Why I’m running

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.