The Town Clerk has Mailed out Ballots
In a few sentences, how do you approach questions related to housing? Do you generally support building more multifamily housing in Brookline? How do you feel about density when it comes to housing?
Brookline needs more multifamily housing broadly and more density for related and separate reasons. We have a housing crisis, where many types of housing are unavailable at almost any price, desirable types of housing are not allowed to be built, and the intense demand pushing up prices reduces our diversity as a Town.
Density is a great way to bring in more housing, but also provides benefits unrelated to the direct housing shortage. It improves walkability of neighborhoods, discourages sprawl, makes public transit more viable, increases the customer base for local businesses, and encourages many other climate-friendly practices.
Housing policy is closely linked to other policy/political areas, such as transit, racial justice, and environmental policy. How do you think about housing policy as it interacts with these other issue areas?
(a) Housing & Transportation
Housing and transportation are inexorably linked as land use concepts. The transportation infrastructure we build helps to dictate the types of housing viable in certain locations and the housing forms we allow affects the viability of transportation options. Brookline, as a “streetcar suburb” was built with a fundamental concept of moderate-to-high density living supported by robust local options within walking/rolling and biking distances with significant abilities to reach more distant locations via public transit. The “neighborhood character” we value in Brookline is based on these land use principles. Our ordinances and practices of the last 80 years have eroded our ability to maintain and renew this form over time; by planning for and prioritizing cars, we encourage more sprawl, less pleasant streetscapes, and worse health and safety outcomes for our residents and visitors.
We must tackle these issues simultaneously, building more housing (including at historic or higher densities), making it easy for folks to opt for public transit. Things are getting better on the T and we should be riding that wave to work with the MBTA as the Better Bus Network and Green Line Transformation programs move forward.
(b) Housing & Racial Justice
Housing and racial justice need not to have been conceptually linked, but American history has tightly coupled these items. We in Brookline and nationwide need to do the decades of hard work to break this link and end the use of housing policy as a shield for overt, casual, or unthinking racism and racist outcomes.
Brookline invented the racial housing covenant, a Brookliner founded the Immigration Restriction League and led the charge to ban three-deckers statewide to deny housing to immigrants, and the fingerprints of redlining can be seen in our zoning code today by simply overlaying the two maps. As we reform our zoning and housing policies, we must keep these issues front and center, seek out opportunities to directly counteract the multi-generational harm of past policies, not allow people with racist intent to shield themselves with housing policies, and ensure that our next round of changes center voices of those still struggling to overcome these barriers.
(c) Housing & Climate Change
Our housing and land use choices have a direct impact on climate outcomes. Denser and more urban living dramatically reduces the carbon impact of day-to-day life. Communities like Brookline make it easy to walk/roll, to cycle/scoot, and to use public transportation to achieve many of life’s day-to-day needs. By reducing or eliminating car use, the direct carbon emissions of all of those actions are similarly mitigated. Beyond transportation, though, denser living means fewer cubic feet to heat and cool (and shared walls and roofs help insulate the spaces we use), fewer carbon-intensive resources needed to provide public services (e.g., fertilizing playing fields or plowing sidewalks and streets), and improving the viability of pooled resources that enable fewer single-person trips (e.g., grocery delivery vans). Moreover, in a growing population, housing will be built somewhere, and encouraging density in places like Brookline means fewer forests and other greenfields demolished to make room for high sprawl and carbon-intensive housing.
(d) Housing & Economic Development
We need more development, residential and commercial in town. The opportunities we have to reconsider our land use allows us the chance to build mixed-use where we do not have it and to build more of everything. Our relaxation of commercial parking minimums some years back should aide us in converting underused lots into more commercial and mixed-use buildings.
In 2021, the legislature passed a law requiring 175 cities and towns with MBTA stations, including Brookline, to establish a zoning district in which multifamily housing is permitted as-of-right—that is, without needing any variances or special permits. In November 2023, Town Meeting overwhelmingly approved Brookline’s Consensus MBTA-CA compliant zoning package focused on allowing more homes on Harvard Street.
Despite adopting the 2023 Harvard Street rezoning this adoption, since rezoning Harvard Street in 2023, only one parcel has been developed, creating just three new homes and a day care center. Meanwhile, nearby peer communities, including Lexington, Newton, and Watertown, are permitting and building significant mixed-use and multi-family housing under their MBTA-CA zoning. Harvard Street’s zoning, as adopted, does not appear to support financially feasible development. Not only have market economics changed drastically since 2023, but Brookline’s Consensus Plan adopted zoning regulations for Harvard Street that are outside the standards adopted by such peer communities, namely:
1. Lower height restrictions: Brookline capped building height on Harvard Street at 4 stories, whereas peer communities allow 5-7 stories.
2. Stricter affordable housing requirements: Whereas development elsewhere in Brookline requires 15% minimum affordable housing requirements or an equivalent cash-in-lieu-of-units payment into the Affordable Housing Trust, under the MBTA-CA Consensus plan, development on Harvard Street must be 20-25% affordable housing, with no option to pay into the Housing Trust.
While the Consensus Plan has been a great first step to encourage mixed-use development, do you agree that additional reforms are needed to spur housing production and do you have ideas to fine-tune the zoning to match the success of other peer communities?
I'm all in favor of continuing to liberalize our zoning code to allow for greater density as-of-right everywhere in Town. We also knew that the MBTA-CA zoning was not going to be an immediate fix for anything and so I'm less concerned about the need for specific action on this zone specifically. If we are to make these changes (and they are good changes!), we should do it on all our main streets, not just this one.
For two years, the Brookline Planning Department has been negotiating with developers and analyzing potential impact to the community to develop an area along Route 9 called the Chestnut Hill Commercial Area. At the next Town Meeting in May 2026, it is planned that Town Meeting Members will debate and vote on three proposed warrant articles that would allow building of a new, vibrant neighborhood with almost 250 new homes, estimated to generate roughly $470k per month in tax revenue. Recently some nearby community members have recommended that the two years of negotiation and study are insufficient and recommend pulling the warrant articles from the May Town Meeting – indefinitely pausing the development effort.
Do you support the idea of allowing a significant project in Chestnut Hill West that will create meaningful benefits to the Town at large? More broadly, should we prioritize rezoning efforts to allow for new mixed-use projects in key commercial areas as identified in past Town studies and reports?
We absolutely should pass these articles and get it done. We should also make it easier in general to do these kinds of projects such that they do not take years to negotiate and special warrant articles to approve and certainly not such that a handful of NIMBYs can block all progress.
A proposal is likely to come before Town Meeting that would allow a 7-story apartment building with 103 new homes, including 16 affordable homes, to be built on a parking lot on Pleasant Street across from the Coolidge Corner library.
How do you think of a project like this?
This would be a great addition to the Coolidge Corner neighborhood (Selected)
May be a good project, but it might be too big or create other problems in the neighborhood
Town Meeting shouldn't be changing zoning to allow more density than what is already allowed
A loss of parking in Coolidge Corner shouldn't be celebrated
Need more information
What do you believe are the most significant challenges currently facing Town Meeting? How would you propose addressing these issues?
Our system of local government is ill-suited to running the Town. In the absence of a Charter Commission we need to take a long, hard look at the conduct of Town Meeting. It is often intentionally hostile and current rules make actual debate or compromise essentially impossible. The biggest impediment to addressing it is having a Moderator who is interested in changing things from how they’ve always been done. While I am not expert enough in Town Meeting Time to know exactly what can be done within state law, ideas such as consent agendas or pausing debate to allow for negotiation and amendments to bring back on a future night seem like a good starting point.
In your view, what does it mean to be a progressive Town Meeting Member?
Being a progressive Town Meeting Member means sticking up for what’s right and believing we can and should do better as a Town. Brookline has a lot to love but has not always succeeded at making those amenities available to all. To be progressive in Brookline means more than shouting slogans on a street corner or resolutions about issues outside our borders; it’s fighting for racial justice across all Town departments; it’s ensuring we serve all kids in our schools, not just the ones who can qualify for AP classes or don’t need an IEP to be served; it’s ensuring our sidewalks and commercial areas are accessible to people with disabilities; it’s making Town services such as recreation programs affordable to all, among many other priorities. It’s also a core belief that we can ask more of our Town government, that we deserve more out of our Town government, and that the way to get these things is to raise the funds necessary to accomplish these goals while respecting our civil servants who work hard for us every day.
Do you support the passage of an operating override to fund Brookline’s town and school services in the May 5th election?
Yes, decisions by anti-tax extremists in the 1980s have put us, along with all Massachusetts municipalities into a predictable, and intentional, never-ending crisis. Within this crisis, overrides are the method a Town has to carefully and responsibly plan for expenses that rise with inflation or the desire for additional Town services. Yes, we absolutely need this override and yes we will need future overrides because the request for one is not a failure but instead what State law requires as part of a healthy municipal financial system.
Would you vote for warrant article 12 (Posting of Public Records Request) at May Town Meeting?
Yes, public records laws in MA are often toothless and, as a result, worthless. While we cannot solve this problem alone, we can take some steps to at least improve accountability. Moreover, I hope that evidence of the requests that go unfilled may shame the Town and, notably, elected officials who obstruct records (for example, by using work email accounts associated with their law firm and thus, making it difficult to search emails without endangering client privilege).
Would you vote for warrant articles 17 (Prohibition on Immigration Enforcement) and 25 (End ICE Collaboration) at May Town Meeting?
Yes.
Would you vote for warrant article 22 (Modernize Prop 2 1/2) at May Town Meeting?
Absolutely, as noted above, Prop 2 ½ was a right-wing extremist law designed to strangle local government into extinction. For 46 years, Brookline and other municipalities have cut and cut everything to the bone. State aid funded by the lottery and income taxes made up the difference for a while, until the year 2000 referendum to reduce the State income tax dried up that avenue as well and Brookline, among all other municipalities, is feeling the crunch every year. We need to end Prop 2 ½ if we want to build and support the local government we want and deserve.
Would you support efforts to protect residents' data, enhance data privacy, and limit mass surveillance?
Yes.
Would you vote for the Chestnut Hill Commercial Area overlay district as currently proposed?
Yes. We need more housing and more commercial development everywhere in Brookline. This is a major project that can help us achieve some of these goals and we would be foolish to give in to the NIMBYs that ignore our housing crisis, our climate crisis, and one of the few tools we have to help our local finances as well.
What do you think are the potential benefits from the projects referred to in the background information? Do you believe that they should be important priorities for the Town? Do you support them?
The fact that we are still having the same bike infrastructure arguments, decades into having ample international, national, regional, and local evidence about the value of bicycle and multimodal infrastructure is infuriating. The Washington Street project should be table stakes for ANY street project. Reliving the same arguments about parking and impacts to small businesses of proven solutions is dispiriting.
The case for the Bridle Path is equally strong on its merits but also presents a real opportunity for a multimodal jewel in the crown that is Beacon Street. We can build a model 21st century urban corridor that prominently includes transit, cycling, and walking/rolling along and a thriving business and residential district. During the brief days of a Complete Streets Brookline, I worked with Jules Milner-Brage to vet and flesh out some of his ideas that sparked the project and walked the corridor with measuring tape to talk through some of the nitty-gritty details of how to make it work.
I am less familiar with the specifics of the cycling project to Brookline High from the south (and it appears to still be early in the pipeline) but fully supportive of the goals and intent and look forward to publicly supporting the budget needed to make the rest of the planning and implementation happen.
How do the articles and reports referred to in the background information affect your views about availability of parking in Brookline? Do you believe there is a potential to better accommodate non-car modes of transportation by using our existing parking resources more effectively and freeing up some curbside space for non-car parking uses?
As implied in the summary and the vast number of studies on the subject, adding parking only creates more parking, not thriving businesses, vibrant commercial areas, or livable communities. Brookline has plenty of parking, and improvements in our transit and cycling infrastructure will only further reduce the need to devote acres of resources for parking. Alongside this better allocation of space, the Town also desperately needs a loading zone program so there is a place for delivery vehicles, ridehail/taxi users, and residents who use their own cars to make the necessary quick stops near their destination without endangering people on bicycles, taking transit, or walking/rolling in the area.
How do you and members of your family get around Brookline and the Boston area? How do your mode choices affect your views on bicycling-related issues? Are there any actions you have taken to improve bicycling in Brookline that you would like Biking Brookline and the public to know about?
I have lived carfree since leaving Missouri over 20 years ago. I’ve done it as a young single professional, as a parent with babies, and now with tweens who are learning to navigate the Town on their own. We use Zipcar when we need to, and I’m very thankful they’re around, but we accomplish a lot on transit and on foot. I personally don’t love the maintenance side of owning a vehicle and, as a result, do not often cycle, but happily use Bluebikes when the weather and destinations work. Long before children, I cycled to work semi-regularly and certainly knew the constant feeling of vulnerability when on high-speed mixed-vehicle roads. My entire professional life has been in transportation policy and have worked in national, regional, and local spaces to improve multimodal options and voice internal support for complete streets with prominent cycling in all of my roles.
With many trips in Brookline being five miles or less, how significant do you believe bicycling can be in helping Brookline meet its 2040 climate goals, and what are the best ways to maximize bicycling's potential
We cannot meet our local, Commonwealth-wide, or international goals on climate change without significant mode shift. Bicycling absolutely must be a part of the solution. As noted, the vast majority of trips by most people are short distance and low/no carbon options need to be made prominent, welcoming, and safe. Cycling is obviously not for everyone; but it can be a significant portion of the solution for many. Amsterdam and Copenhagen didn’t happen by accident or by virtue of anything special about Northern Europeans. Residents saw the possibilities and transformed their car-dependent cities into bicycling oases. More recently Paris and London have made significant strides. Notably when I lived in London in 2005-2006, I would not have once considered it reasonable to commute by bicycle. When I worked for a British employer in the late 2010s, cycling from my hotel to the office was an obvious and pleasant enough option that I eventually kept a helmet in London just for these commutes. There is no reason we cannot make the same changes here, but we need political leaders with enough will to make it happen.