The following item was mailed out to a few thousand Ward 5 households in February 2021. You can sign up to receive more frequent Ward or political newsletters by email here.
Dear Ward 5 constituent,
With my first year in office complete, I wanted to let you know what I have been working on so far and what I hope to achieve in the second half of the term. I believe it is important for residents to hear from elected officials more than just at election time.
SERVING YOU
Council President Susan Albright assigned me to the Finance Committee and the Programs & Services Committee, both of which had busy agendas during this crisis. I was also appointed to the Council Rules Reform subcommittee.
The pandemic has profoundly altered the course of my first Council term, but we went virtual immediately and did not miss a meeting. Public participation has been significantly higher than at our in-person meetings, and we are exploring changes to allow more public engagement from home in our post-pandemic meetings.
I have worked hard to answer most emails and calls within hours, and I have dropped by on socially distanced home visits for some households who needed special assistance. (Newton’s 311 reporting system remains a better option in most cases because it automatically creates a record for city staff to work on.) I continue to attend monthly neighborhood area council meetings. And I email a newsletter with detailed Council and community updates, from policy to road improvements: billhumphrey.org/newsletter.
I championed emergency rental assistance funding throughout the crisis, and last spring, I walked door-to-door dropping off application info to Ward 5 apartments. The Council has also held discussions on measures to help our restaurants survive this period and to strengthen our village centers permanently with more walkable streets. I am hopeful we can make greater progress on these fronts in the new year.
I also worked with my colleagues to pass a symbolic change to the City of Newton calendar to rename Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples' Day, with an Italian-American heritage day to be determined at a later date. We held a thoughtful process on this change, including a public hearing with indigenous neighbors. I also suggested some locally significant Italian-Americans to celebrate separately, but we were unable to reach consensus on that.
BUDGETARY PRIORITIES AND POLICE REFORM
The pandemic and its economic effects also created new costs and hurt revenues. Some infrastructure and facilities projects were put on hold, while others (including playground disability access) were accelerated. I alerted residents, via social media, that the proposed budget last year was going to eliminate Sunday library hours, a change many councilors feared could become permanent. Residents responded with hundreds of emails to the Council and Mayor asking for Sunday hours to be restored. Mayor Fuller agreed, and she also deferred purchasing any new police cruisers during this fiscal crunch, which I had raised questions about in the City Council, given how many departments experienced deferrals.
In response to racial justice protests, Mayor Fuller created a police reform task force to provide a comprehensive review of the department. I led my colleagues in two (unsuccessful) budget votes to leave vacant patrol officer positions open until after that review, so that we know what job we expect our officers to do.
Our budget should reflect the public’s needs and priorities. We should reallocate some resources from armed police to unarmed teams specializing in mental health, social work, and minor code enforcement. Many tasks we assign our police are not what they are primarily trained for, and they have made clear they do not want all of these roles.
One specific example that I have been heavily involved in is reforming our unworkable ordinance around noisy, polluting gas leaf blowers. We have reached some tentative changes to make the rules easier to understand and follow up front, for both residents and landscapers, but we are still stuck on the question of enforcement. Currently, the ordinance is almost never enforced. Most of us (including our police officers) recognize it is absurd to call armed police to deal with a leaf blower. Nobody is really happy with the current situation. So, why not make sure our budgets and our laws reflect that?
ZONING AND HOUSING
The City Council is a decade into its discussions of comprehensive zoning redesign. Due to the complexity of the subject and the review of each chapter for potential revisions, drafting work will continue into at least the next term.
I do not serve on the Zoning & Planning Committee, but I continue to meet with City Councilors and citizens, as well as City Planning staff, to brainstorm recommendations. These range from very specific corrections to the proposed new zoning map to bigger ideas like a housing trust, which the Council is now proposing.
I remain committed to a zoning redesign outcome that promotes environmental sustainability and genuine affordability. Our zoning code should align home construction or preservation design parameters with those goals and make homeowner renovation processes less confusing. Our overall zoning map should support those goals, too.
Zoning is always a challenge because it intersects with so many issues and because residents often have conflicting priorities. People often hope to maximize their own rights to make changes while restricting changes by those around them. Some ideas the Council considered last year have already been withdrawn, as part of that balancing.
FUTURE PLANS
In 2021, my Ward 5 at-large colleagues and I will keep advocating for better road repairs and road safety improvements. The Council will move forward on plans for a new or fully renovated senior center in Newtonville. We also hope to continue identifying new environmental action items. I am leading the effort to obtain state permission to allow 16- and 17-year-old residents to participate in our municipal elections to help younger residents have more of a voice in the community and become and remain regular voters.
I am enjoying the work of serving as your ward councilor, and I feel we are making progress on the priorities of our ward and in making Newton a community for everyone. I intend to seek re-election in November of this year to keep building on this progress. Since we don’t yet know how the pandemic will affect door-to-door conversation opportunities, I hope you will let me know if you plan to support me or if you have feedback on my work.