Why I’m running

We need systemic change to bring down the cost of housing for Somerville residents. I’ve been a member of statewide coalitions advocating for housing affordability. I’ve testified on Beacon Hill and lobbied state legislators to get the Affordable Homes Act passed and make it easier to build more homes at lower cost in Massachusetts. Our Council has enormous power to affect housing prices through its land use and zoning controls and I want to use it to:

● Upzone to create 6 story mid-rise districts around transit to create hundreds of homes and push down rents and provide valuable entry ownership opportunities. 

● Zone for new tech and innovation districts in underdeveloped areas near Boynton Yards and Inner Belt and use the new commercial revenue to increase the residential tax deduction for owner-occupiers making staying in Somerville more affordable, and making it easier for people trying to buy a home to outbid investors. 

● Support efforts that enable projects to include more than 20% deeply affordable units for low-income residents, with subsidies like the Star Market project and through public-private partnerships like the new Clarendon Hill Apartments—and strong tenant protections and common-sense rent stabilization legislation to shield tenants from huge year-to-year increases.

● Reform Somerville’s permitting system to combine permit types, simplify building requirements, and make mixed use allowable by-right in mid-rise districts, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs for new mixed-use buildings. 

I want to use our Council’s land use powers to reduce what you have to pay to continue to live here, and improve our ability to fund city services with added commercial revenue.

Every resident should have the right to get around the city safely. I’m a strong supporter of ensuring our streets are well maintained and designed for local residents to get around safely and easily by foot, transit, bike, or vehicle. I’ve seen how people like my grandmother with reduced mobility need safe streets to walk and wheel around the city. Better street design can also make bus stops and T stations more inviting to use. To make our streets safer we need to:

● Commit to a dependable repaving plan that consolidates maintenance, road improvement, and utility work together to shorten construction times and includes bringing sidewalks up to ADA standards. 

● Complete and improve the Bicycle Network Plan by upgrading intersection safety to ensure bike transportation is safe, comfortable, and efficient with additional bike parking at destinations. 

● Ensure curb space in commercial areas facilitates short term parking like loading zones, pick-up/drop off, and 30 minute spaces and meets ADA requirements for seniors and people with disabilities. 

● Invest in smart traffic signals that prevent grid lock by adjusting to traffic patterns, reactivate walk buttons at intersections, and continue to deploy accessible walk buttons. 

Our streets should be designed for our residents and discourage cut-through traffic and reckless operation. Everyone in Somerville deserves to be able to get around safely regardless of what mode of travel they choose, I’m committed to making that happen.

Supporting artists and art in Somerville is critical to maintaining our city’s cultural vibrancy. I’ll work to ensure artists and their spaces are not consumed by market pressures and continue to expand opportunities for artists and those who love art by:

● Committing to approve new large developments only when paired with a strong Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) that protects and expands performance, practice, and commercial spaces.

● Reforming our zoning rules to allow studios in neighborhoods that otherwise would not allow commercial uses by creating a new classification for artist space. 

● Working to create a new Mass Cultural Council District in Somerville and find other ways to unlock new larger scale funding for art and performance spaces and events like ArtBeat and Porchfest. 

● Funding new public arts projects, especially those which help with placemaking and wayfinding in public spaces 

Artists have helped make Somerville the beautiful and interesting city it is today. I’m committed to ensuring that our city protects artists from increasing costs and displacement, and finds innovative ways during economically difficult times to support the arts at historic levels.

We’re the densest city in New England, with over 80,000 people living in just 4 square miles. We need free, accessible, and sustainable spaces for people to gather and to ensure our urban trees and biodiversity remain healthy. I’ve loved being a part of our city’s green space efforts and I want to further improve our sustainability by:

Ensuring our public parks are clean and accessible, including more projects built with universal design, and more dog parks to help keep other playing fields clean.

Seeking unique opportunities to expand green space where possible with new pocket parks and outdoor green spaces and public private space build through Community Benefit Agreements (CBAs.)

Meeting our sustainability goals by planting more pollinator gardens and native plants, improve our biodiversity through proper stewardship of public spaces, and continue to roll out anti-flooding infrastructure across the city.

Improve our urban tree coverage across the city by fulfilling more resident requests to plant trees, including expanding to back of sidewalk plantings, and planting bushes and shrubs where curb space cannot accommodate full size trees.

Our community benefits from sustainable, green, and beautiful public spaces. I’ll work to expand access to areas of the city deprived of park space and to make the maximum possible use of the spaces we have.

I want to ensure people of all ages have access to a variety of quality recreational and social events throughout the city. Particularly for parents of young children, I want to expand afterschool programming and add new recreation programs that will help to alleviate childcare costs. I’ll work to maximizing the investments the city has already made and expand new opportunities by:

● Expanding the hours and ways we use city-owned buildings like schools and libraries to offer recreation and indoor spaces for families with young children.

● Moving afterschool programming into its own department and fully fund enough spaces for more children to enroll, with a particular emphasis on improving programming for students with disabilities.

● Adding new variety to city-supported recreation events including festivals, block parties, and Council on Aging events. 

● Pushing for new commercial and residential buildings to include strong Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs) that include community spaces available to the public. 

Our city government has an important structural role in enabling a strong community. I’ll work to make sure we help parents by providing more out-of-school time care year round, sponsor and support residents in holding community events, and ensure seniors have access to quality programming they want. 

Our city must continue to improve its response to the uptick in homelessness we've seen in recent years. We need to provide both immediate shelter options, connect residents to state funded resources for long-term stability, and work to reform our intervention process to focus public health and safety efforts on connecting people to recovery services.

I’ll work to facilitate transportation to connect residents in need with our local Community Behavioral Health Center (CBHC) in Cambridge—which offers wrap-around services including Mass Health enrollment, substance use programs, employment, and housing assistance—tapping into a large source of state funding. 

Make emergency services encounters with homeless residents publicly using narcotics more productive by adopting an Recovery/Drug Court diversion program like Suffolk County uses to allow officers to direct those using narcotics to treatment programs in lieu of arrest.  

Ensure that our public spaces are kept safe for all residents and that the city actively works to collect needles and ensure public restrooms are kept clean. 

I’ll help ensure the city can continue to improve our accessible emergency warming and cooling centers for unhoused residents and expand the use of these venues to offer wraparound services geared towards long-term stability. 

This is a complex issue, but it’s clear the city’s current approach isn’t successful in serving some of our most in need residents. I’m committed to ardently pursuing the policy changes we need to ensure our public health and safety policies enable residents to access the largest array of recovery services possible.

Reducing the rodent population is a difficult but worthwhile task. The city has to continue to invest in the ways we know we can fight back against the rodent population, continue to innovate with new methods, and enforce our existing regulations against businesses who improperly dispose of trash. 

● Make the methods we know work, like the black Terad3 bait boxes and household burrow treatments, available to more residents.

● Expand the use of non-toxic rodent birth control treatments into our efforts to reduce the overall population and allow bait boxes to be more effective.

● Finally offer citywide municipal composting to get more food waste out of our trash cans and into reinforced and sealed containers. 

● Increase fines for commercial properties who improperly dispose of waste to incentivise more frequent dumpster collections, and increase the number of closed receptacles and collections on city property. 

Rodent control is a difficult issue because it requires the city to continue to improve its own services and work with private home and business owners to ensure proper waste disposal is carried out. I’m committed to expanding and closely monitoring our efforts to get rid of more rodents.

Your city councilor should be the person who helps you navigate and get results from your city government. I’m committed to making sure when you need an answer, resource, or service from city hall, you have someone to ask who to talk to, navigate each step, and follow-up to ensure you get a timely solution.

Addressing Systemic Problems Frequently Reported to 311
I want to make sure that when you submit a 311 request, you both get a solution, and moreover, as a Councilor, I will track recurring 311 requests to identify repeat issues that might merit a change in city policy. Helping to ensure we crack down on patterns of city issues is one of the key ways I want to help address the root cause of problems in our city.

Navigating City Government
As a councilor, I’d work to be someone you can come to when you don’t know who or what department to talk to for help solving your problem. Whether you need the city to respond to a serious issue, or support with something as simple as getting a parking permit or a new trash can, you should have someone to help you navigate that process. My neighbors know me as the guy to talk to when they need help finding the right office to call or email at city hall. I want to help guide every resident to get what they need from our city government.

Unsticking Stalled Issues
Our city is in the middle of many ambitious and large projects. While there is a lot of work being done, it can sometimes feel like progress on key projects is stalled. I want to join the Council to help identify where we can unfreeze long-term projects and address the systemic issues that cause relatively simple work to take years.

In-Person Office Hours
Over the last several years we have all come to appreciate in-person availability. If elected, I would be sure to hold regular in-person and virtual office hours to be available both for constituent service requests, and to discuss city policy.

Your city councilor should be the person who helps you navigate and get results from your city government. I’m committed to making sure when you need an answer, resource, or service from city hall, you have someone to ask who to talk to, navigate each step, and follow-up to ensure you get a timely solution.

Addressing Systemic Problems Frequently Reported to 311
I want to make sure that when you submit a 311 request, you both get a solution, and moreover, as a Councilor, I will track recurring 311 requests to identify repeat issues that might merit a change in city policy. Helping to ensure we crack down on patterns of city issues is one of the key ways I want to help address the root cause of problems in our city.

Navigating City Government
As a councilor, I’d work to be someone you can come to when you don’t know who or what department to talk to for help solving your problem. Whether you need the city to respond to a serious issue, or support with something as simple as getting a parking permit or a new trash can, you should have someone to help you navigate that process. My neighbors know me as the guy to talk to when they need help finding the right office to call or email at city hall. I want to help guide every resident to get what they need from our city government.

Unsticking Stalled Issues
Our city is in the middle of many ambitious and large projects. While there is a lot of work being done, it can sometimes feel like progress on key projects is stalled. I want to join the Council to help identify where we can unfreeze long-term projects and address the systemic issues that cause relatively simple work to take years.

In-Person Office Hours
Over the last several years we have all come to appreciate in-person availability. If elected, I would be sure to hold regular in-person and virtual office hours to be available both for constituent service requests, and to discuss city policy.

Somerville’s budget is limited, and while I will continue to advocate for fully funding our priorities, one way we can do more to address community needs is by better partnering with and supporting our city’s exceptional nonprofit organizations. These groups play a crucial role helping our community with housing assistance, economic supports, educational programs, environmental initiatives, and food resources.

As a City Councilor, I will ensure our city supports the efforts of nonprofits and connects residents who are ineligible for or receiving insufficient assistance from city resources with community organizations that can help.

In light of disappearing federal resources, it's imperative that our city's elected officials, in collaboration with our state legislative delegation, advocate for state funding to fill gaps that emerge. We need to continue to provide essential services to our residents, and must take advantage of resources that expand what we can do beyond the restrictions of our municipal budget.

Housing costs in Somerville are expensive for just about everyone. One of the fundamental goals of our city has to be to reduce overall housing costs dramatically for all households. The Council actually has significant power in this area with their control of zoning.

In truth, a lot of Somerville’s capacity for success in lowering prices is dependent on the action of other communities. Somerville has a strong vested interest in statewide housing construction requirements like the MBTA Communities Act, which requires denser housing in other communities who lag behind our own. I will be a strong advocate for the enaction and enforcement of further statewide construction legislation.

We should continue to increase the density of housing units allowed near transit stations, change the incentive structure around development to make permitting and construction of lower market-rate housing more profitable than luxury development, and allow for more mixed-use development on commercial corridors.

We need to speed up the permitting process for new housing, remove unnecessary barriers to development like excessive parking and stairwell requirements, and encourage the conversion of vacant or underutilized lots into housing.

Too many longtime residents, working-class people, and essential workers can't afford to live in Somerville, and reducing market-rate rents alone will never be enough to keep them here. That’s why we must maintain and strengthen our subsidized housing programs.

I will work to protect Somerville’s 20% affordable housing requirement in the Inclusionary Housing Ordinance and push for better connections between residents and existing resources, including Section 8 vouchers, the 100 Homes Program, the Somerville Affordable Housing Trust’s rental assistance program, and other housing support services, so no one is left navigating the system alone.

It is critical our City Councilors actively work to connect residents in need with assistance. I will work to ensure people who need housing assistance get connected with these resources. I will also advocate for a centralized, easily accessible platform that consolidates available housing programs and assistance options, ensuring residents can easily find the support they need.

Despite some progress recently, many of our streets and sidewalks are aging and in poor condition, making getting around the city more difficult, particularly for disabled residents, seniors, and parents with strollers. One of the fundamental ways we can improve Somerville’s mobility is to ensure our sidewalks are in good repair and are accessible. Last year the city released a tracker that shows road and sidewalk repaving and improvement progress; we should use that format to enable resident feedback to which streets are in the most need of repair, and track the areas of highest need as well as plan out the schedule for city wide upgrades. These essential repair projects are an essential complement to other traffic calming and safety measures to ensuring our Vision Zero goal is met.

Completing the city’s Bicycle Network Plan will also make cycling safer and better integrated into our transportation system. The intention of the network plan was to ensure the predictability and completeness of our city’s cycle network, and ensuring we continue implementation that maintains those two principles remains important for the council to secure.

Better integrating the new Green Line stations into our streetscape, with dedicated pickup and drop-off locations and accessible crosswalks, is also key to improving city mobility. While the MBTA manages these stations, one key way we can make them more usable and have them better serve our community’s transit needs is by ensuring the streets around them are optimally used to allow for passengers to easily access stations.

Our city must continue to improve its response to the uptick in homelessness we've seen in recent years. We need to provide both immediate shelter options and long-term support services to help individuals regain stability.

In addition to maintaining emergency warming and cooling centers, we must prioritize expanding supportive housing and mental health treatment for those experiencing homelessness. I will work to address public health concerns associated with homelessness, including preventing public drug use and ensuring that needles are regularly removed from parks and public spaces.

I will also advocate for bringing programs like Suffolk County's Homeless Court Diversion Program to Somerville. This program helps individuals experiencing homelessness avoid criminal charges for offenses related to their homelessness, such as trespassing or panhandling. By connecting individuals to services instead of jail, we can offer opportunities for rehabilitation rather than incarceration.

The city continues to struggle with traffic and difficulties with loading and pick-up parking. We need to focus on ways to improve traffic flow, particularly at major intersections and in our squares.

Increasing the availability of “15 minute” parking spaces in commercial areas is essential to keeping traffic moving and avoid double parking. Businesses and particularly restaurants need to have available quick parking to allow for customers and delivery drivers to easily pick up orders. We also have to prioritize curb space designs that provide room for trucks and vans to unload deliveries, and avoid double parking or parking in bike lanes.

With our particularly high density and high number of cars, we need to do everything we can to increase the efficiency of our streets. Post-COVID, we need to reactivate "request walk" buttons, ensuring pedestrians can safely and efficiently cross streets, and reducing unnecessary delays. We should also need to experiment with smart traffic signals that can adjust lights based on real time traffic to improve rush hour backups.

Somerville can take a more proactive and community-based approach to mental health care by placing licensed mental health professionals and social workers in public spaces like libraries, community centers, and teen spaces. The city has been able to do this on interim and emergency basis before, and doing the financial and space planning to ensure we are able to continue to offer these services proactively should be a priority.  Embedding trained professionals and inviting opportunities to access state and city resources should be a function of many of our city-owned spaces, especially where they are likely to be accessible to vulnerable populations.

Massachusetts has developed a strong framework for delivering a full range of mental health and substance use services through the state-administered Community Behavioral Health Centers (CBHC) program. However, Somerville is somewhat disconnected from the nearest CBHC, which is in Cambridge. As a city, we need to do more to make sure we connect residents in crisis with CBHC treatments and state resources. These facilities offer walk-in care and emergency crisis response, as well as long-term supports for people who struggle with their mental health. Strengthening this connection and increasing local visibility of these services will help prevent emergencies for residents, reduce interactions and burden on our police and city emergency response personnel.

Somerville has tried nearly everything under the sun to try to reduce the rodent population. While there is still more we can do, especially deploying more Terad3 bait boxes which have proven effective, we need to find more points to attack pest issues. In particular, ensuring we are enforcing existing city regulations around waste disposal.

This is an issue where we have already found some effective solutions, and the next steps are to more fully deploy traps, and perform burrow treatments on properties. Pest control is an area where the city has a clear role itself in maintaining buildings, parks, and waste disposal bins, but also where we need to work collaboratively with commercial and residential property owners to solve this issue.

At commercial properties, we need to ensure proper waste disposals of overflow trash is properly contained, and that business are made aware of the city’s regulations and assistance for disposing of excess waste—particularly for restaurants.

At residential properties, we need to continue to educate residents on the city’s regulations around trash collection that are designed to try to mitigate growth of the rodent population. Repeat offenders or absentee property owners who consistently fail to properly dispose of waste should be held accountable. Residents who are unable to or are unaware of how to contribute to the city’s effort to reduce rodent issues should be connected with the city’s extensive efforts in this area.

I will continue to support innovative ways to control the rodent population, however, this issue appears to be one where following up to ensure we are sufficiently enforcing existing regulations, and pursuing deployment of known solutions is the best way forward.

Somerville is the densest city in New England. Outside of the home, we need free, accessible, and quality spaces for people to gather, play, and socialize at. In particular, because so many Somerville resident live in smaller living spaces, access to public spaces isn’t just an amenity, it’s a necessity. Our city has a number of wonderful parks, and ensuring they are clean, safe, and accessible should be forefront in our focus. Maintenance often isn’t front of mind when we consider our city’s efforts, but gaps in maintenance are often felt quickly and are harder to solve when left unresolved for long.

Somerville is just over 4 square miles, and we aren’t getting any more space. That means we need to ensure that our city’s laws ensure the best possible use for our residents. One way we can ensure city policy results in more public green space is by requiring it as a component for large new housing or commercial development. Additionally, we can ensure more meeting spaces and community rooms by including a requirement for public meeting spaces in large buildings as well.

I served on a city Advisory Committee that was in part focused on the future of Somerville parks. Ensuring we use the space we have for maximum community benefit is paramount. In addition to providing open space for recreation, we can also use our parks space to support our climate initiatives, reduce flooding risk, and provide a home for native pollinators.

Our community is extremely civically active and has a wealth of community groups that meet across the city to pursue a wide variety of hobbies, projects, and advocacy work. We should ensure these groups have free places to meet to continue to support our community. In addition to the addition of public space requirements in private large construction, we should also focus on how small additions of reservable meeting rooms can be added to municipal buildings across the city to provide such spaces.

Somerville is an expensive place to rent or own property, and thats true for business owners too. One of the city’s primary concerns should be avoiding vacant commercial space. Vacant storefronts hurt our commercial areas by reducing foot traffic, limiting resident choices in shops, and creating uninviting public spaces. The city can play the role of facilitator to fill vacant spaces and find both short and long term solutions to keep these spaces utilized.

Supporting our local businesses is paramount both to keeping our squares vibrant places and empowering new business owners, but also to help build our city’s commercial tax base. Somerville, unlike many other cities, only sees commercial taxes make up about 30% of our municipal revenue. That leaves 70% of the burden to fall on homeowners, making housing more expensive for everyone. Ensuring businesses in our city are supported and avoiding vacant storefronts helps us across the board in creating a more vibrant and affordable city.

Trees do so much for our city—they keep our streets cooler, improve air quality, reduce flooding, and make our neighborhoods more livable. Unfortunately, much of Somerville’s tree canopy has shrunk in recent years, and is under threat in others. We need our Councilors to push for new developments to include public green space, protect the spaces we already have, and expand public green space in both small and big ways.

Enforce the 2019 Tree Preservation Ordinance
In 2019, Somerville passed a Tree Preservation Ordinance to protect trees on private property (in addition to previously protected trees on city owned property). We need to ensure the city is enforcing this critical ordinance, and consider raising the penalty set under this law which establishes a fee for violations at $500, something which large or careless developers often consider a cost of doing business. The council should consider raising this fee, in particular in a way that discourages large developers from violating it.

Better Communicate the Process for Requesting New Trees
In Somerville, tree requests are actually pretty straightforward. It’s fairly easy to request a new tree outside of your home, get a sick or dead tree removed, request pruning, or get someone from the city to inspect a tree for potential issues. Making sure residents know they can, and when they should, put in a 311 request for a tree in their area is something I’ve enjoyed doing while I was a member of the city’s Pollinator Committee.

Caring and Protecting Street Trees
The tree steward program has taken one of the amazing benefits of Somerville—how many residents we have who care about their neighborhoods and nature—and put them into action protecting our city’s trees. We should continue to expand this program and spread public awareness of when a tree on your street might need to be cared for whether its watering, weeding, or cleaning.