Why do you want to serve on the City Council?
I have been a Councilor-at-Large for 16 years. I want to serve for another two years so I can use the experience and knowledge I gained to continue to serve the residents of Watertown and to make Watertown an even better place to live, work, raise a family and be a senior.
I want to serve again so I can follow the best practices I have learned such as listening to and learning from city staff, citizen-volunteers, and those with different ideas from mine; being patient, but persistent, while working to create policies and programs; responding to the day-to-day concerns of residents in a timely manner; and doing everything possible to ensure that Watertown stands for equality and justice. I want to serve again because I want to build on our many wonderful accomplishments such as the creation of the Affordable Housing Trust, ongoing efforts to implement our Climate and Energy Plan, expanding open space, and protecting existing and creating new housing.
I want to serve again because I want to move Watertown forward by supporting an Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) ordinance, advocating for Community Preservation funds to be dedicated to affordable housing; prioritizing ordinances that address climate change; building on our Watertown Square Action Plan and zoning amendments to support housing and small business; advocating for open space and recreation at Walker Pond; and supporting our new Human Services Director and programs addressing housing, food and economic insecurity, and services for those in need, veterans, seniors and immigrants.
Tell voters about your background and qualifications for being a City Councilor
I have worked in the human service field, as a frontline staff person and a program manager for nearly 35 years. I was a staff member of an organization focused on national and international issues that provided educational materials, workshops and outreach programs I have been a volunteer and a board member of many organizations for well over 45 years, including the Agape Foundation, Survival Education Fund, Watertown Cares, Progressive Watertown, Watertown Forward, Watertown Citizens for Peace, Justice and the Environment, and others. I have also worked on local and statewide electoral campaigns including campaigns for Jonathan Hecht, Steve Owens, Ed Markey, Elizabeth Warren, and others.
Through this work I have gained management, planning, research, and organizing skills that have served me as a councilor. Maybe the most direct experience that prepared me to be a city councilor was my years as the policy advisor to Boston At-Large City Councilor Rosaria Salerno. My role included drafting legislation and resolutions, preparing policy briefs, representing the Councilor’s positions at community meetings, working with community organizations and activists to create programs, and doing the nitty-gritty work to address constituents’ concerns.
What would you like to see built on the municipal parking lots in Watertown Square that are proposed to redeveloped as part of the Watertown Square Redevelopment?
The city is only at the beginning stages of implementing the goals of the Watertown Square Area Plan. It has recently contracted for engineering design services related to converting the five-way intersection in the heart of the Square to a four-way intersection. A second contract has been awarded to Innes Land Strategies Group to develop a Demonstration Project that would include a parking lot, retail, open space, and affordable housing on the property behind CVS. The Demonstration Project will take about two years from start to finish and would involve the creation of a public/private partnership.
Two of the goals of a Demonstration Project include testing what is feasible in the further development of Watertown Square and cataloguing what are the lessons learned from the project that can inform the overall revitalization of the Square. Given this I would like to see:
• a parking structure that is built in such a way that it could be converted to housing or retail in the future if there is a decrease in vehicle traffic in or around the Square.
• housing that is fully affordable and considers additional steps that can be taken to mitigate climate change in addition to implementing the city’s solar ordinance and the requirement to meet enhanced stretch code requirements. Ask the developer to investigate how the town of Lexington, which in addition to high energy efficiency standards, prohibited fossil fuel use in new buildings and yet built 1,100 new housing units of which 160 are affordable.
• small and medium size businesses that could be housed under or adjacent to the parking garage.
• a large open/green open space that would provide a welcoming environment to residents of the housing development and patrons of the retail stores. This could include public art displays, rest areas with benches and tables, and other amenities.
• completing another section of the Community Path from Baptist Way to Church Street as well as ample bike rakes in the parking garage and the housing development.
The City has aggressive goals in the Climate and Energy Plan. How can the City help make their homes more energy efficient and the City as a whole more sustainable?
Yes, the Resilient Watertown’s Climate and Energy Plan (Plan) has very aggressive goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I firmly believe that the Plan must be the centerpiece of all our efforts to mitigate climate change and increase resilience to it. The Plan includes five Elements each which has a number of goals which in turn have strategies to achieve the goals followed by specific action steps, as well as metrics to measure the success at meeting the goals. It would be great if residents review the minutes of the meetings of the Council’s Committee on Climate and Energy, which I chair, which is charged with reviewing the Plan on a regular basis.
The Committee began by meeting every three months, but presently meets every six months, to hear from Laural Schwab, the Sustainable Program Manager who reviewed the status of the Plan. The minute meetings from March 16, 2023 to May 20, 2025 can be found by clicking on the following link, https://watertownma.portal.civicclerk.com/?category_id=95. The Committee is planning to meet in November to hear about adjustments to the metrics used in evaluating goals.
If I am re-elected and if I am assigned to chair the Committee again, I would like to convene a meeting of the Committee in April of next year to review the progress toward completing the Plan goals. This would be a precursor to the much more robust five-year review of the Plan, that was passed in 2022, as required in the Plan.
Efforts to help residents become active participants in the effort to reduce GHG emissions and increase sustainability has been a major focus of City’s Sustainability program which is housed the Department of Community Development and Planning. One of the goals of the Plan was to increase the capacity of the city to implement the Plan by adding staff. The Sustainability Team now has four staff members, including the important position of Energy Advocate who responsibility is to explore ways to educate and engage Watertown residents. Our Energy Advocate is Fangxue Zheng. She and members of the team have implemented a number of educational and community outreach programs including a Heat Pump Workshop, a Sustainability Street Tour, and an Energy Coach Training. In addition, the program now publishes the monthly “Resilient Watertown Newsletter”, which includes information about new projects and informative educational materials. It also publicizes related sustainability events planned by city and area organizations. The most impressive effort this year to education and engage the public was the program’s Eco Fest held on May 10, which included solar vendors, educational presentations and panel discussions and many displays and resources from community organizations who address climate change mitigation and resiliency and sustainability. I strongly support these efforts and look forward to more efforts to raise awareness of how residents can contribute to achieving the goals of our Climate and Energy Plan.
It is also important to recognize efforts the city has taken. These include expanding the number of electric vehicles in our fleet, increasing the number of public EV charging stations, and applying and being awarded a $976,000 Municipal Vulnerability Action Grant in April of last year. Finally, last month the city released a “Health and Climate Resilience Report” which was developed with the Metropolitan Planning Council through a Technical Assistance Grant. Creating this report was a recommended action in the Climate and Energy Plan. The Report includes a series of strategies and actions to increase our community’s resilience.
I support these efforts as well as efforts to implement some of the more far-reaching goals of the Climate and Energy Action Plan such as the passage of a Building Emissions Reeducation and Disclosure Ordinance (BERDO), a Tree Ordinance, and a Transportation Infrastructure Fund.
Watertown has an opportunity to completely renovate or rebuild Watertown Middle School and use the temporary school currently at Moxley Field. Would you like to see this happen and if so how would you like to see it financed?
I do not support the building of a new Middle School for two reasons –
• We have heard from the City Manager that it is not financially wise to dedicate tax revenue and borrow to build the school. At a presentation to the Council on September 9, he reviewed the cost estimates from AI3, the consulting group that we have used for the building of the two elementary schools, the renovation of our third elementary school and the build of our new high school. The cost for building the building a new Middle School was $112,230, not including the cost to continue to rent the modules where the high school is located or the reimbursement to the MSBA for work they paid for, but would be destroyed in the demolish of the building. Including these factors the estimate cost of building a new school was $132 million. The available funds to build the school included $17.2 million in stabilization funds and $70 million in borrowing. (It should be noted that this figure was the result of revising the current Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) and pushing out other capital improvement plans like building to future years such as building a new senior center.) The deficit between what the final cost would be and the anticipated revenue to cover the cost was $25.8 million. Based on this analysis and a desire not to purpose a tax override, the Manager’s recommendation was not to proceed with building a new Middle School.
At the City Manager’s FY 2027 Preliminary Budget Overview on October 27, he offered a more detailed presentation of the costs of building a new Middle School that considered the present state and national economic situation, reduced new growth income as a result of fewer life-science projects being built, anticipated higher insurance costs, and potential increases in capital costs due to inflation and tariffs. Given the anticipated costs of the new school, $132 million, he
anticipated a deficient in FY 2027 of $4.9 million, $5,66 million in FY 2028, and $8.7 million in FY2029. His recommends to cover the costs of reducing the budget deficient included reducing contributions to the Senior Center stabilization fund, reducing contributions to OPEB, and eliminating open space and affordable housing contributions. He did not offer a recommendation regarding how to proceed, but asked the City Council to consider this information when it weighs in on whether to build a new Middle School.
My second reason, and I know this is not popular with everyone. I believe we have made wonderful contributions to our schools, as demonstrated by building two new elementary schools, renovating a third, and building the most energy efficient high school in the country. These schools were designed to facilitate 21st century learning practices. However, I also believe it is now time to prioritize other Watertown needs and to direct our capital improvement borrowing to these projects. A specific example that I support is the building of a new senior center. Watertown’s population is aging and we need to consider how to support seniors and provide innovated programs that meet their needs. The city is funding a feasibility study to determine the options and cost of a new center. It is a good probability that the cost would be much less than that cost of constructing a new Middle School. There were other projects presented at a previous presentation to the City Council by the Manager, including replacing the East End fire station, locating a DPW staging area, and building a recreation center. My preference is a new Senior Center.
While not directly related to this question, I would like to offer my recommendation of how to use the former Sterritt lumber site that the city purchased this year. I believe the Watertown would benefit from building affordable “missing middle” housing on top of a recreation center.
How can the City cut down the number of cars on the road, and make other modes of transportation more viable and attractive?
Reducing automobile use and increasing other modes of transportation requires a multi-prong approach. We might begin by having an overall goal of challenging our car-focused way of thinking which perpetuates spending and road design that prioritizes automobile use. Referring again to the Climate and Energy Plan we know that a key goal is to reduce car miles by 50% by 2050. I support the city’s efforts to achieve this goal and a number of the programs designed to do so. We should
• build on our success to expand the number of EV charging stations by installing even more stations at key locations on public and private land.
• implement a Vision Zero policy to reduce crashes and ultimately eliminate fatalities. One way to achieve this is to reduce speed limits to 25 miles an hour on major streets and 20 miles an hour on smaller ones. The end result will be safer streets for bikers and pedestrians.
• suggest ways the Transportation Management Association, which advocates carpooling, vanpooling, biking, walking and commuter incentives, can play a bigger role in the city’s efforts to reduce automobile use.
• continue to advocate for unbundling parking so residents’ and businesses’ rental payments do not include the cost of a parking space(s).
• complete the Community Path and increase the availability of Blue bikes.
• continue to implement the Complete Streets policy when redesigning major streets so that the focus is on safety and accessibility for all users of the street including motorists, pedestrians, bicyclists and transit riders.
I would like to mention a recently study the city published that was funded by an ARPA grant and achieves one of the action steps in the Climate and Energy Plan – the Watertown Study to Improve City Supported Mobility. The report was discussed at a meeting of the City Council’s Committee on Economic Development and Planning on Tuesday, October 21, 2025. It is a comprehensive, data heavy analysis of how Watertown can achieve a key goal of the Comprehensive Plan, that is, “provide safe, efficient multimodal transportation options that provides access to homes, jobs, amenities, and services”. The study offers five strategies to “expand this access for underserved groups/neighborhoods and to reduce travel by single occupancy vehicle, including for those who can’t walk or bike”. Each strategy includes specifics on implementation and potential costs. One program that I would like to see prioritized is found in the Create a Community Transit Platform strategy, that is the implementation of a micro transit program for the general public that would provide residents accessible transportation within the city.
During your campaign, what was the biggest issue or concern for voters when you spoke to them about the City?
This is a hard question to answer since there are a number of issues that residents have raised during this campaign season. If I had to pick one it would be the concern residents have about important issues that need to addressed being seen as at odds with each other, such the need to address the affordable housing crisis and the climate crisis or the importance of supporting local businesses and a reduction in automobile use.