Ward 5 contains sections of five villages; Waban, Newton Upper Falls, Newton Highlands, Newton Lower Falls and West Newton. I have worked tirelessly to keep up with and address the issues facing residents in each neighborhood and to develop and deliver financially feasible and politically achievable solutions for local problems.

I was able to persuade my fellow aldermen to create a School Traffic Safety Committee because I was concerned about school traffic issues starting with our own Zervas Elementary School.

I work on traffic and parking issues throughout the community and have developed many working relationships with our police and fire departments. I regularly meet with the School Safety Officer about the speed of cars through our community and the safety of children getting to school by bus or on foot. Forgive the pun, but I have driven the traffic calming topic until it finally became an official discussion item.  Indeed, this took many years of bringing the topic to the table before the Board of Aldermen began to view it as realistic traffic tool. I have been working for the past several years to develop the appropriate policy to guide site specific solutions.

I worked with parents to improve the Emerson School Playground in Upper Falls and the Warren Lincoln Playground in Waban. I helped start the Newton Food Pantry which is now located in Waban Square and I was one of the founders of the Brigham Community House in Newton Highlands to provide programs and services especially for teens from Newton South and for teens from all over the city.  There are no other teen programs south of Washington Street.

There will be a substantial infusion of capital funds for Ward 5's facilities: Angier and Zervas are two out of the top three schools in the facility needs study sent to the state, with Countryside not far behind. I have supported every increase to the school's operating budget and all capital improvement projects. In addition, the Eliot street fire station will be the second firehouse renovated. I have supported every fire and Police department budget request and improvement for equipment or facilities.

I was one of four alderman appointed in 2002 to the Comprehensive Planning Advisory  Committee for The Newton That We Want. Members of the community, Board of Aldermen, and City Departments spent years working on the comprehensive master plan for the direction of growth and development for our city. Working with our zoning code which currently gives us the Newton we do NOT want, I filed legislation urging the Mayor to hire outside professionals to deal with our outmoded, cumbersome zoning ordinances that have too many loop holes and encourages the kind of housing we do not want. I am a senior member on the Land Use Committee and have supported the appropriate development of our community from housing to business. We need to find a way to encourage the type of development that is currently too risky for developers to propose as the process is long and expensive. Instead they opt for what is quick and cheap. We are losing our great opportunities as we are a built out community and parcels are harder to find.

Our public buildings have suffered from a lack of maintenance for many decades. Greater demands on our budget, rising payroll costs, health insurance and utilities, all costs we do not control, have created a structural deficit. The health of our city is dependent upon the health of the Federal Government and our State Government. Both those sources of revenue have shrunk because they are facing the same kinds of challenges.  Therefore we need to take advantage of opportunities such as redevelopment projects and encourage the Comprehensive Planning principles to be adopted for our future financial needs or Newton will stagnate.