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(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries and letters to the Editor of The Somerville Times belong solely to the authors and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville Times, its staff or publishers)
Becca Miller for Ward 7 Councilor
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With the municipal election only days away, Somerville voters are carefully considering who they want to represent them on city council and in the mayor’s office next year. Whatever happens, we know this election will mean a big change, because we’re going to have a new mayor and at least five new councilors, including in my own ward 7.
I will be voting for Becca Miller and hope you will join me in ensuring she is our next Ward 7 Councilor. I’ve been a homeowner in West Somerville for 34 years, and I’ve seen how big developers make millions off sweetheart deals that the city foots the bill for: by raising my property taxes.
Our neighbors struggle to pay increasing taxes and water bills to stay in their homes. When they decide to sell and move to a cheaper town, the community we have built here together gets a little weaker. It used to be that after you raised your kids in Somerville, they could purchase a home near you and stay close. That’s unachievable for most now. And that is disgraceful!
Becca has the vision to fight for a housing policy that works for all of us, whether you’re a homeowner like me, or a renter, whether you’ve lived here 30 years, or moved in last year. She’ll fight for more affordable housing, tenant protections, and to tax big developers so they pay for things like new sewer systems their construction will require and not expect my water bill to make up the difference.
Becca is a climate activist, and she’s the only candidate who has called for making Somerville Carbon Neutral by 2030. Our city’s plan calls for that in 2050, but I know that’s not soon enough to catch up from the setbacks of the last 5 years in Washington. Becca doesn’t just have ideas, she knows how to get things done.
I was impressed to learn about her work over the years at the State House, winning more than $47M in funding for food security programs to ensure that everyone in this state can get healthy food and live a decent life.
She doesn’t just work with people who agree with her; one of the lead sponsors of her legislation is a Republican! She has to work with people who are conservative, people who are moderate, and people who are liberals. I know she will be able to bring all of us in Somerville together after the election.
Yes, she’s a democratic socialist. To me, that means she puts the needs of her community first, before corporate profits and political expediency. She’s fighting for policies that will help the many in Somerville – housing affordability; better, greener city infrastructure; and fully funded city services. To me, electing a socialist means electing someone who has the beliefs and ability to follow through on an agenda that will help residents to flourish.
I’m supporting Becca Miller because she has the experience, the vision, and the commitment to enact the policies we need with the rest of the council. I ask you to join me in voting for Becca Miller on Tuesday, November 2.
Patricia Thatcher
Ward 7 Resident
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Does the candidate recognize that when you raise taxes and fees on developers that those costs are then passed on to the renters and buyers, therefore increasing the cost of housing?
Living in Somerville is a choice and not a right. It’s not the governments role to fund or enact laws to fulfill someone’s wish list. The self-entitled crowd needs to learn to live within their means just as most people do. If one can’t afford to live in Somerville then it’s up to them to find housing in a more affordable community and live within their means.
And let them eat cake, right? Have another BMW, Your Majesty. There’ll be plenty of parking spaces available once you get that “self-entitled crowd” out of your sight. Despicable.
Becca moved here about 5 years ago knowing full well the housing situation. If she wanted to make a difference she should have moved to Lynn. These activists are getting around to fixing the barn door but the horses have been in the next county for 20 years.
Our Revolution’s slogan is “ORGANIZE TO WIN” which perfectly sums up what they care about. Power. Becca Miller is no exception.
The idea that Becca or her slate is going to do anything about affordability is laughable. If anything electing a slate of overeducated underemployed upper middle class socialists is only going to attract more of the same, driving housing costs up further. Ending the “revolution” would do more to moderate housing prices than anything else.
Politics is all about power. And in Somerville, big landlords, banks, real estate developers and large employers like Tufts and Partners (MGH-Brigham) have had the upper hand for far too long. From what I see, electing the Our Revolution slate would help to provide some balance to their continued plundering of our community and rapacious greed!
Rand, If you think the people from our revolution are change agents then I don’t know what to say. You must be new here. They have controlled this city for the last dozen years… they’re not going to balance anything out. There is no one running for office who dares to say or do anything against them. Curtatone bent over backwards for them along with all the councilors. What an embarrassment.
So, if you want someone to balance out all the special interests and power then look elsewhere. Our Revolution IS the special interest. The only thing that drives them is control and power. Buyer beware.
Our Revolution is a lot like Trump. Great at stirring up hate and discontent and rubbish at actually accomplishing anything.
You want a crowd incited to near riot? They got that covered.
Meaningful legislation, not so much.
Well Rand in the last four years or so that ORS candidates have held office, has there been any let up in this “plundering of our community and rapacious greed”? Nope! But I now need a license or a permit or a note from Al Gore to use a leaf blower. My polyamorous partners and I can trip on psychedelics on the way to the weed store because our legislative priorities are apparently set by the ghost of Hunter S. Thompson. Drawn out meetings over the evils of artificial turf and long soliloquies about eighteen inches of dirt at Conway Park. Y’all aren’t exactly storming the Bastille here.
Where your ORS folks exercised real power was in the year-long and divisive closure of the city schools. For many parents like myself, the denial of in-person instruction to even the most vulnerable kids and the demonization of parents made shockingly clear how little this city cares about its children and youth. Fewer than one in six Somerville households are raising children here. About a third of young families leave the city before kindergarten and less than half will be here for high school. By the numbers, dog owners have more political power than families raising kids. Not hindered by morals or any sense of decency, most of our electeds chose to use the children of Somerville as pawns to further their political ambitions or pursue some ideological goal. Our political dialogue is driven by a self-appointed activist class defined by groups like ORS, YIMBY Somerville, Bike Somerville, Green Somerville. Families with children along with the elderly and the disabled don’t fit conveniently into their visions of “radical transformative change”. It’s ironic that the members of these group most likely hashtagged “kidsincages” and liked/friended/retweeted Greta Thunberg but when it came to the kids growing-up around, screw ’em!
My child, like so many others, was greatly hurt by the school closure. My wife and I have spent considerable time working through an overwhelmed adolescent mental health system to get help. Becca Miller’s opponent, Judith Pineda Neufeld, is one of the only candidates to acknowledge the damage done to so many of the city’s children and the pressing need to improve the mental health response. The aspiring Che’s and self-styled Malcolm X’s that make-up the ORS ticket haven’t said boo about this. It’s excruciating to watch your kid fall apart in front of you. But I guess you’ve got to be willing to accept some collateral damage in a revolution right Rand?
I used to say that I raise my children in Somerville because I wanted them to grow-up with people who are different from them. To grow up in a place where they can learn to be independent. A place with ready access to educational and cultural opportunities. I wanted my kids to grow up where the struggles of others aren’t easily hidden or ignored. But over the last year, the suffering of my child and the treatment of families here have left me bitter. Now I tell people I raise my kids here because I want them to see that educational attainment doesn’t make one a good person. You can have degrees from Wellesley and Harvard and still be a callous, dismissive ideologue. Anymore I say I raise my kids here because I want them to see that the monetized narcissism of social media isn’t real community and others around them aren’t extras in their egocentric drama. I raise my kids here because I don’t want them, at the age of 28 or 29, to one day lookup from their avocado toast, suddenly realize the world treats people differently based on their race, their gender, their ethnicity, their sexual orientation, slap a pride flag emoji or hashtag next to their Twitter handle and call it a day. Rand, I raise my kids here because I want them to be more honest, more genuine and more caring than any of your revolutionaries!
JWE…..on the mark with wisdom and wit! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
What a steamy load. I should be paid for the time it took to slog through all that tripe. But you don’t like to pay, do you?
ORS and DSA activists love talking about how they are standing up to developers and real estate interests. Look around you at what is happening since Our Revolution took over in 2017. Large development interests have never had it better.
When ORS/DSA talk about real estate interests they also mean individual property owners especially long time homeowners and small landlords. Standing up to them is where ORS/DSA really have been successful. ORS/DSA activists resent them because they have something they want.
ORS and DSA love to talk about affordable housing like no one ever thought of it before. How much has been created since the 2017 revolution? How much is in the pipeline? Not much. Any new affordable housing being created is almost always thanks to programs and policies passed by the prior Board of Aldermen. I will give the ORS Council credit though they are doing a great job tweeting about the issue and are clearly winning at ideological posturing.
Poor Union Square where ORS/DSA pioneered their oppositional organizing tactics. Budding professional organizers demanded power under the slogan “development without displacement”. Activists including Rand Wilson demanded the right to negotiate a private deal branded a Community Benefits Agreement and treated as opponents anyone in the community who dared question or cared about anything else. They won and got to negotiate their agreement and realized how difficult it was to deal with a complex issue after the organizing was done. The CBA was a dud. A few years later and many of the organizers have moved on from Somerville. I challenge anyone to find someone who has been helped from being displaced as a result of their CBA.
What happened in Union Square is a preview of where the City is headed if the ORS/DSA slate wins. Hopefully people have learned to see through the rhetoric and not blindly vote the slate.
As anyone who has read my column in this paper would know, I am not a big fan of ORS/DSA – and I did not support Becca Miller’s candidacy. But most of these comments are so full of hatred and wild exaggerations of what ORS has done these past 4 years and what Becca stands for that they serve more as self parody rather than serious political comments.
Rather than engage any further with the those of you who seem to relish in off the wall attacks…that’s all I’ll say. Go after me, it you want. But you might want to take a honest look at what Becca Miller ran on before you foolishly say any more in your effort to turn her and her political allies into arch villains.
Ken, I don’t see any hatred or angry posts except for your unhinged responses and well… our resident troll (Casimir). I really do wish Casimir had better comic material, but I don’t believe he’s the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree.
and “Becca” lost. Good riddance as she seemed to want to babble about issues that she would have had no control over. Councilors need to realize they represent LOCAL issues for their ward residents. Their job is to help fix a parking ticket, get a waiver or variance for a property and make sure plows don’t bury driveways. Other than that… really we have no use for them.
Troll? Moi? Better check yourself, genius. All I ever do is call the tax dodging bigots like you on their B.S.
All your repulsive comments accomplish is to confirm that, in lieu of any cogent arguments to advance your agenda, all you’ve got are infantile insults.
Looks like a totally burned out bulb to me. Sit your ass down.