My Platform

Every household budget in America has been affected by historically high inflation since COVID disrupted life just five years ago. Our city expenses are not immune from those rising costs, whether that’s the cost of electricity, insurance, and fuel; the need to pay our teachers and city workers a competitive wage to run our city; or the rapidly rising costs of contracted services like construction, water delivery, or trash collection.

For the past several years, the City Council has voted for multi-million dollar budget cuts in an attempt to adjust our city’s operation to this new normal.

We can no longer allow austerity to force our city off a fiscal cliff:

  • Proposition 2.5 means we can only collect an additional 2.5% in overall tax revenue each year - except for extra tax dollars from newly constructed developments.

  • Teachers, police, firefighters, and public works union contracts are renewed every three years, and typically ask for funding to match inflation which is near 3%.

  • In ten years, our pension obligation will grow 60% from $7.5m today to over $12m in 2035. That increase of $4.5m is almost twice the city’s 2025 overall budget cuts —in a single line item.

  • Other inflation-exposed costs are rising at rates far higher than Prop 2.5 or inflation can sustain: electricity, natural gas, and products exposed to new import taxes and tarrifs.

As a City Councilor, I know there is only one way for our city to correct course - we must pass a tax override. As a City Councilor, I’ve voted twice to put an override on the ballot. As a resident of Melrose, I’ve supported that override with my own words and my actions, through canvassing, and voting yes.

But like any homeowner, my personal budget has its limits. That’s why I’ve personally supported millions of dollars in grant funding to offset roadway and sidewalk improvements:

  • Initiated partnership between Metropolitan Planning Organization and Melrose to participate in a $10m vision zero grant.

  • Supported Complete Streets grants for $400,000 in school sidewalk funding.

  • Worked on grants that paid for the first Melrose parklet, our Slow Streets neighborhood safety program, and the Melrose Traffic Calming Toolkit.

Sound and Funded Budgets.

Safer streets & Sidewalks.

Across America, a revolution in safety and accessibility are saving lives and making it easier and more comfortable to walk, bike and drive around town. As a two-term City Councilor, I’ve worked with neighbors and the city to bring hundreds of thousands of dollars in investment for new sidewalks, and create better conditions for pedestrian and bicyclist access to schools, transit, shopping, and parks in dozens of locations.

As a member of the regional planning organization’s multi-community task force for Vision Zero, I’ve established working relationships and a reputation for fighting for safe streets alongside decision-makers at the state and local level, including Melrose DPW, MassDOT, DCR, and the state legislature to ensure we leave no idea —or dollar— behind.

As at-large councilor, I will continue the work I’ve carried out since 2019 to expand neighborhood traffic calming to give residents city-wide more proven options to improve the safety of their street for people of all ages and abilities. I’ll continue to push for smart improvements to major roadway projects such as a proposed redesign of Lebanon street, intersection improvements at near schools, and a safer, calmer Lynn Fells Parkway.

Protect our parks and conservation lands

Melrose is fortunate to have more residents living within walking distance to open space than 95% of cities in America, through a combination of fields, parks, and conservation lands. These important spaces must be properly stewarded and planned for so they remain accessible and fun for all generations.

Tree canopy protection will become more and more neccesary as we work to grow our city’s housing stock and balance our need for growth with our historic character as a tree-lined city. My work to develop a tree canopy protection ordinance involved work with city staff, community groups, and my fellow councilors to find a way to ensure we can protect our green space and support housing growth goals in harmony.

The Community Preservation Act is the best and fastest solution we have to fund our city’s affordable housing, historic preservation, & open space and recreation needs. For half the monthly cost of Netflix per household, we could secure $300,000 or more in state matching funds earmarked only for affordable housing, historic preservation, and open space and recreation. Better yet, the $1m in revenue it would bring into the city would offset other expenses, allowing us to move forward with less debt and lower taxes. The CPA is initiated by ballot, and funded through a small fee on property taxes that does not increase over time. We can exclude low-income households, and low/moderate income seniors, and waive the first $100,000 in assessed value, leading to an approximate increase in costs of around $50-$100 per year.

Adopting the CPA would also protect Melrose from “40b” developments that ignore our zoning, and allow us to bond against future CPA revenue for large projects.

Your Voice at City Hall

I provide residents with access to city hall, and work closely with city staff, other councilors, and the mayor’s office to broker solutions to tough problems and seek out broad community input on solutions, to hear from as many people as possible, and avoid being influenced by the loudest, most powerful, and most persistent voices among us.

idea: New council committees for focused on community goals.

I will work with councilors to investigate the potential for creating committees of the City Council geared at finding solutions to our most pressing problems and finding the best solutions. Some of the committees we could create include a working group on safe and complete streets, a tree canopy protection committee, a climate/net zero committee, and even an innovation committee that would be tasked with generating new ideas, for example exploring the economic benefits of placemaking, pursuing new grant funding opportunities to plan for increasing our commercial property, and bringing new revenue generating programs to the city.