Why do you want to serve on the City Council?
I was inspired to a career in public service by my family, teachers, coaches and members of this welcoming community. I grew up in Watertown and developed my own life here. My father, a partially-disabled WWII veteran, worked at the Watertown post office, delivering mail to our
neighbors, and my mother, a first-generation American, worked as a secretary. They were proud members of the Greatest Generation who both supported their respective countries in wartime capacities, and instilled in me a lifelong spirit of giving back to my community. I was the beneficiary of a rich, diverse upbringing, living in a multi-ethnic neighborhood, and welcoming regular family visitors from other countries.
After graduating from Watertown High School, where I was a student-athlete, I went to Brown University, then Suffolk University Law School, where I focused on becoming a local government attorney. My experience as a first-generation college and grad school student, balancing my studies while working multiple part-time jobs, taught me time management, the value of working as a team with colleagues of all backgrounds, and the need for a living wage to ensure that we can live in our communities. After law school, I embarked on a 30-year career as a municipal law attorney, directly representing over 100 small towns and large cities, including Watertown and Somerville. As a municipal government professional, I deliver presentations to local government officials on evolving issues and best practices. This week, for example, I gave educational presentations to over 500 city and town officials, including Watertown’s own city finance team. Representing multiple communities statewide, I’ve learned how strong communities govern: they listen to the views of all of their residents, welcome dialogue, consider best practices and inspire responsive and effective public service.
After 25 years of service to other municipalities, I became a Watertown City Councilor At-Large in 2019. Through such service working for you, I have been honored to bring the best ideas and approaches I learned in other communities and worked to apply them to provide the best local government services for all residents, all across our great community. I am inspired by our future. I have a family of my own — I’m the proud dad of my neurodivergent son Will, 22, who has faced many challenges in his life, yet, with the support of our community, is now achieving his own success, living in his own Watertown home, and serving as a proud member of our local workforce.
Tell voters about your background and qualifications for being a City Councilor.
Having previously discussed my own professional career and my inspiration to a lifetime of public service, I am likewise proud of how my lifetime of volunteer service to the community makes me a better City Councilor. As a lifelong volunteer, I worked with many organizations,
including those focused on educating our children, counseling our neighbors who suffer from substance use disorders, coaching my neurodivergent son’s inclusive athletic teams, fighting for voters rights, protecting the environment. As a few examples, after my childhood life catching frogs at West Watertown’s Walkers Pond, which feeds into the Charles River, I now serve on the Board of Advisors of the Charles River Watershed Association, protecting the water quality and open spaces that serve as Watertown’s environmental jewel. I also served ten years on Watertown’s zoning board, protecting our community’s strength and the vitality of our neighborhoods, while welcoming quality development that brought Watertown into the new century. In addition, where I started working on multiple jobs through college and law school and serving as a voice for my colleagues, I am now a vice president of a statewide public sector union, advocating for a voice for thousands of employees nationwide. Through such service, I have been proud to receive the endorsement of other major employee unions, including our own Watertown Educators Association. The most important endorsement I would be honored to have, however, is one of your four votes for City Councilor At-Large.
What would you like to see built on the municipal parking lots in Watertown Square that are proposed to be redeveloped as part of the Watertown Square Redevelopment?
Watertown has a unique opportunity to spur new growth through the development of the Watertown Square plan, but quality redevelopment of Watertown Square will not happen without a robust plan to ensure as much community input as possible. We have seen how prior approaches to Watertown Square created problems that face us today. While Watertown Square has hosted a number of businesses, banks and restaurants, there are a number of buildings that have not seen much investment over the years. Thirty-plus years ago, the state conditioned state investment on roadway improvements on Watertown’s removal of street parking in front of local
businesses that served Watertown. The auto-centric plan allowed out-of-town motorists to travel quickly through Watertown to their destinations, but, for Watertown’s residents, it drove away treasured small businesses and made the square a pedestrian nightmare.
The new plan allows for the creation of housing above the ground level, creating more housing for our local workers, providing more affordable housing so our residents can remain in Watertown, bringing back curbside parking, bringing upstairs customers for the local businesses, making walking across Watertown Square a safe experience, and allowing for a broader mix of
local businesses. And, increasing local tax revenue. My vision for the Square would provide a mix of small businesses, pop-up stores for bringing more cultural activities to the Square and for allowing Watertown residents to grow their own small businesses. As part of the mix, I also support the creation of new parks and unique gathering spaces for residents to enjoy or play music, connect with neighbors over a coffee or ice cream, or relax on a bench while waiting for a bus.
The Watertown City Council will serve as the Redevelopment Authority for this new initiative. I have served as a local government land use attorney representing over 100 communities, safeguarding city and town interests in assuring quality development, while maintaining the integrity of the local community and quality neighborhoods. In Somerville, for example, I worked
as the lead attorney in the Assembly Row development, a 65-acre mixed use retail, office, residential and hotel complex — a 24-hour live, work and play environment featuring 2,000 residential units, and a new subway stop. I also served for 10 years on Watertown’s zoning board, where Watertown began adding multiple residential units mainly on Pleasant and Arsenal Streets. I know quality development – I also know what questions to ask of developers, whether they are providing straight answers and what to ask for in terms of community benefits, such as more parks, open spaces, community investments and adding to transportation networks. On the zoning board, for example, I added conditions to developments creating hiking trails, funding for
preliminary studies that led to the creation of the Watertown-Cambridge Greenway, and property access from private properties to Watertown’s recreational spaces. As your city councilor in the next term, I promise to bring my professional experience and love of Watertown to fight hard to make any development the best for Watertown’s future.
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?
After the release of a study by the United Nations a few years back, combining the work of over 2,000 scientists, and hundreds of other scientific studies, it should be clear to everybody that climate change is a deadly force that threatens our futures and those of our children’s and grandchildren’s. There’s no doubt we need to make Watertown more resilient in the face of these threats. Since I was first elected in 2019 as a City Councilor At-Large, I’ve been at the forefront of fighting for Watertown’s future, and that includes doing our part in this global fight. Locally, I’ve supported maximizing energy-efficiency standards for our city buildings, and on that note, I’m
heartened that we opened the doors to three brand new or upgraded elementary schools, two of which produce net-zero emissions. Next April, we will welcome our new Watertown High School, a LEED platinum building, that will be so energy-efficient that it actually produces more energy than it uses.
These climate-friendly efforts did not just happen. It took the combined efforts of the City Council, the School Department, the School Building Committee and – notably — the actions of local citizen climate activists, who challenged the City to reach higher in developing climate friendly initiatives. I’ve also been supportive of increasing the number of energy-efficient city
vehicles in the town’s fleet, where feasible. Through our city’s capital planning for future city vehicles, we are phasing in energy-efficient vehicles into the fleet, as that technology evolves. In addition, the City’s environmental planners are expanding efforts to reduce carbon emissions in our own homes. We have bulk-purchasing programs available to allow homeowners to purchase their energy from climate-friendly sources, and we are working with homeowners through the MassSave program to convert inefficient heating and electrical sources to cleaner, cheaper alternatives.
Reducing our carbon footprint requires more green spaces, as well as protecting our wetlands, which provide pollution control and a habitat for wildlife. Building accessible parks and acquiring more green spaces also provide substantial health benefits for all Watertown residents. We as a City Council recently purchased Walker’s Pond, a tributary to the Charles River. Walker’s Pond, if planned correctly, will serve as another environmental jewel to Watertown’s ecosystem. We have much more work to do in the next City Council term, but it will take electing city councilors with demonstrated concern and experience in working on the dangers of climate change to take the steps locally to protect Watertown’s and the world’s future. I will continue to be one such voice.
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?
At recent candidate forums, the issue of whether Watertown should provide our school students with modern, world-class educational environments, with amazing environmental efficiencies, all the way from Kindergarten through High School, appears to divide the candidates in this race. The City Manager recently provided a hired consultant’s analysis that appeared to show that Watertown would need an additional $28 million to bring the Watertown Middle School up to 21st century standards, as we did with our three elementary schools and our upcoming brand-new Watertown High School. Three candidates in this race appear to support a view that we should not pursue any option to improve the education environment of our middle school students. I, for one, am not convinced that we should wait decades later to pursue the best school environments for all of our students. Since the middle school financing announcement was made, I’ve spoken to multiple school families and residents about how they felt about the possibility
of Watertown pushing off the decision about a new middle school for another 15-20 years. To a person, each resident said we should explore all of our options, before kicking the can down the road. Also, parents whose students have recently attended the school have told me that the current condition of the building requires more immediate attention. I agree. As the only candidate in this race who attended middle school in the present building, I can agree with them that the building was outmoded many decades ago when I was a student.
We owe it to our students to provide them with a continuum of world-class educational environments from kindergarten through high school graduation. Further discussion is needed, and allowing this opportunity to pass will impact the education of future students. In addition, we are in a unique situation today where, due to our AAA bond rating, the best municipal rating possible, we presently have an interest rate we pay for city borrowing at a little over 2 percent(!). The likelihood that Watertown will have such favorable financing rate in two decades is unlikely. In addition, we still have the modular buildings that were used for the high school that can still be repurposed as a temporary middle school. There are many financing options to be considered, even without a Proposition 2 ½ question, and I have filed a resolution to have the City Council meet to discuss these issues. I urge all residents to attend future City Council meeting on this issue.
How can the City cut down the number of cars on the road, and make other modes of transportation more viable and attractive?
As a City, we have a duty as a city to make our roads safer and more efficient and to develop more alternative public transportation options to reduce the number of vehicle trips. It’s not just good for the environment, it can make walking and driving through our city a safer experience. After the City Council voted that Watertown needed to conduct a study to improve roadway layout and alternate transportation options, the City’s consultant this month released the study. The study provides options for increasing public transportation alternatives to meet Watertown’s transportation future, and to provide a number of new viable transportation options. It laid out, for example, ways in which Watertown’s public transportation options could connect Watertown commuters to new local commuter rail stations, such as the new Boston Landing Station in Boston. The study also showed expanded Watertown based local shuttle alternatives, and the provision of micro-bus routes and more transportation options for our disabled residents and senior citizens.
It is one thing to provide studies on the multiple options available to make our roads safer and to explore new public transportation options, I am committed to exploring the best options possible for Watertown. Also, safer roads and expanded public transportation options offer multiple benefits by reducing traffic, improving air quality, and allowing for the creation of more open space, as well as promoting physical activity where walking is safer.
Also, economically, safer streets and more public transportation options generate jobs, increase property values, boost local businesses, and provide increased ridership for the MBTA buses that run through Watertown Square, and in the future newer technological public transportation options, such as the energy-efficient electric ferry known as the Wadda Hoppa, which will
transport commuters along the Charles River.
During your campaign, what was the biggest issue or concern for voters when you spoke to them about the City?
Meeting so many people across Watertown during the course of my campaign has been a heartwarming experience, and convinced me that the strength of our city is truly found in our residents. Being welcomed into many homes, learning neighborhood lore at block parties, sitting with commuters at bus stops on their way to work, getting insider tips on choosing the freshest
fruit at our farmers market, and singing with others at vibrant public festivals, I became convinced that Watertown’s future is very bright, indeed. Whether we were born here and chose to stay here, or chose to come to Watertown, we all enjoy the unique community vibe that makes us a strong community.
One universal theme I encountered is a concern for keeping Watertown’s community strength vibrant. New developments over time, for example, have made Watertown’s housing more expensive – we’re seeing new buildings that crowd into our neighborhoods, and we’re concerned that our seniors and neighbors can remain here. We’re looking to our local government to assure that new growth will bring community benefits to our residents, such as more parks, open space, and gathering spaces. We’re looking to our local government to take action to provide more affordable housing options to allow all residents a place to call home. We’re looking to our local government to provide community gatherings where we can learn from our neighbors. We’re looking to our local government to provide us a safe and welcoming community for all. And, we’re looking for our local government to provide us responsive services.
Watertown’s residents deserve the best local government possible. Come join me as I seek to continue fighting for you to keep our community strong. For more information about me, please check out my campaign website at GannonforWatertown.com. I would be honored to have one of your four votes for City Councilor At-Large in our city election on Tuesday, November 4. Thank you.