Cost of Living
See my 1-minute video about housing affordability in Somerville!
Living in Somerville is too unaffordable. We urgently need more affordable housing, and more market-rate housing, too, which can absorb some of the high-priced renters moving to Somerville. If we don’t build both, people will compete even more for scarce homes, rents will rise faster, and our community will grow increasingly segregated by wealth.
As a volunteer with Somerville YIMBY and the Somerville Community Land Trust, I believe we can build more housing near transit, limit displacement of small businesses, and ensure developments are walkable and neighborhood-friendly.
I support developments like the mixed affordable/market apartment buildings planned for the old Star Market site on Broadway, and the all-affordable housing building proposed for the old A+ Auto Body site on Medford St. These can help us keep neighbors together, and make our city more affordable for everyone.
(Also—I will not accept donations from for-profit developers.)
Supporting Working Parents
See my 1-minute video about supporting working parents in Somerville!
We can do more to support working families in juggling the pressures and costs they face.
We need to expand our successful pre-Kindergarten programs—which make innovative use of a mix of public and private facilities—so that all families can find a spot near them, and we can start offering preschool to 3 year-olds.
Principals and parents need afterschool staffing, allowing kids to safely use gyms and playgrounds beyond school hours; principals have told me that even a single paid security guard could enable dozens of children to stay and use facilities until the early evening.
Supporting working parents isn’t optional—it’s essential for the economic health of our families, and the wellbeing of all our children.
Education
I'm an educator who attended Cambridge Public Schools growing up, and I have two kids in Somerville Public Schools.
I believe our public schools are one of the great prides of our city. But I also know that our students’ outcomes have persistent disparities across class, race, and gender identity. We need to treat these disparities with urgency, and to insist that all students receive the investment they deserve.
It is unjust that some students cannot always count on feeling safe—and being safe—during the school day, or after school. We need a vision of zero of our children being the victims of violence at or around school.
Raising teacher pay is an investment well worth making, to recruit the next generation of great talent, and to keep teachers’ expertise in our community long-term.
Education isn’t just about classrooms—it’s about community investment, opportunity, and ensuring every student can thrive, from birth through graduation and beyond.
Public Safety
I firmly believe that public safety is a progressive cause. I’ve heard it loud and clear, in dozens of police-community forums I have participated in: community members want effective, accountable, fast-response policing—especially communities who have been historically underserved or disproportionately victimized.
But safety goes beyond police: we need to be responding in the most effective way we can to each situation, whether it is something dangerous needing police, a mental health crisis where trained health professionals are the right responders, or a hybrid. I support the recommendations of The Public Safety Task Force, which recommended a “co-response” model with both police and unarmed responders; in Cambridge, this change significantly reduced emergency room trips resulting from 911 calls, and earned support from both the community and police officers. This is a good first step, and I would like to see its success open the door for more discretion about the best response to any given 911 call—including, when appropriate, by fully unarmed teams.
I also support the Task Force’s call for us to change the way we hire police officers, which currently keeps us from considering a candidate’s full experiences. If they have a background in social work, teaching, mental health or medical aid, or fluency in languages spoken in Somerville, and if they have lived in Somerville and are involved with the community, these are assets in serving the public.
Public safety also means safety for pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers. In 2019, my 9-year-old was hit by a car while on a Cedar Street crosswalk. We are making progress on safer street design, and we need more proactive improvements—and improved traffic enforcement—to stop dangerous crashes from happening again.
Finally, there is the chilling fact that that many of our neighbors right now—including children—are living in fear of being grabbed unexpectedly by federal immigration agents, or of family members being grabbed and never seeing them again. I stand behind Somerville’s identity as a sanctuary city, and I want us to take every effort to protect all of our residents. We need to ensure our whole city staff—especially our police—are on the same page about being present to support those in our community being targeted.
Public safety is about feeling secure from violence, reckless driving, and from being torn from your family by federal agents. It’s about being able to call 911, confident that your needs will be handled promptly, thoroughly and professionally. Everyone in Somerville deserves safety, dignity, and respect.
Transportation
Somerville has better options for getting across town than almost anywhere else in the country, between subway, bus, bike and car. But it’s still far too difficult to get from some places to others, e.g. from Assembly to Union Square, or from Market Basket to Clarendon Hill; and riders sometimes have to wait half an hour or more.
Somerville is beginning to roll out “smart” traffic lights, and we should push for “Transit Signal Priority” functionality, which allows lights to adjust timing on the fly to speed MBTA buses; a recent trial of TSP in Boston showed that this sped up bus travel times significantly.
I also dream of making buses free. Yes, this would require paying the MBTA huge sums, but we should keep trying to negotiate them down to a workable deal. Free buses would load faster, increase ridership, and decrease car traffic—a virtuous cycle. With fewer cars clogging traffic and competing for parking, and a more reliable transit system, we all reap the benefits: less congestion, safer streets, cleaner air, and a healthier city for everyone.
Seniors
Somerville’s seniors and retirees are a vital part of our city—longtime neighbors, caregivers, and volunteers who hold together the web of community across generations. Yet too often, city policies are not designed with older residents in mind.
One in ten residents are 65 or older, and on average their incomes are less than one-third of the citywide median. Many live on fixed incomes while facing rising housing costs, property taxes, and fees. Our housing strategy needs to work for all ages: preserving affordable units, expanding permanently affordable homes through the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, and ensuring new development supports transit mobility so older residents can get where they need to go. We should also expand the senior property tax deferral program by updating wealth limits so more longtime homeowners can stay in their neighborhoods.
Mobility and safety must be treated as essential. For years, residents have asked the city to clear snow at curb cuts and intersections, but dangerous mounds remain after every storm. Cracked sidewalks and broken crosswalks also leave many stretches impassible. We should make sidewalk access a central part of snow removal, deploy rapid-response 311 crews, and send staff on neighborhood walks with residents to identify problems. When we repave, we should prioritize the streets that are hardest for pedestrians to cross. We should also expand the Door2Door van service so it can be used with less advance notice and for a wider range of purposes, giving seniors more freedom and flexibility. And seniors deserve a parking sticker allowing up to two hours at meters without using the app—a simple step that Arlington already takes, and that Somerville should adopt.
Seniors need a real voice in government. I support creating a Senior Liaison Officer: a full-time advocate who works with the Mayor, the City Council, and the Council on Aging, while also serving as the first-stop call for seniors navigating City Hall.
Also, in this election season, I’ve been sent candidate questionnaires by many Somerville groups—but I was surprised to learn that there is no such questionnaire for seniors’ issues! Thankfully, a group involved with the Massachusetts Senior Action Council is putting one together now; I will work to support a robust questionnaire in Somerville for senior issues both this election season and for the future, to help put these concerns firmly on the agenda in every election.
Seniors contribute enormously to civic life, and they deserve dignity, safety, and representation. A city that works for seniors is a city that works better for everyone.
City Communication
Clear communication is a fundamental responsibility of city government—but too often, it's an afterthought. Residents shouldn’t be in the dark if their polling place has changed, or struggle to pin down afterschool program details, or public meeting times.
Our city has made great progress with its messaging infrastructure; the Somerville City Alerts system provides a useful base for learning about events and interruptions relevant to us, via email or text. However, this system is fragmented; you can’t see all of the info you can subscribe to in one place. It’s also underused; dozens of important events go unmentioned, and interested residents often have no idea that crucial city meetings are happening just a few blocks away. We need a deep overhaul of this system, and we should do more messaging by putting public digital signs in key locations, as many other cities do.
We also need stronger leadership from City Hall around best practices in communication. I’ve enrolled my kids in city programs, only to be left in the dark about whether they are actually happening, where and when; and city web pages often omit crucial information, or duplicate partial information piecemeal.
We should end guesswork and uncertainty, ensuring that public programs have reliable, timely updates. Better communication builds trust, empowers residents, and ensures everyone can fully participate—making our city government as transparent, accessible, and responsive as our community deserves.
Constituent Services, Local Knowledge
Somerville residents know our neighborhoods best. We know our own lines of work best. So why is it so hard, sometimes, to be heard? Our city has exceptional people and ideas, but too often their expertise gets stuck in bureaucracy—especially in the mayor’s office. Great suggestions stall; urgent needs go unanswered.
I’m committed to harnessing the expertise and goodwill we have, right here in Somerville. That means relying less on expensive outside consultants, and empowering city employees who deeply understand their work. It means that constituent services must be proactive, responsive, and dedicated to getting results, ensuring that our government truly reflects the extraordinary knowledge and spirit of our community.
Israel/Palestine Ballot Question
Please see this video essay I wrote about Somerville’s Israel/Palestine ballot question.
Here also are my responses to the Somerville for Palestine questionnaire and the Shalom Somerville questionnaire,