIPAA standards, with no outsourcing to private companies not complying with HIPAA standards.

• The deadline to file and pay Massachusetts taxes should automatically be extended by 6 months.

• Require free treatment coverage without consumer cost-sharing for (not just testing of) COVID-19 and related illness through MassHealth, Massachusetts Health Connector insurance plans, state-subsidized private insurance plans, and all public employee health insurance plans. We applaud the steps already taken in this direction.

• Improve humane treatment protocols in county jails and state prisons to contain the spread of infection, consider releasing more elderly inmates and detainees to appropriate and safe housing so that they can be more easily treated by the standard medical system, and reduce the number of people being jailed for minor non-violent offenses before or after trial as well as for technical violations of parole and probation to lower the number of residents cycling quickly into jails and back out into communities, which would be likely to accelerate transmission of contagious disease unnecessarily.

My City Council colleagues are currently considering signing a letter to that effect.

Virtual meetings of the City Council (how to follow along)

Last week the Governor made an emergency suspension of Open Meeting Law provisions that had prohibited bodies like City Councils and Neighborhood Area Councils (as well as many commissions) from meeting remotely without a physical quorum present in the room. Therefore, all of our meetings have been moved online, starting with today’s committee & full council meetings.

The public is urged to submit public comments on anything via email primary (citycouncil@newtonma.gov) but then by participating in the electronic Zoom meetings if you feel that you need to submit a comment verbally as you would do at a normal meeting. Please note however that we currently have a limit of 100 participants (including the Councilors and City Staff) per meeting so you should plan on leaving the video call as soon as you have made your comment so that others have a chance to participate. You can live-stream all the meetings from NewTV if you just want to observe/listen.

Let me explain how to follow along or join a meeting (if you’re not just there to observe):

1. Each week, you can find the “Friday Packet” given to City Councilors (or click the archive for older packets) here: http://www.newtonma.gov/gov/aldermen/fridaypack.asp

2. Then click on the calendar to see what’s coming up and what the Zoom links are for the remote meetings. This week’s calendar is here: http://www.newtonma.gov/civicax/filebank/documents/102352

3. Let’s say you want to read the agenda for the Public Safety & Transportation Committee meeting tonight at 6 PM (which includes my docket item on Face Surveillance Technologies) -- it’s listed under the Friday Packet category “New Agendas”. This week’s link is here: http://www.newtonma.gov/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx?t=65957.39&BlobID=102345

4. Want to find out what is being voted on tonight at the full City Council’s virtual meeting? We’ve got more than 30 items (including some hot-button ones like a marijuana store, a temporary suspension of the landmarking ordinance, an amendment to a special permit in the Wells Ave Office Park, and more) which you can find summarized in the weekly Council Newsletter link. This week’s Council newsletter is here: https://myemail.constantcontact.com/Newsletter-for-March-13--2020.html?soid=1124249987853&aid=5BD0XYchmXM 

5. Trying to find out more about a specific item mentioned in the Council Newsletter summary? That’s detailed in the “Reports Docket” for today’s date in the Friday Packet category “Docket-Report Docket-Actions” and you can see how each committee voted and which committee (sometimes more than one) reviewed the item before it came to the full Council for a vote. Today’s link is here: http://www.newtonma.gov/civicax/filebank/documents/102341(Sometimes you also have to look at a link in the category “Draft Council Orders” to find out more specifics beyond the full summary of each item in the Reports Docket.)

6. Trying to find out the content of what was discussed for each of those items in committee? Once you’ve figured out from the Reports Docket which committee or committees handled the item, you can then go to the Friday Packet category “Committee Reports” and look up the report for the date and committee when it was dealt with. For example, if you’re dying to read the summary of Finance Committee discussion on the item for inter-municipal brine-making sharing agreements with Brookline, it’s in the “03-09-20 Finance Report” – but remember, some items like the Countryside Elementary School item were taken up by 3 different committees before it got to the Council.

7. Trying to look up what has newly been docketed? That’s just called the “Docket” in the category “Docket-Report Docket-Actions” and has the date for the meeting at which it is being officially added. This week’s link is here: http://www.newtonma.gov/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx?t=64689.67&BlobID=102316

A lot of this can be difficult to read sequentially even for City Councilors, and we’ve suspended all weekly paper packets during the pandemic as well, so we’re all using the online version now just like the public, and I thought it might be helpful to explain how to read these. Now you’re all informed on how to read these packets yourselves even when we go back to in-person meetings eventually!

As noted above, the Zoom application links for each virtual meeting are listed in the calendars. We don’t take public comment at the full Council meetings, but the committee meetings do usually allow public comment, and we welcome your participation as long as there is space in the Zoom meetings. Please use the NewTV livestream of the Zoom meetings if you’re not there to comment, so that everyone who needs to can participate in the meetings and that we don’t have too much chaos in each meeting!

Newsletter Vol 1, Issues 8-10: Coronavirus preparedness; Green Line project resumes; Partial recap of recent weeks

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Hello again Ward 5: I’m playing a bit of catch-up this week with three newsletters in one because I was unusually busy with matters related to the March 3rd election for the past few weeks, so I will try to keep it to the important updates.

Coming Up (partial calendar, subject to change depending on public health situation):

• Finance Committee tonight (Monday, 7 PM): Key items include 1) discussing funding a paid LGBTQ Liaison like most peer communities nearby to help both LGBTQ residents and parents of LGBTQ children; 2) a reform proposed by the Mayor to the sidewalk obstruction ordinance to add enforcement & penalties (which was already voted out of Public Facilities Committee 5-0)

• [CANCELED] Beacon St Bike Lanes Community Meeting at the Newton Free Library (Thursday, 6 PM): See details later in the newsletter

• [CANCELED] Waban Area Council Monthly Meeting (Thursday, 7:30 PM) at Waban Library Center

• [CANCELED] St Patricks Newton Political Roast (Friday, 8:30 AM, Dunn Gaherins)

• [CANCELED] Newton Democrats US Senate Delegate Selection Caucus (Sunday, doors open 3 PM, NSHS): Democrats 16 years or older, including same-day registration/pre-registration, can run for or vote in favor of state delegates supporting their preferred Senate candidate. (I have endorsed Ed Markey for re-election and will run in Ward 5’s caucus.)

• Next Monday the 16th: 6 PM ACLU Presentation to City Council’s Public Safety & Transportation Committee on Face Surveillance Technology (info here - this is my docket item)

Coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) Update:

We are, like every other community, experiencing a rapidly evolving situation with the viral pandemic that is crossing the globe at the moment. (For reference, this newsletter was drafted the evening of March 8 2020, in case anything changes later which supersedes it.) Other than simply regularly washing your hands thoroughly with soap and water to reduce transmission even if you are asymptomatic, and coughing into your elbow to reduce aerosolized spread, it will be important for you as a resident to do several things: 1) Stay up to date on official announcements from our city government, 2) Be reasonably prepared, 3) Check regularly on your family and neighbors who live alone.

1. Mayor Ruthanne Fuller notes that, "The Newton Health and Human Services Department has developed an FAQ section on the COVID-19 webpage on the City of Newton website. It includes questions and answers about travel, what to do if you think you may have symptoms, and other Newton specific information. We plan to update this resource as we hear more from you about what information you need." http://newtonma.gov/covid19 She also emphasizes that, "With so many possible information sources and so much reporting on COVID-19, it can be difficult to discern what is accurate...We urge residents to use reliable sources. Specifically, we direct you to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):" https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html

2. As many of you know, I’m an Eagle Scout, and the Scout Motto is “Be prepared.” One of the required badges is Emergency Preparedness, which I remember earning not too long after the disaster of Hurricane Katrina when it was a relatively new badge, but they had good reminders for preparing for any general kind of problem, so that you and your family are not caught off guard. My suggestion, speaking in my personal capacity and NOT as an official statement from anyone in city government, is that you should consider making and checking off a list of what essential supplies (including but not limited to food – don’t forget a can-opener!) that you might need in the home, and in sufficient quantities for all members of your household, to be able to ride out 2-3 weeks in your home without outside help. This is probably useful to have on hand in general, not just during the present situation, and you might want to make sure you have water and flashlights/batteries if you are assembly a more general preparation kit (since we don’t have reason to expect power or water problems from this particular level of pandemic.) If the United States starts experiencing large-scale quarantines like we are seeing in China, Italy, and so on, you will be glad to have stocked up in time. That being said, please do not purchase excessive supplies because we need to make sure there is enough to go around for everyone. And as always, don’t panic. Greater levels of calm cooperation with one another will lead to better outcomes for all of us.

3. Speaking of better outcomes -- research on emergency situations, especially the kind where you can’t leave the house for an extended period of time, would suggest that mortality rates are significantly lower among our vulnerable populations if people are checking in regularly on friends, family, and neighbors. If you know anyone in Newton who lives alone, please make a plan to give them a call or contact them some other way, every day or two, whether or not we end up experiencing a quarantine. If they experience a health incident while alone, the sooner we know there is a problem and can get help to them, the better off they will be. We can get through this together, but only if we do our part to keep each other safe as a community. And I want to underscore that doing our part to keep each other safe means zero tolerance for any racist or nationalist incidents related to this public health emergency. This is a global health pandemic that does not discriminate by nationality or race. We have unfortunately already had some racist incidents here in Newton as a result of ignorance and bigotry. I urge you to speak out against anything you might overhear that falls in this category. It is worth remembering that the so-called “Spanish Flu” pandemic of 1918-1920 only bears that name because Spain, as a non-combatant nation during the final year of World War One, was one of the few countries being transparent about the course of the disease instead of deploying wartime censorship to hide it. Countries that are being transparent about the challenges they are facing from coronavirus-2019 are helping all of us, not threatening us. Keeping their citizens safe in our community is how we keep all of us safe. We want everyone to feel safe and comfortable reporting symptoms and potential contact to authorities.

Green Line Track & Signal Work Resumes

Spring has sprung, more or less, and that means it is time for all of us once again to put up with some short-term inconveniences for the very important project to upgrade the Green Line tracks, signals, and stations on the D Line through Newton so that the MBTA can in a few years begin running more frequent trains and much longer trains regularly (among other benefits). The project is now 37% complete, according to the MBTA. Here’s the upcoming plan:

• Newton Centre – track and signal replacement on weeknights and weekends throughout March and April

• Reservoir – track replacement and signal infrastructure work on weeknights and weekends throughout March

• Chestnut Hill – track and signal work anticipated to begin in April

Full updates at https://www.mbta.com/projects/green-line-d-track-and-signal-replacement

PARTIAL RECAP of THE PAST FEW WEEKS (Feb 19-Mar 5)

Note: I’m leaving out a lot that happened in order to keep this a manageable length!

Upper Falls Updates

• 2/20 Press conference with Gov. Baker: The state awarded a grant to the City of Newton to help with design and engineering for a couple projects involving the Greenway and Pettee Square that are tied to the now-approved Northland Needham St development project. The grants themselves do not pay for these adjacent improvement projects, just the design work. The projects themselves will be paid for by the Northland Development Corporation as part of the negotiated agreement reached by the previous City Council in 2019.

• Upper Falls Area Council Meeting February - 3 key things

  • My notes are here

  • Appointing a 9th Area Councilor: There is still one vacancy and people have until March 15th to apply. There has been public notice.

  • Christina-Oak-Needham St Realigned Intersection Lights Update:UFAC sent a letter to MassDOT and received a reply. Answer was brief & stated DOT could not add a left-turn lane for Oak St onto Needham St because of both space and the amount of time a left-turn light would add. City Councilor Downs (not present at the meeting) had said she plans to follow up further because she was also not completely persuaded by the explanation in the Mass DOT letter.

  • The Newton Upper Falls Area Council is now accepting nominations for the Sixth Ken Newcomb Upper Falls Book Award! The Book Award shall be awarded to a high school junior from Newton Upper Falls (home address within 02464 ZIP code) who in the judgment of the members of the Newton Upper Falls Area Council best combines the following:

    • Contributions to the Newton Upper Falls community

    • Good character

    • Good academic performance

The Book Award recipient will receive the following at a ceremony in June:

• A copy of The Makers of the Mold, Ken Newcomb’s history of Newton Upper Falls

• A $50 bookstore gift certificate

Nominations should include a short essay explaining why you or they should win the Book Award (50 words minimum). We would also like to see a short essay from the nominee on the topic: "What Upper Falls Means to Me." Nominations can be sent to any member of the Area Council. Deadline: May 15, 2020

February Office Hours Recap / Looking Ahead

I am currently not expecting I will be doing office hours this month due to the unfolding public health situation, but fortunately I was able to squeeze in joint office hours in February with two of my colleagues in two of the villages of Ward 5.

Thanks to the 10 people who came to the joint office hours in Waban and Newton Highlands that I held with my colleagues Councilor Downs and Councilor Noel. It was great to hear your thoughts on the city and answer some of your questions. People brought questions about Chestnut St Water Main work, the Northland referendum, and many other topics!

2/26 Programs & Services Meeting

1. Confirmation hearing with the Mayor’s appointee for Director of Parks, Recreation & Culture (the newly renamed department), Nicole Banks - Council President Susan Albright emphasized the urgent safety need to repair the Cold Spring Park trails. Councilor Ryan (Ward 8) emphasized the need to make sure LGBTQ+ youth are safe at city recreation sites & parks. Councilor Greenberg (Ward 1) emphasized the need to make ADA compliance accessibility upgrades to our parks, which was also going to be my emphasis!

2. A discussion with the School Dept (and School Committee) about the role of school fees in Newton and whether the pluses outweigh the minuses.

If you’re interested in either topic, I highly recommend checking the report notes for that meeting to see all the questions we asked on both these items and the answers we received.

NewCAL/Senior Center Update

I was not able to attend the most recent community meeting on the new Senior Center concepts and site selection, due to a schedule conflict, but the sites under consideration have been narrowed to either the current Senior Center property in Newtonville or the triangle parking lot in Newton Centre.

Beacon St Planning Preview

Your ward 5 & 6 councilors met this past week with city planners and traffic engineers to discuss re-striping Beacon St for bike lanes on both sides all the way from Washington St in Waban to Centre St in Newton Centre (with a couple short exception stretches). This is still in the early stages and there will be a community meeting this Thursday (3/12, 6 PM) at the Newton Free Library (assuming no cancelation for public health reasons) and likely further hearings. We want to make sure this works for everyone safely and accounts for specific factors and varied conditions in each segment of Beacon St, and we were going over the maps almost block by block for the whole distance. Please feel free however to start sending in ideas/suggestions or things you want the city to be aware of about specific segments when designing these bike lanes.

3/4 Programs & Services Meeting

You can read my full live notes here. But probably the most pertinent to Ward 5 parents: The City Council is moving forward a request from the superintendent for authorization to submit a Statement of Interest (SOI) to the Massachusetts School Building Authority for consideration of funding for a renovation/addition (or more properly, likely a full rebuild) of Countryside Elementary School, which has at long last risen to the top of our city’s priority list, as I assured many of you last year on the doors that it would soon be! I think those modular classroom units have been there literally my entire life, if I recall correctly which year they were added.

There's a minimum of a 5-6 year timeframe on projects of this scale from start (study & design) to finish (opening the new doors after construction ends), so this new school with added capacity would be opening around the same time as the newly approved Northland project would be completed too. Also as a reminder the newly approved Northland Needham St project comes with $1.5 million in free funds from the corporation to the city toward the new (or renovated) Countryside Elementary School.

One of the challenges with reimagining the Countryside site is that part of it is a wetland and part of it falls within a 200 foot buffer zone around a wetland.

Newton Dems March Resolutions to City Council

The Newton Democratic City Committee, at the request of me, Councilor Holly Ryan (Ward 8), and the Newton High School Democrats, adopted two resolutions at the March 2020 meeting: 

1) "The Newton Democratic City Committee urges the Newton City Council to adopt a municipal election voting age minimum of 16." 

2) "The Newton Democratic City Committee urges the Newton City Council to strengthen and expand union rights and protections for both public and private employees in the City of Newton."

Newsletter Vol 1, Issue 7: Office Hours this weekend, early voting next week, Upper Falls news, docket items on taxes & construction noise

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Five days of early voting both for the March 3 Presidential Primary and citywide Northland referendum begin this coming Monday, Feb. 24. You can vote early at City Hall, Monday through Thursday of next week (Feb 24-27) from 8:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. and also on Friday (Feb 28) from 8 AM to 5 PM.

Don’t forget on your Democratic primary ballot to vote for local party positions. I am running for re-election to the Ward 5 Democratic Committee as well as running for our local male seat on the Democratic State Committee. (You can learn more about that here.) I hope to earn your vote!

Coming Up (Feb 18-23, Partial List)

• City Council meeting tonight (Tuesday, 7:45 PM): This is a very light agenda covering...

  • 2 business signage changes

  • 2 permit time extensions

  • 8 commission or board or staff appointments or reappointments

  • Various small items from the Finance Committee and Programs & Services Committee that I recapped last week in my newsletter

• Mayor Fuller / Governor Baker Announcement of Upper Falls MassWorks Infrastructure Grant (Thursday, 9:15 AM, 1234 Chestnut St B Entry): The state has approved a grant for an engineering and design study for transportation and neighborhood improvement projects to the Upper Falls Greenway and Pettee Square intersection. The announcement event there by Pettee Square this week will feature Governor Charlie Baker, Lt. Governor Karyn Polito, Secretary Mike Kennealy, and Newton Mayor Ruthanne Fuller. The Mayor’s update describes the Pettee Sq project as follows “we are aiming for traffic signal replacements, roadway milling and new pavement, new concrete sidewalks, new ADA accessible curb cut ramps, upgrades to the drainage system, new pavement markings, lighting upgrades, new traffic signs, landscaping and streetscape improvements, and potentially a raised table intersection and raised crosswalk at the Greenway.”

• Upper Falls Area Council (Thursday, 7 PM, Emerson Community Center): Agenda items include...

  • They are still looking to appoint a 9th member to a vacant seat! Come be part of your neighborhood government.

  • Planning the March 21 Upper Falls Soup Social honoring John Rice

  • Ken Newcomb Upper Falls Book Award

  • Update on the Christina/Oak/Needham St intersection lights discussion with MassDOT

• Joint Office Hours in Waban with Councilor Downs (Saturday, Waban Starbucks, 10 AM to 11:30 AM) - check my website for any updates or changes to the time

• Joint Office Hours in Newton Highlands with Councilor Noel (Sunday, Stacks Espresso Bar, 9:30 AM to 11 AM) - check my website for any updates or changes to the time

Docket Review - New Filed Items

This week in my review of newly filed docket items I wanted to highlight two specific items:

• “#134‐20 Discussion on easing the tax burden on low‐ and fixed income Newton residents - COUNCILORS HUMPHREY, RYAN, BOWMAN, MALAKIE, WRIGHT, DOWNS, DANBERG AND NOEL requesting a discussion with relevant city staff and a representative of the Massachusetts Department of Local Services to explore possible local tax reforms with the goal of easing the tax burden on low‐ and fixed‐income Newton residents and shifting it to those residents who can comfortably afford to pay a greater share of revenues.” 

  • This is my second item as lead docketer, and I’m joined by 7 other councilors so far. Not everyone in Newton is a very wealthy homeowner with a huge home and a big income, but some residents certainly are. A one-sized fits all policy on revenues therefore presents some problems. With city budgets tight and many residents – especially seniors who aren’t wealthy – struggling to keep up with taxes and home maintenance costs, it would be good to try to rearrange our taxes, if we can. Although cities in Massachusetts are funded primarily through property taxes, which are generally flat and not progressive by income or wealth, the state does allow some flexibility on how those are figured, and we in Newton use some but not all options available to us. Fortunately, it happens that the Department of Local Services has recently been working on educating municipalities specifically on these options. This item is docketed as a discussion, not an actual proposal yet, because we’ll need to figure out first what if anything could work for Newton that we aren’t currently doing. Then if there is something from a policy standpoint that would address our concerns – and not create unintended negative consequences as a byproduct – we will consider docketing a specific change.

• “#121‐20 Request for a study on construction vibration standards - COUNCILORS ALBRIGHT, LEARY, DOWNS, LAREDO, KRINTMZAN, WRIGHT, CROSSLEY, MALAKIE, BAKER, NORTON, GREENBERG, BOWMAN, MARKIEWICZ, HUMPHREY, AND RYAN based on the Washington Place Liaison Committee recommendations, requesting the study, analysis, review of vibration standards related to construction projects as they affect neighboring buildings. The outcome of this analysis could be an amendment to the Noise Ordinance to include a vibration section, regulations on vibrations and/or a vibration section to be included in construction management plans.” 

  • One of the big problems residents have had with all the recent construction in Newton from large projects down to home rebuilds next door has been the noise of it all and what hours or days of the week the noise is happening. Everyone would probably be a lot happier overall if the noise were better controlled and regulated, so this item seeks to figure out what should be done to that end.

My Week-in-Review (Feb 11-17)

• NSHS Panel on Political Climate Action: I was asked by Newton South teachers to be a panelist to students on the topic of local political action on climate change during their teach-in last week. I focused on my experience not just as a new councilor receiving constituent contacts, but also my years of environmental activism and marriage equality activism, in figuring out how groups of citizens, including students, can identify and exploit pressure points in the government to move elected officials to change their position. My co-panelists were a representative from Citizens Climate Lobby on their approach to lobbying elected officials for a price on carbon and a representative from Communities Responding to Extreme Weather. The latter organization works to prove the premise (supported by scientific research into past extreme weather events) that together, as communities, in solidarity with our neighbors, we can reduce the death toll from extreme weather events related to climate change such as heat waves and flooding. Children and low-income, isolated seniors, particularly in communities of color, can be especially vulnerable to these events but research shows that the death toll can be reduced when our community ties to our neighbors are stronger and people check in on each other.

• BC Fossil Fuel Divestment Rally: On Thursday afternoon of last week, Boston College student activists (backed by alumni) rallied as part of National Fossil Fuel Divestment Day before presenting their demands to the BC administration to divest the college's multi-billion-dollar endowment fund and other finances from the fossil fuel industry, arguing the investments are incompatible with Jesuit doctrine. Unfortunately the students say the administration has been very hostile to their protests and that they have been threatened with police action. This is especially remarkable considering Georgetown University, one of BC’s peers as a major Jesuit university, just committed to divesting from fossil fuels a few weeks ago. Councilor Emily Norton (Ward 2) & I were there in person to show our support on Thursday, but other Newton City Councilors and Boston City Councilors sent words of support as well.

• Waban Area Council February Meeting: (My notes in brief here.) There was a big audience this week at the monthly meeting of the Waban Area Council in relation to the ongoing neighbor concerns about Newton-Wellesley Hospital’s power generation plans, but (as noted in the agenda) there was only a short update from Area Council President Chris Pitts for now to hold us over to next month – and no representative of the hospital present this month to address any other questions. The big challenge right now is a lack of clear communication and explanation of what exactly is or is not being proposed; so neighbors don’t have a good sense yet of whether or not there is a need for concern or what alternatives for stable power supply have been considered. I’m hoping to get clearer answers soon, just like all of you. I’m hoping with some clarity we will know what is actually even under consideration, instead of all of us trying to piece it together from conflicting information and rumors. On the rest of the agenda, Councilor Downs as Vice Chair of Public Safety & Transportation presented on the committee's recent public discussions on what priorities residents want the Council to work on for transportation and related safety issues. (Thanks again to residents on Chestnut St between Beacon St and Fuller St for recapping their safety concerns this month and pressing us to keep making progress.) And finally, a Waban resident noted that many of the street lights on Quinobequin are not functioning, but of course it's a state road with private utilities (not a city road with city contracts) so everyone is trying to push off the problem onto everyone else. Councilor Downs plans to look into it further.

• Finally, City Councilor Maria Scibelli Greenberg (Ward 1) & I helped kick off the Bernie 2020 Newton door-knocking effort at the Newtonville staging location this past Sunday, and then I set off into Newton Highlands to talk to folks about why I’m supporting Senator Sanders for the Democratic nomination. If you’d like to know more or get involved, please let me know, and I will get you connected to the right people. As always, I have a standing offer to talk to anyone at any time to try to answer questions they might have about Sanders and his platform. And I’ll be out knocking doors on the weekends until we get to the March 3rd primary.

Newsletter Vol 1, Issue 6: Recaps of 2/3 City Council Meeting, 2/5 Programs & Services, 2/10 Finance, and More

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I ended up delaying this week’s newsletter by one day because there is very little happening on my official or political calendar this week. (Not counting me heading back to coaching at the Newton South Speech & Debate Team after a year away while I ran for City Council.) I figured I would include this week’s Finance Committee recap now instead of waiting until next week. Next Monday is a holiday and next Tuesday we have a full City Council meeting, and I’ll have some docket commentary on new filings.

Also a quick reminder from my colleague Councilor Bowman via Twitter that Newton is updating its Open Space and Recreation Plan and you should complete an online survey this week before 2/13 with your thoughts.

Coming Up (Feb 11-17, Partial Calendar)

• Tonight (Tuesday) - Not sure if I will be able to attend myself but there is another Riverside proposal hearing at Land Use in the City Council chambers. The meeting starts at 7 PM with smaller matters first up on the agenda.

• Wednesday Newton South Climate Day - In addition to my colleague Councilor Norton, I will be a panelist at one of the Newton South panels on a climate change teach-in event for students this Wednesday. I’ll be on an afternoon panel about Political Action.

• Waban Area Council Monthly Meeting Thursday, February 13th 7:30 pm at the Waban Library Center - Agenda items include Update on Public Safety and Transportation Committee by Councilor Downs; Discussion on Northland Referendum by Rena Getz; Open Space Initiative and Survey - Bob Jampol

  • Note: Update for Cogen at NWH, including specs on the plant will be provided in March according to WAC President Chris Pitts

• Concurrently on Thursday night there will be a League of Women Voters forum on the Northland Referendum. Info here.

• Sunday Feb 16 at 2 PM, 26 Blake St Newtonville: I will be officially kicking off the Bernie 2020 field campaign operation in Newton as one of their local elected official endorsers. The Democratic presidential primary election in Massachusetts (in which I’m also running for Democratic State Committee) is March 3rd. I’ll be speaking at the event about why I’m supporting our next Democratic nominee, Senator Sanders, and then getting people out to knock doors here in Newton. In 2016, one of the strongest Newton precincts for Sanders was Newton Upper Falls (Ward 5, Precinct 1), along with the precincts of Ward 1 (Nonantum/Newton Corner) and the precinct of Ward 7 with Boston College.

• Looking Further Ahead: Last week I made a small error in my newsletter note about the upcoming office hours. The corrected info on the first one is that I will be joining my Ward 5-at-Large Colleague Andreae Downs at her office hours at the Waban Starbucks at 10 AM on Saturday Feb 22. Hope to see you there.

My Week-in-Review (Feb 3-10)

• City Council Full Meeting Last Monday - This one was relatively uneventful in that we ended up postponing some of the more controversial items to deal with later, possibly with changes in the interim. You can read my notes here. I raised some concerns regarding some natural gas capacity expansions that did not seem to me to be genuinely safety-driven as opposed to inducing demand – and unfortunately the gas company hadn’t responded to committee questions about that until right before the full Council meeting – but I did not have the votes to do much about the situation. Some councilors have argued that this was a routine matter not worth discussing, but I do feel that we should be acutely aware of every single decision made on fossil fuel infrastructure right now, given the climate situation, and that some things that might have been “routine” in the past probably aren’t so banal now. At any rate, I said my piece about the matter, even if some councilors were upset with me about having to stay later than usual.

• If you have heard about a recent Open Meeting Law complaint filed against the City Council and had questions, please read the official statement to the public from our Council President Susan Albright. We want to make sure there isn't any public confusion about the complaint or the Council's position on it.

• Land Use Hearings on Marijuana Stores - I sat in on part of this committee hearing. Unfortunately, my specific questions were cut off by the Chair, but I brought them to the Council President directly, who in turn brought them to the Mayor. I’m sure I’ll have more to say on this in a future newsletter, if and when these applications come to the full City Council. As a reminder, please email all comments on pending Land Use matters to the entire City Council (citycouncil at newtonma dot gov). And as I noted in a prior newsletter, the process at this point (due to state law and city ordinance) is relatively narrowly focused on specific legally defined special permit requirements, mostly about issues of traffic, proposed site design, public safety, hours of operation, appointment conditions, parking and so on. The Council is unlikely to reject the application based on other grounds as long as those special permit requirements are met. If you have feedback on the overall petition or on ways it could be improved, it is recommended that you focus your public comments or emails on those specific criteria  – and not on the issue of marijuana itself or even on overall location (a zoning matter).

• Programs & Services Meeting - We had a discussion of staff directories and best practices, the 2020 Census, and temporarily moving a polling location (Ward 2, Precinct 1) to the Albemarle Field House for the duration of 2020 due to construction/renovation at the Old Horace Mann. Here are some of my notes: 

  • This is the first year ever that the City of Newton's Customer Service staff (who also manage the 311 request tracking system) has been fully filled with no vacancies, which seems to be helping constituents reach a human at City Hall who can help them with what they need. We discussed the importance of a human response to constituents to get them to the correct department and correct staffer (which is our current approach) rather than referring people to an automated phone tree and having them guess who they should be speaking to.

  • We also talked during this meeting at some length about the census count process and the critical importance of getting everyone counted to maintain our federal funding. Thank you to resident and longtime activist Josephine McNeil for making sure this got on our docket and for attending the meeting to speak on the issue. Every municipality has its own specific challenges in getting accurately counted. In Newton we especially need to work to be sure college students, people with disabilities, immigrants, African-American residents, and low-income residents get counted. I noted the large Chinese immigrant community & growing community of unrelated adult renters both significant in parts of Ward 5 as something to focus on. Councilor Holly Ryan noted that some activists in the LGBTQ+ community are boycotting the US Census due to the Trump Admin's removal of counting that community, but she also noted that this brings up countervailing pressures to get money brought in for other services, even non-specific services, that LGBTQ people rely on. I also asked about the re-precincting process, which will happen in 2021 (this term!), and which I'll be a part of automatically as ward councilor – which is great because I’ve done a lot of walking around knocking doors over the years and I know the precinct lines pretty well, and specifically which ones don’t quite make sense.

• As noted in last week’s newsletter, I did not attend this month’s Newton Highlands Area Council meeting due to a schedule conflict. But I read the minutes so I’m up to speed. I just can’t recap it for my own readers firsthand. Sorry!

• Safe Routes Task Force Meeting - I sat in on this month’s Safe Routes to School Task Force meeting at the Waban Library Center on Friday morning, along with a number of my City Council colleagues and School Committee Members. The biggest topic was safety around Memorial-Spaulding Elementary School on the south side of the city in Ward 8, but also about the policies at other elementary schools that affect safety around dropoff and pickup times. The comment that really stood out to me was a parent who said, "We shouldn't feel like we live on an island, 3 blocks away from our school, with no way to get there safely on foot." Safe Routes to School is a Mass DOT project, and we have a Newton task force that meets each month.

• Newton Highlands Soup Social - We had another great Newton Highlands Soup Social this past Saturday evening, this year run directly by the Hyde Center for the first time.

• Finance Committee Meeting - Here’s what we dealt with this Monday(all unanimous votes of those present): 

  • #115-20: "authorization to accept and expend a forty-three thousand nine hundred and forty-three dollar ($43,943) grant from the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security for the purpose of funding overtime to have Police Officers monitor high accident locations and conduct traffic enforcement through written warnings and/or citations." To get the grant from the state, they submitted 10 specific locations for monitoring. It's possible to add or subtract locations off the list as they go, if conditions evolve, with state approval. I asked a question about enforcement vs design, in terms of street safety, and what happens after the enforcement period ends when the grant money ends (since we can’t just briefly ticket our way out of a long-term design problem). This is really more of an enforcement grant than a bigger picture grant. But once the money runs out, they would try to get additional NHTSA money to keep the enforcement going. 842 estimated patrol hours total in this grant. Some of the locations relevant to Ward 5 specifically are Needham St, Waban Square area (3 intersections), and Washington St @ Beacon St. Others also probably affect residents as well but are outside Ward 5.

  • We very quickly went through #379-19(7) to amend the funding source for Webster Woods acquisition. There turned out to be no discussion or questions after a very brief presentation from the Planning Dept explaining the change, because everyone was satisfied with the amendment as explained to us.

  • The bulk of the meeting time was spent going through a summary presentation of the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) and external audit reports for fiscal year ending June 30, 2019

  • An item for additional snow & ice removal money authorization was held instead of approved, at the request of the Administration, due to the recent fortuitous weather not making it necessary quite yet.

  • #116-20 was from our Treasury Department asking for approval for a 5-year contract for online payment services with the vendor as chosen by the RFP evaluation committee (anything over 3 years requires Council approval). There was a bid process, but in the end the contract was renewed with the existing vendor (obviously it's less disruptive for both staff and city residents to stick with the existing vendor if we're happy with it). We approved this as well.

  • #111-20 was a reappointment of the director of our board of assessors. And then we adjourned.

Newsletter Vol 1, Issue 5: Road Work Alert - Chestnut St in Waban; Docket Review

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Happy February, everyone! One month down on my first term. Here’s this week’s newsletter.

Coming Up (Feb 3-Feb 9, partial calendar):

• Monday (tonight): Full City Council Meeting 7:45 PM (Agenda to be Voted On) - Other than some relatively minor routine items voted out of various committees, I think this meeting is mostly picking back up on some of the debate about parking waivers – and there has been a fair amount of public interest in the proposed temporary suspension of the certain historical landmarking powers during the review process. (The Zoning & Planning Committee amended the proposed suspension period so that it would end on June 30 2020 instead of Dec 31 2020, if adopted.) Also at some point we’re expecting to be in an Executive Session which is a part of the meeting where we won’t be in chambers and won’t have a public audience; this is a mechanism used to discuss legally privileged matters or confidential items.

• Tuesday Feb 4: 

  • Friends of Hemlock Gorge meeting 7:15 Emerson Community Center in Upper Falls; 

  • Land Use Hearing on two retail marijuana store proposals (Ascend for Washington St and Union Twist in 4 Corners). The first one should be some time after 7 PM while the second should be some time after 8 PM.

• Wednesday Feb 5: Programs & Services at 7 PM Room 211 - see Docket Review section of this week’s newsletter below

• Thursday Feb 6: There is a Newton Highlands Area Council meeting at 7:30 PM at Brigham House, although I will probably not be in attendance due to a schedule conflict this month.

• Looking ahead to upcoming Office Hours: In January, I did my first office hours in Upper Falls. This month, I’m going to try to do a double-header: First, I will be joining my Ward 5-at-Large Colleague Andreae Downs at her office hours at the Waban Starbucks at 10 AM on Saturday Feb 22. Second, I am tentatively planning for Newton Highlands office hours at 10 AM Sunday Feb 23. (Check my campaign committee website or email me beforehand to make sure that’s still correct.) In March, I will try to schedule a Friday session for people who cannot make weekends at all.

Docket Review: 

This week in my review of newly filed docket items I wanted to highlight three specific items:

• #102-20 Request for a discussion on the vacancy of the LGBTQ+ Liaison: “[The entire] PROGRAMS AND SERVICES COMMITTEE requesting a discussion on whether the Administration intends to fill the recently vacated position of LGBTQ+ liaison and whether a replacement would be compensated or uncompensated.” This position became vacant in 2019 when my colleague, Ward 8 Councilor Holly Ryan, resigned to run for the seat she now holds. But previously it also wasn’t paid either. A number of us, as you can see from the whole committee co-docketing this item together, are very concerned that our LGBTQ+ population in Newton is not being adequately served if we cannot attract a qualified person to fill the role, which is empty at the moment. We look forward to this discussion and hopefully finding a solution quickly in the upcoming budget.

• #101-20 Requesting a discussion on the 2020 Census: “COUNCILORS ALBRIGHT, RYAN, GREENBERG, NOEL, KRINTZMAN, HUMPHREY, AND MALAKIE requesting a discussion with the Complete Count Committee Newton's plans to assure that all Newton residents are counted in the next census. To assure that Newton can continue to receive CDBG funds to serve underserved people an accurate census is essential.” Something that is heavy on the minds of municipal officials all across the Commonwealth is whether or not an accurate census will be conducted this year by the Trump Administration, particularly in communities with significant immigrant populations, because the official census data is absolutely crucial in determining federal program funding allocations that many cities and towns rely upon.

• I have also request to join as a co-docketer on #100-20 Requesting a discussion on fees in the Newton Public Schools: “COUNCILORS KRINTZMAN AND CROSSLEY, LAREDO, NORTON, GREENBERG, LIPOF, KALIS, NOEL, AND MARKIEWICZ requesting a discussion with appropriate members of the School Department and School Committee about fees in the Newton Public Schools. The discussion should include an explanation of the basis upon which fees are set and how the fees factor into the overall budget request of the schools.” I think some other councilors might also be joining it as well, but I’m not sure. The reason I asked to join the item is that I have been concerned ever since I was a Newton Public Schools student myself about the discouraging impact that certain school fees have on the use of certain NPS services or participation in activities by our student population, especially but not solely among lower-income students. So, I’d like to learn more about this part of our budget along with my colleagues.

Ward 5 Major Road Work Alert - Chestnut St in Waban: 

As part of critical preparations for the impending (2021 we hope), long overdue overhaul/repaving of Chestnut St from Rte 9 to Beacon St, the city first needs to do a rehabilitation and overhaul of the water main running along Chestnut St so that we won’t have to dig it up again immediately after we properly repave. Details from city staff, as summarized by me:

• There will be a temporary no parking zone along Chestnut St from Beacon St to Rte 9 from Feb 3 to Sept 1 of this year (Mon-Fri), although this doesn't really affect anyone because no one ever parks on Chestnut St anyway. 

• "the water main will be cleaned and lined. This process will improve the quality, taste, odor, flow and color of the water. Water services will also be replaced from the main in the street to the property line during water main replacement. New fire hydrants will be installed"

• "This work will include Chestnut Street and the following side streets: Beacon St, Avalon Rd, Pine Ridge Rd, Plainfield St, Woodward St, Larchmont St, Wyman St, Larchmont Ave, Collins Rd, Fenwick Rd, Stanley Rd, Kodaya Rd, Amherst Rd, Tamworth Rd, Oliver Rd, Anita Circle" +Rte 9

• "When the mains in a neighborhood are taken out of service [...] residences will be provided with water by means of a temporary by-pass piping system. Connection will be made from the temporary pipelines laid alongside the curbs on each street to each adjacent residence."

• "The Contractor will schedule an appointment with the homeowner to facilitate the connection to the by-pass piping."

• Phase1 "Side Street Connections, is currently scheduled to begin on or after February 3, 2020 and continue for approximately 10 weeks. Construction hours will be 8:30 am- 3:30 pm, Monday through Friday. If this property is being rented, please notify renters of this construction"

• Phase2 "Cleaning and Lining of the Chestnut Street pipe will begin on after May 1, 2020 and will continue for approximately four or five months to complete. Construction hours will be 8:30 am – 3:30 pm, Monday through Friday (some Saturday work may be required)."

• Phase3 "Water Services will be replaced from the main to the property line"

• Phase4 "Excavation trenches will be milled and paved [...] (the City will schedule complete paving after all water work is complete and the trenches have had adequate time for settlement)"

• Remember during this process to be careful about running the water to make sure you don't have discolored/rusty water before you drink it or use it for laundry.

• Councilor Downs emphasizes that this water main project is to protect the water pipes for the next 75 years—and a precursor to much-needed repair, paving and safety work on this stretch of Chestnut!

My Week-in-Review (Jan 27 to Feb 1): 

• Land Use (Riverside): I’m not on the Land Use Committee, but I sat in on the meeting like most of my colleagues to try to get caught up to speed on the details of the compromise proposal reached last fall for the Riverside T station development concept, as well as to hear public comments on it. My partial notes can be found here. There are more meetings to come; this one was just about overall design elements. Other topics will be covered at upcoming hearings.

• Finance Committee: The Finance Committee held its first meeting, discussing possible future priorities for the year and voting out: $1 million for snow & ice removal (so far this has been a good winter but some of our recent winters have required a lot of February/March snow removal spending and 2 of our worst years for snow costs ever have been just in the last several years); $900k to cover retroactive salary increases agreed to in the recently reached collective bargaining agreement with the Fire Department (we heard a presentation on the outcome of that negotiation); $6000 in FDA grants money for Environmental Health Specialist training; $200k in state Housing Choice grant money to study the feasibility of converting the armory to 100% affordable housing (possibly combined with related on-site social services); $41,869 in E-Rate funds for converting Burr Elementary School hardline telephones to VOIP technology hardline phones. I asked some emergency preparedness / safety backup questions about the VOIP phone systems in the schools. There are tradeoffs here either way but there's also a Fire Department-mandated walkie-talkie emergency system in the schools already to help provide a backup. Councilor Noel asked a safety question confirming that these would be hard-wired and therefore not competing with wifi capacity in the schools. Councilor Kalis followed up on my question by asking if VOIP would be safer than copper phones (yes, compared to 40-50 year-old legacy wiring). There are 7 more schools, I think including Burr, to undergo this phased conversion process.

• Newton Housing Authority Lunar New Year Event: Wonderful afternoon Saturday with the Newton Housing Authority and Mayor Ruthanne Fuller as we celebrated the Lunar New Year to kick off the year of the rat with our Chinese immigrant & first/second-generation community in Newton, as well as other residents of our community's NHA housing!

Newsletter, Vol 1 Issue 4: Zoning Redesign, Riverside, Good News from DPW for Beethoven and Allen

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Coming Up (Jan 27-Feb 2)

• Tonight (Monday): Zoning & Planning Committee 7 PM Chamber/211 - I’m not a member of this committee, but I wanted to make sure people were aware that the committee is holding a recap discussion with the Planning Department about where things stand on the comprehensive zoning redesign process and the history of how we got to the point where we are now. If you can’t attend, there was a memo distributed publicly to Councilors to explain all of this and to explain what “context-based” zoning means. The Planning Department has been extremely responsive over the past couple of years to public feedback, suggestions, and criticisms of their early drafts of zoning redesign, and they are very willing to incorporate things that you point out as residents about your own neighborhoods, to make sure that we get this right. The zoning redesign is attempting to achieve (or reconcile where they conflict) a very broad range of objectives like keeping most of our neighborhoods similar to what they are now, adding additional housing capacity in certain areas where we think we can fit it, substantially reducing the number of teardowns (and by extension allowing ordinary people to buy homes here without bidding against developers as often), promoting environmental sustainability, revitalizing our village center commercial/business districts, simplifying the approval process for ordinary homeowners to make renovations, and much more. This zoning redesign, which if adopted would be our first all-encompassing new zoning code in close to 70 years, is something that we want as many residents as possible to be satisfied with and comfortable with. While the “context-based” approach to zoning that we have been pursuing in Newton may be innovative and cutting-edge in some ways, in other ways, it’s actually quite conservative in how much it works to preserve what is already here, rather than dramatically re-zoning everything. It is also uniquely tailorable to our city (or any city where it is used as the approach) compared to traditional zoning approaches. If you have an idea for how to tailor things in your neighborhood in the next draft, now is the time to let us know.

• Tuesday: Land Use Committee 7 PM Council Chambers - I’m also not a member of this committee, but this is a public hearing on the special permit for the negotiated compromise deal for the Riverside T station development. If you have public comments to make or just want to hear the latest details of a project proposal that has significantly changed many times over the past couple years, you might want to attend. If you are unable to attend but you have a comment on this special permit (or any special permit) to submit for the Councilors to read, please email the entire City Council at citycouncil at newtonma.gov. My advice for effective advocacy to your elected officials, as a current official and former longtime activist, is to try to make your comment specific and differentiated from other comments/emails so that it stands out. And make sure that you include your address so we have a sense of the distribution of comments! A project of this scale and its location means it is something that will affect our entire city, but it’s still helpful to know where people are writing from.

• Wednesday: Finance Committee 7 PM Room 211 - This is a pretty straightforward meeting, our first of the term, to authorize snow/ice removal funding, fire/rescue salary money, technology upgrade money for the Williams Elementary School, and the use of grant money from the US FDA and the Mass Dept of Housing & Community Development (the latter is for a feasibility study on converting the West Newton Armory to 100% affordable housing).

Also as a head’s up: next Monday, Feb 3, there’s a full City Council meeting.

Week-in-Review Highlights

• This past Wednesday: DPW discussion (including some good Ward 5 news!), Programs & Services

  • DPW Discussion: As part of the Public Facilities Committee meeting, the Dept of Public Works was kind enough to give a presentation on their current and upcoming projects, not just for that committee but also for the newly elected city councilors who are not on that committee. We were also given guidance on where to direct various constituent concerns about public works issues. As a reminder, which they underscored, the best way you can get a report in on a specific problem like a pothole is to use the city’s 311 system first, so that they have a record. If you haven’t heard back for a week, or you have a question about something long-term rather than a problem to report, you can then email one or more of your city councilors for us to follow up. In many cases, depending on the type of problem you’re reporting, it might be handled in as few as 3 days, sometimes even faster, if you use the 311 system. We also got to hear some fun facts about our incredible DPW team and the logistics of keeping everything running as smoothly as possible. For example, did you know that Newton DPW has in-house capacity to plow snow for storms of up to around 3 or so inches? For larger snow storms the city then has to bring in outside contractors. Finally – and perhaps of the greatest interest to Ward 5 and Ward 6 residents who live nearby – some DPW announcements: 1. The Newton Fire Department has signed off on a raised speed table for the entire Beethoven Ave & Puritan Rd intersection. 2. Bumpouts are coming on Allen Ave at the Pine Ridge and Plainfield intersections. I think almost every single person I talked to during the campaign last year who lives on Beethoven Ave expressed concern over the speeding and blind intersection at Puritan. Neighbors have been fighting for change here for years and years, and it looks like things are finally about to move.

  • Programs & Services Committee: We met this week to vote on 4 youth commission appointments, and 2 Council on Aging appointments, as well as to discuss internally some of our committee’s priorities for the year or possible ideas for legislation (I certainly have a lot myself!). The committee handles a wide range of City Council matters from appointments to citizen petitions to Council rules and charter reform to environmental policy to election reform to many of the titular programs and services our city offers. We have a really great group of people on the committee this term, and it was wonderful to have a unique opportunity to hear from Newton teen activists and a senior activist in the same meeting. It takes a whole spectrum of people to make our city great!

• Thursday: Upper Falls Area Council - I will keep my notes brief since I had to keep my notes brief on Thursday due to not having internet access during the meeting. The two key takeaways (other than that the Area Council has filled its vacancies and has sent a letter to Mass DOT about the traffic light configuration at Christina St / Needham St / Oak St) are that two events have been scheduled:

  • Upper Falls Village Day tentative date: Sunday Sept 13 11AM to 1:30 PM

  • There will be a 4-Area Council-sponsored Informational Forum on Northland Referendum Sunday Feb 16 2-4 at Zervas. (It is, as far as I know, mostly being organized by opponents of the project although they say they intend to have a neutral moderator and presentations by both campaigns.

• Weekend: MMA Conference, Democratic Party events

  • This weekend there was a conference by the Mass Municipal Association where elected officials and municipal staff from all across the Commonwealth came together to learn best practices and exchange ideas. It was great to see how many of my friends and acquaintances are now my colleagues in elected office across the state and to hear what they are working on in their cities or towns. A lot of us face the same challenges and opportunities. I also really enjoyed the opportunity at the “trade show” to skip past various corporate vendors and just talk to state departmental staff and federal EPA workers who are all there to help local governments understand state and federal programs they can benefit from. Also, if you need to know what invasive species to keep an eye out for, I brought home a lot of materials from the Department of Agriculture, so just let me know!

  • The Ward 5 Democrats met on Sunday afternoon to hear from candidates in various Democratic Primaries (including me as a candidate for Democratic State Committee on March 3rd) and to talk about what our Ward 5 City Council delegation has been working on. Then I headed to the Riverside Office Park to the campaign offices of Senator Ed Markey who is seeking re-election on the Sept 1 ballot. (You can read why I’ve endorsed him here.) Markey supporters in Newton, please attend the March 15 Democratic caucuses at 3 PM @ NSHS to run for or elect pro-Markey state convention delegates!

Newsletter, Vol 1 Issue 3: Contentious City Council Meeting, Surveillance Issues, Understanding Marijuana Permitting, Senior Center Site List

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I delayed my newsletter this week to account for the Monday holiday and for the action at the City Council chambers on Tuesday. This one is a bit long, but I hope very informative. As a reminder to new subscribers, this newsletter is expressing my own views and thought process on things that come up as we go along, in addition to being informational about what is going on in the ward and city. It is not a neutral governmental newsletter. (Please reply with any city-related questions/comments to bhumphrey@newtonma.gov whenever possible, for public records reasons.)

Coming Up (Jan 22-26)

• Wednesday (tonight): Programs & Services Committee Meeting, 7 PM, Room 211 City Hall - Not much going on this week except four Youth Commission appointments and two Council on Aging appointments.

• Thursday: Rescheduled from last week - Upper Falls Area Council Meeting at 7 PM at the Emerson Community Center including appointment to vacant seats and election of officers. (I will not be able to attend the contemporaneous Traffic Council meeting. One of the items is the Highlands business parking district expansion into Ward 5 that I mentioned in a recent newsletter.)

• Friday & Saturday: I’ll be at a Massachusetts Municipal Association conference with many of my fellow councilors!

• Sunday: 2 PM Ward 5 Democratic Committee (702 Chestnut St in Waban); 3-5 PM US Senator Ed Markey for Re-election campaign office open house in Ward 4 in the Riverside Office Park (275 Grove St)

Note: In the future, if you have a Ward 5 or Newton event coming up that you would like me to mention in the newsletter, please let me know. So far I’m generally just listing some of the events I plan to or am scheduled to attend. There are other important community events at the same time as some of these meetings, and I left them off because I can’t personally be there, but in future I’m happy to include them in the newsletter to inform people.

Docket review

This week in my review of notable docket items I wanted to highlight a docket item that I filed with Council President Albright (Ward 2) and Public Safety & Transportation Chair Auchincloss (Ward 2): #74-20 is requesting a discussion with a representative of the ACLU of Massachusetts regarding the current policy environment on facial surveillance technologies.

On March 4th at the PS&T meeting, we’ll be hearing from Kade Crockford of the Mass ACLU on the policy challenges posed by face surveillance tech and the ACLU’s position that municipalities should “press pause” on any implementation of this technology. Our State Senator, Cindy Creem, is working on a statewide ban in the legislature and our neighboring town of Brookline banned the technology last year. In addition to fairly straightforward privacy concerns, there are also serious concerns that the technology is simply incapable of performing the function it purports to serve in the realm of law enforcement: False positive recognition of faces, particularly of non-white people, remains very high. My view is that we should not have any such technology used by law enforcement at all, but at minimum I think we should all agree that a piece of essentially “junk science” that could potentially be used to arrest and convict an innocent person has no place in any law enforcement system. The presentation on March 4th will go over all of this, and my hope is that my colleagues on City Council might decide to take up a measure to at least prevent the use of the tech for the foreseeable future. 

While opposition to mass surveillance technology was one of my earliest policy causes (refer back if you can find it to my testimony to the Newton School Committee just over 10 years ago, when I was still a senior in high school!), this has become a particularly urgent issue in recent years with the rapid proliferation of doorbell camera surveillance across all of our residential streets, not just the usual CCTV cameras around commercial districts and government buildings, especially with the close relationship between these doorbell/alarm companies and many law enforcement agencies in the United States.

Week-in-Review Highlights

• This past Monday: Union Twist Four Corners Retail Marijuana Proposal Community Meeting at the Waban Library Center, sponsored by two of the Area Councils, with a presentation by the petitioners and background information on the public process by former City Councilor Schwartz. This is the special permit request (public Land Use hearing Feb 4, 7 pm) for 1158 Beacon St (former Jaylin Cleaners in Four Corners) for a retail marijuana store. My notes on the presentation are here. The process at this point (due to state law and city ordinance) is relatively narrowly focused on specific legally defined special permit requirements, mostly about issues of traffic, public safety, hours, and similar. The Council is unlikely to reject the application based on other grounds as long as those special permit requirements are met. If you have feedback on the overall petition or on ways it could be better, it was recommended that you focus your public comments or emails to the Land Use Committee on those specific criteria (traffic impact, public safety components of the plan, hours of operation, etc.) – and not on the issue of marijuana itself or even on location. Those will largely not be factored in to Council decisions, again, because state law is fairly restrictive and because the City Council already previously authorized this location for retail marijuana during its zoning process for the issue as a whole.

• Programs & Services special committee meeting on the referendum guide: For most city elections, the city government tries to provide a neutral informational guide by mail to all voters. Due to changes in state law in 2011 surrounding citizen referendums at the local level, the Law Department asked the City Council to make some changes in our local laws, to adopt certain state guidelines for how to prepare a voter guide for the upcoming Northland referendum. We had some discussion at the Programs & Services committee about whether this would be a one-time change and whether there was a need for a broader review of our procedures around referendums now that we are having them more frequently than in the past and given the changes in state law. Ultimately, our committee unanimously adopted the state guidelines for creating the voter guide for the upcoming referendum.

• Joint meeting of the Council & School Committee: We heard an overview of school building conditions & enrollment trends (heading very slightly down overall but with some pinch points in specific schools), updates on current major projects, 5+ years of upcoming NPS projects, and more. A few key takeaways for Ward 5 people: 1. Capacity at the high school level should be tight for a few more years (although equalizing between North and South better) and then stabilize at a more manageable level even as the bubble of students going through the middle schools arrives. 2. The middle school population is now temporarily reflecting the baby boom of just over a decade ago but should stabilize soon, especially with the Oak Hill expansion. 3. Countryside’s long-overdue overhaul and expansion should be getting to the planning phase imminently as promised, so stay tuned. 4. The north side of the city is grappling with Peirce and Underwood not only both being in bad shape but also way under capacity within just the next couple of years, and a working group is meeting this year to figure out what to do about that (which I mention here since it could affect overall renovation cycles across the city even if you don’t have kids in either of those districts). 5. The new Angier has reached capacity but Williams has available capacity and is in good condition so expect some redistricting between the two soon. I think we can all agree on one thing: It's very hard to plan elementary school capacity for kids who haven't been born yet (!) and when it takes 5-6 years minimum to do significant renovations or rebuilds to schools. Fortunately, we all have in mind the disastrous example of the decisions in the 1980s to close and sell off a bunch of the schools to know what NOT to do this time around. That was a consensus at the meeting.

• NewCAL (new Senior Center) community meeting: City Staff held another community discussion this past Thursday. A large group of councilors attended and my limited notes are here. (Unfortunately due to how packed the event was, they ran out of handouts and the posterboards didn’t have much info.) Having stricken last year’s initial list of potential sites (Albemarle and any other parks), they presented a list of new, smaller sites under consideration, some of which were pretty surprising to me, and I’m not sure are really being seriously entertained. This felt a bit like a Golidlocks List where some options were insufficient on one end and too difficult or costly on the other end so that certain options would be more reasonable in comparison. The 7 sites with upper-bound cost estimates for each are:

  • 1. Newton Centre triangle lot ($36m, including reconfiguring parking)

  • 2. Existing senior center site ($17m)

  • 3. Former Aquinas Junior College ($18m) - NPS might be displaced

  • 4. West Newton Armory ($35m) - State-owned, this proposal would be instead of affordable housing

  • 5. Newton Ed Center ($114m) - NPS might be displaced

  • 6. West Suburban YMCA ($56m)

  • 7. Newton Police HQ ($103m, including a new police HQ elsewhere, I think)

I apologize if I got any details wrong here and for the lack of additional details, since I didn’t have the handout (which I wasn’t able to find online in time for this newsletter). This should be taken just as very preliminary information about the list under consideration.

• Office Hours: I held my first office hours this past Saturday in Upper Falls at the Needham St Starbucks. If you braved the cold and snow flurries to come talk to me, thank you! Continuing my rotation, I currently expect to hold my next office hours in Newton Highlands in mid-February, likely on a Sunday. I will probably hold Waban office hours on a Friday in mid-March, to give Ward 5 residents more options in case weekends don’t work for them. Residents are of course always welcome to come to any of the locations, not just the one closest to them.

• MLK Jr Community Celebration: The City Councilors joined a huge turnout at the First Baptist Church this Monday to celebrate the life and legacy of Dr. King. While there were many inspiring and radical speeches I could refer to, the one I’ll highlight here was from Pastor Devlin Scott of the NewCity Church, who has rapidly become a fixture at interfaith city gatherings over the past couple years. Here is a passage from his speech:

Acceptance means you make room for people to be who they are — you add another chair at the table; you add another place setting; you move your stuff off the extra chair near you — you make room for people; as they are, whether you agree with them or not. You make room. Whether you have much in common or not, you make room.

Dr. King said it this way, “We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.” — so, let’s make room.

Make room by offering a radical invitation to all people; by showing radical hospitality to all people; by responding with a radical embrace of all people; by rendering a radical love for all people; and by standing with a radical boldness for all people. Let’s make room.

Let’s make room for every single one of our kids to have the best education; whether typically developing or on an IEP; whether from Newton or bused from Boston. Let’s make room.

Let’s make room for the senior citizens and the elderly to age in place; for teachers to have fair compensation and benefits, and for our communities to be as environmentally safe as possible. Let’s make room.

Let’s make room for families to live here; whether that family is a single person or a family of six; whether they make six and seven figures or survive on minimum wage; whether they are liberal or conservative or somewhere in between; whether they born here, brought here or simply chose to live here. Let’s make room.

Let’s make room for affordable housing. Sure, we should consider traffic patterns, overcrowded schools and neighborhood density, but may that never distract us from what is most important – our neighbors. So let’s make room. I don’t care if its “livable” or “right-size,” let’s just make room.

Let’s. Make. Room.

I am your neighbor. Who I am is who I am and I am your neighbor. Will you make room for me?

I’m reminded of Dr. Kings words, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’” Could not we understand Dr. King’s work to be summed up in this — let’s make room for others? 

Newton is a great city. I’m proud to live here. So I leave you with this: Dr. King had a dream, now we have a mission — an obligation some would say. And Newton, what is our mission this year? Let’s make room for others. Let’s really “know” our neighbors.

• State of the City Address by Mayor Fuller: I was part of the City Council’s “honor guard” to escort Mayor Ruthanne Fuller into the chambers last night to deliver her annual message. Here were two passages that particularly stood out to me as I was listening to the speech:

  • Every day I see examples of so many other City of Newton employees working together and going the extra mile for our residents. In the last two years, we’ve helped 131,265 people when they called customer service and responded to another 112,522 requests that came in through our 311 system; thank you Garrett Ross and your team. We’ve planted 1,849 trees, thanks to Marc Welch, the forestry crew and the Newton Tree Conservancy. We’ve paved 26.5 miles of roads, the most ever in a two year period, with a shout out to Shane Mark and the DPW crews.

  • we face challenges. Let me name three of them.

    • Challenge #1: Home prices are rising. Our adult children too often can’t afford to move back and we cannot say that no matter your income or your age, you have the ability to stay here or move here.

    • Challenge #2: Traffic congestion is growing on our major arteries, cars are speeding through our neighborhoods, and there are still so many streets and sidewalks that require our attention. Drivers, cyclists and walkers too often feel frustrated or unsafe.

    • Challenge #3: Threats to the environment are mounting.

• 1/21/20 City Council meeting: We also had a long and unfortunately contentious City Council meeting last night, which ended up featuring four more “maiden speeches” from my fellow freshmen councilors. We confirmed the date of the Northland referendum election for March 3rd, concurrent with the Super Tuesday Massachusetts presidential primary, which is expected to have very high turnout this year. Most constituents I heard from said they wanted that date. I voted for it on the basis that it would be likelier to have greater democratic participation than a standalone election in April and because it was the only option that allowed us to offer five days of in-person “early voting” alongside the statewide election. The other hot-button item last night was a relatively routine measure (already in place for several other commercial restaurant/retail complexes in Newton) to streamline the process for parking minimum relief in one of the commercial complexes in Newton Centre, essentially so that new tenants or expanding tenants do not need 4-18 months to get relief each time they try to move in or add table capacity. Parking minimum reform, which could help many of our restaurants, is something we need to address comprehensively citywide as part of zoning reform but in the meantime, the Council is allowing individual landlords to petition for this streamlined process on a case by case basis. Councilor Wright of Ward 3 argued that this was unfair and risked opening the door to the elimination of parking minimums completely and put the item on “second call” which means it gets a full debate and a full vote, as opposed to an automatic procedural vote by the Council. After an extremely long debate on this item, which is supported by all the councilors for Ward 6 and by the whole Land Use Committee, a single member (Councilor Gentile of Ward 4) exercised a “Charter Objection” to unilaterally delay the item without further discussion. This is the 2nd time that the procedure has been used this month alone, whereas previously I think it was relatively rarely deployed. I might be new to the City Council but I worry that I’ve seen this kind of show before in the US Senate...

Newsletter, Vol 1 Issue 2: First Office Hours Jan 18, Northland Referendum, Wellesley development

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Coming Up (Jan 13-20) - Not a comprehensive list:

• Monday (tonight): Union Twist Four Corners Retail Marijuana Proposal Community Meeting at the Waban Library Center at 7:30 PM, sponsored by two of the Area Councils, with a presentation by the petitioners and background information on the public process by former City Councilor Greg Schwartz.

• Wednesday: 

  • Programs & Services Special Committee Meeting at the Ed Center Room 304 at 6:30 PM to allow the Clerk of the City of Newton to provide voters with a state-authorize guide containing (1) the full text of the Northland referendum ballot question; (2) a fair and concise summary of each question, including a 1 sentence statement describing the effect of a yes or no vote, which shall be prepared by the city solicitor; and (3) arguments for and against the question. 

    • By the way, the referendum text will be as follows, according to Clerk David Olson: Shall the following measure which was passed by the City Council be approved? A measure which changes the zoning of parcels of land located at 156 Oak Street, 275-281 Needham Street and 55 Tower Road (commonly known as the Northland Project) from Mixed Use 1 District (MU1) to Business 4 District (BU4). The zoning change would allow for the construction of the Northland Project as described in a special permit and site plan approval granted by the City Council. [Yes/No]

  • Joint School Committee & City Council Meeting at the Ed Center Room 111 at 7 PM (to go over the new enrollment report and projections as well as school building projects)

• UPDATE: POSTPONED TO JAN 23 — Thursday: Upper Falls Area Council Meeting at 7 PM at the Emerson Community Center including appointment to vacant seats and election of officers; NewCAL (Senior Center) Community Meeting at the Ed Center Room 111 at 7 PM “reviewing the Newton Centre triangle parking lot and a number of other potential sites” now that Albemarle and other parks are off the list of site ideas. I will try to get to the second one after the first is done.

• Saturday: Councilor Humphrey Upper Falls Office Hours - I will be holding my first Office Hours from 3 to 5 PM on Saturday Jan 18 in Upper Falls (or technically across the street) at the Needham St Starbucks. (I had to move it last-minute before this newsletter, but I hope next time to be back in Upper Falls itself, at one of our fine establishments.) This is a good opportunity to drop by and talk to me in person about what’s on your mind. Next month, I will be in one of the other villages of Ward 5 and rotating accordingly each month.

• MLK Day (Jan 20): MLK Community Celebration at First Baptist Church in Newton at 9:30 AM

Note: In the future, if you have a Ward 5 or Newton event coming up that you would like me to mention in the newsletter, please let me know. So far I’m generally just listing some of the events I plan to or am scheduled to attend. There are other important community events at the same time as some of these meetings, and I left them off because I can’t personally be there, but in future I’m happy to include them in the newsletter to inform people.

Week-in-Review, Key Items:

It was a busy week with a lot of one on one or group meetings, as well as several political events outside of my Council work, but the three key items from the past week I wanted to highlight were about Northland, the Wellesley Office Park redevelopment, and the N-Squared Innovation District.

• Jan 8: City Council & Committee of the Whole Meeting on Northland:

On Wednesday at City Council, I gave my “maiden” (first) speech to the full Council, which everyone has to stand for and applaud, but which usually occurs much later in a Councilor’s first term, except in unusual circumstances such as this past week. We took a vote on whether to uphold or repeal the previous Council’s re-zoning in Ward 5 for the Northland Needham St project (it was not repealed) and another vote on what date to hold the citywide referendum on the Northland re-zoning. (It was decided in committee of the whole, but not yet the full council, to hold it on March 3, 2020, which has the advantage of being concurrent with a presidential primary that is expected to generate very high turnout so that everyone knows this referendum is happening and which unusually for a city election will allow 5 days of in-person early voting, instead of just absentee voting. I believe I only received emails in favor of that date.) I wanted to explain my thoughts on all of this to my constituents, so I did give a speech. There were some other things I could not discuss in detail on the floor due to time limits, but I have included them in the text below, most of which was in my speech. I posted it on my website for greater access (and included it in the weekly newsletter email), for people who could not be at the speech in person.

• Jan 9: Waban Area Council Meeting (Councilor Crossley also in attendance): 

  • The focus of the Waban Area Council meeting this month (apart from the election of new officers, including Chris Pitts as president, and appointments of new members) was an informational presentation by the developers of the Wellesley Office Park Re-Development project as part of Wellesley’s 40R affordable housing and “smart growth” zoning overlay for the park. 

  • This is not something that requires approval from Newton (so it was not an opportunity for public input from Newton residents) but is obviously proximate to Waban and Upper Falls and will have some traffic effects on Ward 5. The reason they were presenting on this to the WAC (after several prior discussions without presenters) is that this site is only accessible from Williams St which is itself only accessible in one direction from the Rte 9 frontage road/on-ramp that comes across from Newton at Quinobequin Rd. 

  • The housing development component in Phase 1 of the project will satisfy Wellesley's affordable housing requirements under state law. The rest of the office park site is also part of the 40R "smart growth" overlay. 

  • As discussed in prior meetings, traffic impact should be re-aligned, because it will shift out-flow to the morning instead of the evening (alleviating the Rte 9/128 interchange rush hour problems) & reducing traffic by shifting office use to residential. However, the existing traffic pattern where people coming to the site have to cross into Newton, under Rte 9, and back out to Wellesley will continue since there's no other way to configure it. There is also a pre-existing office park shuttle connecting the site to the Riverside T station. But in order to make the housing redevelopment qualify as transit-oriented, the development will become integrated into the 128 Business Council shuttle network already in that area. The shuttles should also become more efficient because residential reverse-peak trips will reduce the number of shuttles that are returning empty after delivering office workers to this and other various nearby office park sites. 

  • Also of course in theory, this site is actually fairly close to the Eliot Green Line station on foot, so they're hoping to work with Newton and the state to improve pedestrian connectivity either directly up the hill or to our soon to be opened aqueduct access. (I'm a bit skeptical of that element since it's about a mile away from the center of the office park. Google says it’s about a 20 minute walk. Not terrible, but not great, especially with the hill.) 

  • Part of the negotiation with Wellesley to establish the 40R overlay was that all the design for phase 1 had to include preserving the space necessary to make further changes to the exit/entrance/highway configuration in future phases. Future phases can't happen without more fixes.) In phase 1, one office building will be demolished and replaced with housing but the other office buildings remain. (Overall office space vacancies in the park are now ~50% if I recall correctly from a previous meeting.) Future phases would change that, according to the overlay district allowances, which authorize various other redevelopment including building a hotel. But the owners said that they have no specific plans right now. (Remember that traffic patterns and exit configurations are such a huge limiter on a project like this that it’s not something they can automatically build up in one fell swoop.)

  • One interesting thing is that they're not including natural gas hookups to the new buildings. The Town of Wellesley apparently pushed hard on some of the environmental points when designing the overlay district. (The fact that the Town of Wellesley owns their own municipal power & light dramatically cuts the cost of electrification to substitute for natural gas, which is a key distinction compared to similar projects in Newton.)

  • There was some discussion of a suggested pedestrian bridge to better connect the project to Waban over the river, but this is not part of the plan.

• Jan 10: N-Squared Innovation District Meeting: I have been asked to serve as the City Council’s representative to the N-Squared Innovation District’s steering group, succeeding Ward 8 Councilor-at-Large Rick Lipof, who is now the Council Vice President and Land Use Committee Chair. This was my first meeting and by coincidence the topic focused on pedestrian connections across the river to improve linkages between the Newton and Needham sides of the N-Squared district, including the issue of the abandoned rail bridge at Christina Street, which has come up as a topic at several recent Highlands Area Council meetings. The City of Newton will be working with DCR to try to establish permanent access.

Also on Jan 11, I stopped by the annual Newton South tournament for the Massachusetts Speech & Debate League this afternoon to show my support for the old home team! I also plan to return to assistant coaching with the team some time very soon, and I’m looking forward to that.

A reminder from DPW despite our recent unseasonably warm weather:

The City Council recently supported an Ordinance to require property owners to clear their sidewalks of snow and ice. If you own a property or business please clear all concrete and asphalt sidewalks that abut your property of ice and snow within 24 hours of a winter weather event. There are fines associated with non-compliance. Click here for the winter weather information brochure.

The City's winter parking ban was amended in September to shorten the duration of the winter parking ban. The ban is now in effect from December 1 through March 31st.  Vehicles cannot park on any street, way, highway, road, parkway, or private way dedicated or open to the use of the public for a period of time longer than one hour between the hours of 2:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m.

Moving forward on Northland: A message for Ward 5 constituents

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Introductory note: Today at City Council, we took a vote on whether to uphold or repeal the previous Council’s re-zoning of the Northland project (it was not repealed) and another vote on what date to hold the citywide referendum on the Northland re-zoning. (It was decided in committee of the whole, but not yet the full council, to hold it on March 3, 2020, which has the advantage of being concurrent with a presidential primary that is expected to generate very high turnout so that everyone knows this referendum is happening and which unusually for a city election will allow 5 days of in-person early voting, instead of just absentee voting. I only received emails in favor of that date, I think.) I wanted to explain my thoughts on all of this to my constituents, so I did give a speech. There were some other things I could not discuss in detail on the floor due to time limits, but I have included them in the text below, most of which was in my speech. I am posting it on my website for greater access, if people could not be at the speech in person.

I was a bit reluctant to get up and make a maiden speech this early and on this topic, but I felt that I owed it to my constituents, as the new ward councilor for this project’s area, to offer a few comments about my thought process here.

Upper Falls is an integral part of my community; it’s a place where I spent a lot of my time growing up and where I still often go out to eat, shop, or to meet up with my friends who live there.

In last year’s ward election campaign, where I advocated for affordable housing across the entire ward, I believe I spoke personally, door to door, with more nearby residents than anyone else on this council, and I won Upper Falls. I know not all of the people there who voted for me agree with me on this matter, but I promised I would listen to them, advocate for them, and support a negotiated solution that avoided the very real possibilities of an all-commercial development or a 40B process that’s out of our hands.

A lot of folks told me even if they weren’t happy with the project – although many were happy with it – they saw a negotiated solution as a better outcome than a 40B or a by-right development. Many people didn’t have time to attend the numerous Land Use hearings over the course of the past two calendar years, and they elected me to do this work on their behalf, or follow through on work done before I arrived.

First, while I was not part of the negotiation process, I have a great deal of respect for the process that the previous council went through on this, especially for my predecessor Councilor John Rice, who spent years working to find a proposal that could actually work for this site and be a net positive for the neighborhood compared to a previous all-commercial and traffic nightmare proposal. He then spent years working to get people on board with this idea and getting their input on refinements and changes. He suggested significant changes throughout the process, which I followed closely before joining the council, and many of his suggestions got adopted.

Second, while I was not part of the negotiations and didn’t get 100% of what I would have wanted – like the Oak Street configuration – nevertheless, I respect the fact that there have been many improvements made in response to public input, over more than a year of hearings and many community meetings long before that. This project is substantially different from –and better than– what was originally proposed. Even if not every concern was addressed exactly how everyone wanted, the developers and City Council did listen.

One of the best changes was to the proposed shuttle system. The original concept I said publicly was unworkable and non-credible. Fortunately, we now have a much more straightforward, feasible, and useful proposal to provide free service to everyone, leaving every 10 minutes, to get to the Green Line. This is the kind of thing I have wanted to have here my entire life, so that I don’t have to walk along the whole length of Needham Street.

Toward the end of the process, I heard from numerous residents who were not impressed with the initial shuttle plan that was expensive, infrequent, and overly ambitious – but when I told them about the final version of the shuttle plan they said “Ok, that’s something I would use.” However, we wouldn’t get that with a smaller project, and the city’s peer reviewers say we would actually get worse traffic from a smaller project due to lack of mitigation.

Third, this is a complicated negotiation, not a unilateral dictation. This is private property, owned by a company that is based in Newton and is already part of our community, and it’s property that they have held for many years at this point. Some residents I spoke to while knocking doors were not aware of that; they had heard that the city had all the leverage and bargaining power on this project, or that this was city property where someone outside was offering to develop semi-public housing for us. This is not the case, and once residents realized that, I usually found they were more amenable to the proposal – which is that a private company is offering to work with us to develop their own property in a productive and positive way for our community especially compared to they could otherwise legally do.

I’m here as the ward councilor for Ward 5 and for this neighborhood, trying to represent this area and find the best negotiated solution for us. I have to conclude that of the various potential outcomes that are actually on the table, the best one for our community is the plan approved last year, even if we don’t get everything we want. We’ve had an exhaustive negotiation process and made many changes, based on public feedback.

I know not everyone in my ward will agree with my view that this proposal was finalized last term, but everyone will get a say on the upcoming referendum.

I’m here to fight for my constituents on a wide range of issues, and when this project is resolved, we’ll have a lot more unrelated issues left to tackle together. And I hope we will all be welcoming new neighbors to our Ward 5 community in a few years.

Councilor Humphrey’s Newsletter, Vol 1 Issue 1: Inauguration Edition

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Hello again and happy new year to my supporters and to the residents of Newton. I took a break from my regular newsletter between the November election and the inauguration while I started to get a handle on the new job and my new role as an elected representative. But, as promised during the campaign, the newsletter is back! This newsletter will primarily cover city and neighborhood matters that come up over the course of my work, but to avoid any confusion let me clarify that it remains part of my campaign committee operations and will continue to be political in nature and expressing my views and thought process on things that come up as we go along, in addition to being informational about what is going on in the ward and city. It is not a governmental newsletter.

It has been a whirlwind transition period since the election, particularly as the citywide election recount pushed many of our training sessions into the holiday season on a compressed timeframe, but I am extremely excited to get to work for all of you, now that we are in 2020. I have been working closely with newly retired Ward 5 Councilor John Rice to ensure things switch over as smoothly as possible, and I have also been working closely with our new Council President Susan Albright (Ward 2-at-Large) to figure out what items from my wide-ranging campaign platform are good things to get to work on first. Of course, I’m also coordinating with the two at-large councilors for Ward 5, Deb Crossley and Andreae Downs.

It’s an exciting time to be on the Newton City Council because there are five new councilors (we all carpooled together to a statewide training in Worcester recently) and seven second-term councilors, as well as a new Council President and Vice President and a first-term mayor – which means a lot of energy and enthusiasm for moving forward on many policy arenas.

A few very important notes I want to highlight before anything else

• My city email address is now set up (please use it often!):bhumphrey@newtonma.gov - It is generally preferred that people contact me about city business through my city email, rather than my personal or campaign email addresses, even if that was normally how you would reach me previously. Please don’t hesitate to email me about any city business or neighborhood concerns (although it is now advised that everyone first use the 311 reporting system whenever applicable). I will try to answer it as promptly as I can. There are tons of city issues flying to and fro past your councilors and not all of us are aware of things that might be very important to you; so, you should email me if you want to make sure something gets on my radar. Even if you believe you can guess where I will come down on a specific issue or proposal and believe we are in 100% agreement, you should still send me an email to let me know where you stand! Often in government, constituents are less likely to write to their representatives when they believe they are already on the same page, but the constituents who disagree will surely write in, and this can lead to the elected official being misled about the prevailing views of their district.

• New Social Media Accounts: My new Facebook and Twitter accounts for city business (not political campaign or personal matters) are both @HumphreyWard5. You can certainly contact me there as well, although email is preferred for ease of public record-keeping. These are brand-new accounts, not the same as previous social media pages you might be following from my campaign. The Twitter account tends to be where I post live notes of certain types of public events. The Facebook page is usually for more general summaries afterward.

• Office Hours: I will be holding regular office hours on a rotating basis through Upper Falls, Waban, and Newton Highlands, so that you can talk to me individually – or in some cases with another City Councilor if they are covering the same area at that time. If you absolutely cannot attend one of those office hours due to your schedule or mobility or other circumstance, please email me and we can set up a time for either a meeting or a phone call. I am still in the process of setting the schedule for the office hours, but I will probably be switching between Sundays and Saturdays to give people more of a chance of being able to meet with me. (I will also still be at the three neighborhood Area Councils of Ward 5 as an ex officio member. Also you should all feel free to email me to invite me to your community meetings, if you would like me to be involved on your top issues. I will do my best to attend as many as I can.)

• My committee assignments: I have been assigned to the Programs & Services Committee (chaired by Councilor Krintzman) and the Finance Committee (Chaired by Councilor Grossman), the same committees that my predecessor Councilor John Rice served on. These assignments are, among many good things, key to working on many of my campaign platform goals like public ownership of public services, resisting fiscal austerity, and working to make sure that those in our city with more are contributing a greater share of our revenues than those with less. These two committees are where I will be doing the bulk of my work on the Council, and so if you have a question or comment about something closely related to those committees, then you should definitely let me know – but all councilors ultimately work on all issue areas and work with our colleagues on the other committees, and I am sure I will co-docketing great proposals in those other committees to support the work of my fellow City Councilors.

A few events since November

There are dozens of meetings and events I could recap since the election, but that would take up too much of your time and some of it would be out of date at this point. So, I will just briefly note a few pertinent things here (and you can email me back if you need more info on any of the specifics):

• Area council meetings - I have been to three Newton Highlands Area Council meetings, one Waban Area Council meeting, and two Upper Falls Area Council meetings since the election. In upcoming newsletters, I will try to recap salient points in some elaboration as I did during the campaign, but this is just a summary roundup to get us caught up to present. Some of the hot button items at those meetings included discussion of the proposed mixed-use development across from the Newton Highlands T station, pedestrian access to the bridge over the Charles River at Christina Street, Newton Wellesley Hospital’s boiler upgrades, the Wellesley Office Park redevelopment for housing, traffic light patterns at Needham/Oak/Christina, and more. There are also upcoming Soup Socials in February and March for Newton Highlands and Upper Falls, respectively.

• Observing office hours - I joined two of my colleagues (Councilor Noel and Councilor Grossman) at their office hours in December to get a better sense of how I can be helpful to my constituents in those sessions. I appreciate their willingness to show me the ropes! As noted above, I will release my own office hours schedule as soon as possible.

• Leadership Caucus - In December, the Councilors-elect met in caucus, and by two votes of 14-10 we selected Councilors Albright and Lipof as our new Council President and Vice President, who ran essentially as a joint ticket. This was as I understand it an unusually contentious internal election, following on the heels of a city council election season that saw dueling slate campaigns. For that reason I have tried to be clear and transparent about my choice: I voted with the majority in both cases because Councilor Albright has championed municipal progressive legislation and is making it a priority to let rank & file members like me push bold legislation. Albright has also served as a mentor to me the past few years on matters of city government, and I felt that I could trust her to help me serve my constituents most effectively and to listen to me when I had concerns. That being said, as you will see below on some docket items, there are still many opportunities for all of us on the City Council to work on numerous issues across the aisle with colleagues who did not vote the same way on leadership election.

• Newton Highlands Business Parking District - Last year, the city initiated a program to help free up parking spots for customers in front of Newton Highlands businesses by shifting employee parking down the block with an annual parking pass system. There is a proposal on the table now to make a slight expansion of this area further down Lincoln Street. On January 5, I joined my Ward 6 colleague, Councilor Brenda Noel, to go door to door to talk to residents about this proposal and give them written information about the plan and a way to contact us with further questions. The parking district crosses back and forth in both of our wards.

• Scouts events - Some of you might know that I’m an Eagle Scout. Whenever someone in Newton attains the rank of Eagle Scout, the City Council gives them a commendation. As an Eagle on the Council and a former member of both Troop 182 and Troop 9, it’s now one of my jobs to represent the City Council to these two troops (and others) and deliver commendations. In late 2019, I attended Troop 9’s annual fundraiser dinner in Waban, and on January 5, I attended Troop 182’s Eagle Court of Honor (along with State Rep. Kay Khan) in Wellesley to present a commendation. If you or someone you know needs a commendation from City Council, please send me an email, and I will handle it with the Clerk!

Co-docketed items

I will be docketing or co-docketing various items at City Council over the next few months (and I will save those for future newsletters), but I have already signed on this week to three items that Councilors had previously introduced in the last term and reintroduced in this one. They are all early-stage inquiries (not specific policy proposals yet), covering the issues of housing, services, and the environment. Here are the summaries and list of other councilors co-docketing:

#29‐20 Review and possible amendment of Demolition Delay and Landmark Ordinances COUNCILORS KELLEY, ALBRIGHT, AUCHINCLOSS, CROSSLEY, GREENBERG, KALIS, KRINTZMAN, LEARY, LIPOF, MARKIEWICZ, BOWMAN, HUMPHREY, RYAN AND NORTON requesting a review and, if appropriate, an update of Chapter 22, Sections 22‐50 to 22‐76 that relate to demolition delays, historic designation, and landmarking.

#40‐20   Discussion with Department Heads regarding supportive services COUNCILORS ALBRIGHT, CROSSLEY, DOWNS, KELLEY, LEARY, GREENBERG AND HUMPHREY requesting a discussion with the Director of Health and Human Services, Director of Senior Services, Commissioner of Parks & Recreation and the Director of Planning and Development regarding what Newton is doing to support economically disadvantaged persons in Newton, including; immigrants, seniors, disabled individuals and families with adult disabled children.  

#61‐20   Discussion to limit or prohibit the installation of fossil fuel infrastructure   COUNCILORS CROSSLEY, KELLEY, LEARY, NORTON, ALBRIGHT, GREENBERG, AUCHINCLOSS, MARKIEWICZ, NOEL, DANBERG, KALIS, DOWNS & HUMPHREY requesting a discussion with the Sustainability Team to create an ordinance to limit or prohibit the installation of fossil fuel infrastructure in new construction and substantially renovated buildings, as well as to clarify the Council’s authority to prohibit the extension of gas mains subject to the condition of the existing infrastructure.

Thank you for bearing with me on a lengthy catch-up email newsletter. I hope the next few will be briefer.

Why I'm running for the Democratic State Committee

Friends – It has been a busy two weeks since I was elected to Newton City Council: I've been at an Engine 6 meeting, a Newton Democratic Executive Committee meeting, a Newton Highlands Area Council meeting, the Waban Area Council meeting, a community event in Waban on Climate Change policy, a Ward 5 Democrats meeting, an Ed Markey campaign event (read my endorsement here), the Troop 9 Scouts' annual spaghetti dinner in Waban, and various other City Council hearings and Transition meetings.

As is evident from the above items, the calendar doesn't stop just for us to catch our breaths from an election – and the only way we make change happen is by pressing forward constantly.

While I'm looking forward to taking office on City Council on January 1 and getting down to work here in Ward 5, there's also a once-in-four-years opportunity coming up for me to make a difference on another, parallel avenue in Democratic Party politics, which most of you know I've been active in for a long time.

Since before I was old enough to vote, I've been part of the national project to re-align the Democratic Party. Our party has only one path forward to victory & to meaningful change for our country: to become a mass-member, multi-racial, environmental party of the US working class.

We cannot continue to be a party that repeatedly loses the presidency and our governorship to people who destroy our air & water, bust our labor unions, and implement racist policies. We can't tinker at the edges and leave problems to be solved by markets with no reason to do so.

For these reasons, this week I put my name on the March 2020 Massachusetts Democratic Primary ballot for elected male representative on the Democratic State Committee for our state senate district (Newton, Brookline, and Wellesley). I have to stand with my peers from the party’s left flank in reconstructing the party for all of us.

People who have known me for a long time know that I am particularly fascinated with the mechanics of institutional and party machinery, which makes this small role in the current struggle a good fit for me. I hope you’ll support my DSC candidacy to add my voice to our efforts.

Other elected officials in our district have held seats on the Democratic State Committee while serving in office, and I view both of these positions as complementing each other in advancing my agenda to move us in a new direction, given how important the Party is in Massachusetts.

I'm endorsing Ed Markey for re-election

As a Newton City Councilor-elect and a Millennial environmentalist, I'm proud to join my friends in the Sunrise Movement in endorsing Senator Ed Markey for re-election. When other elected officials refused to act on climate change, Ed Markey was front and center fighting for us. He has been right on all the issues, and I have been proud to call him my United States Senator.

When I moved back home after college, Markey was the first person I knocked doors for, during the 2013 summer special election, and I'm ready to knock doors for him again next year.

Thank you for electing me to be your next Ward 5 Councilor!

Friends – It is my honor and privilege to serve in the 2020-2021 term on the Newton City Council as your next Ward 5 Councilor.

Thanks to all my supporters who got me elected as our next Newton Ward 5 Councilor. Voters agree we need to make Newton a community for everyone. I couldn't have done it without you. (Especially my wonderful parents.)

I’m still fundraising for my committee so I can keep communicating with my new constituents.

10 years ago our Council gave me a scholarship to study government. Tonight's a triumph for a shared, ambitious vision for Ward 5 & our city. It's a victory for local democracy, after I spent a year to knock 8,000 doors & talk to as many voters as possible. It's also a victory for our policy agenda of urgent environmental action and the promotion of affordable housing.

Now I need to take a tiny break to celebrate this win, rest up from 9 months of knocking doors plus a year and a half long campaign, and then get down to work during the transition so I can serve my constituents on day 1.

Oh and two other big thank-yous:
First -- to retiring Councilor John Rice for his tremendous years of services. Here's to many more years of his work at the Hyde Center.

And second -- to my opponent Kathy Winters for a great, very civil campaign, focused on the issues. I spoke to her by phone half an hour ago about making sure we keep all our Ward 5 neighbors in the loop about what's going on, regardless of whom they might have voted for this year.

Sincerely,
Bill Humphrey
Ward 5 Councilor-elect

Can I count on your vote today?

The polls in Newton open today at 7 AM. Here in Ward 5, we’ll be deciding who will be our next Ward Councilor. I hope you will cast your vote for me before 8 PM.

- Precinct 1 votes at the Emerson Community Center in Upper Falls.
- Precinct 2 votes at the Hyde Community Center in Newton Highlands.
- Precincts 3 and 4 vote at the Waban Library Center.

I’ve knocked on more than 8,000 doors this year, wrapping up in Upper Falls this past Saturday, and managed to meet nearly 2,000 people by doing that.

I got in this race back in June 2018 because my supporters and I believed that we needed a real choice in this election and a voice for making Newton a community for everyone. From the start, I said that I would run on a clear, outspoken platform articulating my values and vision for Newton and Ward 5 – particularly on environmental action and affordable housing issues. I hope you think I have done so. That clarity of purpose is why I believe we will win today.

The past year and a half has brought me even closer to the community I grew up in, and I have been heartened to hear from so many voters who share my vision – or from voters who don’t share my positions but respect my honesty and clarity and believe that I will be responsive to their constituent service questions.

I have learned a lot during this experience, and I loved having the opportunity to bring information on pending neighborhood issues and problems to residents who have questions and concerns but have not had the time to be present at all the many public and community meetings. I hope to continue doing that in the next two years!

The Ward 5 Councilor election is likely to be fairly close. I won the preliminary election in September by fewer than 10 votes.

Your vote today could decide the election.

Thank you for your support and interest in my candidacy. Together, we can win this seat. I could not do any of this without you.

Sincerely,
Bill Humphrey
Ward 5 Councilor Candidate
712 Chestnut St
Newton MA 02468
617-862-2045
bill@billhumphrey.org

PS: If you want to make reminder phone calls to supporters, please join our campaign supporters at noon for a phone bank at 128 Dorset Rd in Waban!

Donations to cover final expenses can be made here.

Campaign Week-in-Review - 11/1/19: I’m asking for your vote (and your help) this Tuesday | Final debate video

This coming Tuesday, November 5th, I am asking for your vote again in our general election for the open Ward 5 councilor seat, so we can work toward becoming a community for everyone.

I announced my candidacy for Ward 5 councilor in June 2018 and released my platform immediately, so that people would know where I stood and why I was in this fight. In February of this year, when there was still snow on the ground, I started knocking on doors to make sure as many people as possible had a chance to meet me, to let me know their biggest issues or concerns in the city or their neighborhood, and to hear directly from me where I stood on the issues, whether we agreed or not. (Fortunately, it seems like most of the people I spoke to agreed!)

This week, I reached my 8,000th door knocked in Ward 5. Including my volunteers, my team has knocked over 9,100 doors around 4 full passes (and a bit more) across the Ward! 

Irina, my campaign organizer, categorized every issue brought up to me in a conversation with voters since kicking off my door knocking in February. Topping the list:

1. Road/Sidewalk Repair, Road Safety, & Bike Lanes

2. Development, Zoning, & Teardowns

3. Environment/Climate, Transportation, & Clean Energy

4. Housing

5. Traffic

Our team has also been on the phones all week talking to supporters, undecided voters, and people we haven't reached in the four passes to remind them of Tuesday’s election!

Together, we can win this seat on Tuesday – but I’m going to need your help to do it. No matter how many supporters we identify all year long, in the end it only matters if they show up on Election Day and cast their vote for me. That’s where your help is essential.

How You Can Help in the Final Four Days

1. Please email everyone you know in Ward 5 and let them know why you’re supporting me and why they should choose me on Tuesday.

2. On Saturday, Sunday, and Monday our team will be joining me to distribute door-hanger reminders to voters in Ward 5! If you are interested in helping out, please fill out this form.

3. We are also looking for volunteers to help hold signs near polling locations on Tuesday! Please fill out this form if you are interested in showing your support!

4. If you are unable to commit to either of these opportunities, but would still like to get involved, we are also still looking for volunteers on voting day (Tuesday) to make phone calls to supporters starting at noon! The phonebank will be held at 128 Dorset Rd in Waban or, alternatively, email me to get a remote list to work on from home!

Final Endorsements

This week, I am proud to announce some more endorsements of my campaign from Quentin Palfrey, the 2018 Democratic Lieutenant Governor nominee, and the Newton North Climate Advocacy Club! (Newton North’s school district includes about four streets at the edge of Ward 5 in West Newton, and I’m delighted to have the support of any of our city’s climate activists.)

Palfrey said, “Bill Humphrey will be a powerful voice for environmental protection, affordable housing, and convenient transportation in the Newton City Council, representing Ward 5.”

The Massachusetts Nurses Association, though already having endorsed my campaign earlier in this election season, also sent a new mail piece to their members talking about my candidacy:

"Bill's mother has spent her career at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Bill has stood with her and fellow MNA members during difficult contract fights. He has walked on many picket lines to demand better patient care alongside MNA nurses."

You can still add your name too in support here and if you want to send me a quote to put out on social media before Tuesday, please do so.
 

Now here is a quick recap of just a couple of the things I did during the past week...

Hemlock Gorge Fall Cleanup

Last Saturday, I participated in this year’s second Friends of Hemlock Gorge Cleanup Day in the morning (before I went out to knock 120 doors in Newton Highlands!) and my dad and I were part of the team that picked up litter around the Gorge to keep it beautiful for all to visit.

Area Council Candidates Debate

This past Sunday, I participated in the joint Area Councils sponsored candidates debate! This was the final candidate debate of the year and is available online here.

As I said during the debate, I’m already starting to get more and more constituent questions and requests for help just by doing the door-knocking and making myself available across all platforms, and I’m looking forward to continuing that service on the City Council in January. 

My accessibility will be a key advance since the last time the seat turned over, back when social media was new: I don’t just get phone calls or emails from constituents, but also messages on Facebook from our seniors and messages on Twitter from our younger residents. Any method where I can help, I’ll be there!

Candidates Night Nomad Story Slam

On Wednesday, I participated in the Politics-Free Candidates Night Nomad Story Slam at Gregorian Rugs organized by Jerry Reilly of Upper Falls. The night featured 16 of the 25 candidates running for contested City Council seats citywide (selected on a first come-first serve basis). I got to use some of my theatre kid and speech team background to talk about a trip I took to South Dakota with my dad, and it was a lot of fun!

Coming Up: Saturday Night at the Races

This coming Saturday (tomorrow night) is the collaborative candidates event put on by the League of Women Voters, Green Newton, and Mothers Out Front for City Council candidates in all of the Ward races to interact with and answer questions from voters. It will be held from 5 to 7 pm at the War Memorial at City Hall! Please come ask me any questions you want!

Ballot Reminder

On this year’s ballot, the Ward 5 Councilor race will be listed absolute last on the back side of the Ward 5 ballow, next to the three contested School Committee races. A preview of the ballot can be found here.

Absentee Voting Reminder

In-person absentee voting at City Hall ends at noon on Monday November 4. The City Clerk office is open today until 5 PM and on Monday opens at 8:30 AM (but you need to vote before noon).