The issues that matter to Newton
Climate
Newton faces no more urgent issue than climate change. We must make climate action our priority and do what we can at the municipal level to reduce greenhouse emissions. Reducing climate impact must be our guiding principle in all city decision-making, especially on transportation, new construction, and housing.
As the saying goes, the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best is today. Newton has been incurring a tree canopy debt for decades. The second best time to start paying that debt is today.
Newton is already beginning to feel the impact of climate change, mostly in the form of flooding. We must invest in climate resilience
Education
An important challenge facing the City Council is how to provide more financial stability for our public schools. We must fully fund our schools, including fair and competitive compensation for our professional and para-professional educators.
Our working parents need high-quality, dependable after-school programs. I’ll work to ensure that the city is working with these critical partners to find the space for students to learn and grow.
Housing
As a community, we want to have neighbors from all walks of life. We want economic diversity. We want folks at all stages of their lives. We want young families. And, we especially want to support folks who want to live in Newton as they transition from one stage to the next.
This vision requires a wider range of housing options: from more affordable rental apartments for young professionals, to smaller homes in two- and three-family houses for younger families, to places that provide a wide-range of amenities and services tailored to seniors.
Having more housing in Newton — particularly, but not exclusively, near transit — is one of the more important actions that we can take to reduce overall vehicle miles travelled and, therefore, reduce greenhouse emissions.
Our regional economic future is closely tied to the acute housing shortage in eastern Massachusetts. All of the region — Newton included — must make it possible to build substantially more housing.
Transportation
Given that the city’s priority should be reducing greenhouse emissions, the guiding principle for transportation should be to reduce traffic. We need an overall strategy and goals for a meaningful reduction in vehicle-miles-travelled per household.
We must figure out how to adequately fund maintenance of our streets and sidewalks. This is going to be come even more challenging if federal funding reduces available state funding for road repair.
As we repair our roads, we should not simply be re-paving the roads exactly as they are designed. There are well-known, tested strategies for calming traffic on our largely residential streets. We should implement those strategies in a thoughtful, planned way.