Ward 7 Alderman Bob Trane boasts seven years in the chamber. ~Photo by Andrew Firestone

By Andrew Firestone

As an incumbent, Alderman Bob Trane has had a lot to face down in this election for Ward 7 alderman. Several months ago, Trane was put out of commission following serious injury in a car accident in which he was struck from behind. Returning to duty, Trane is touting his work in “thinking outside the box” and his time of service to the city as Alderman since 2004 in his re-election bid.

“I work really hard at what I do, I enjoy the job more than anything else. I do it with my heart,” said Trane in an interview with The Somerville News. “It’s people not politics. It’s served me well, thinking that way. I care about people, I like talking to people.”

One group of people Trane has worked for in his time was the senior citizens of Somerville. “We have a lot of seniors that live in Ward 7. They own their home but they are living on a fixed income. They’re what they call house-rich but cash-poor.”

“Their pensions aren’t keeping up with [the bills], the value on their houses are skyrocketing. You start to see the turning point where they can’t keep on going.”

Seeing that there was a problem, Trane worked with the Somerville Housing Authority and the Visiting Nurses assisted living community to combine their resources and work to prevent seniors from having to make undesirable choices.

“They could be living independently, but they needed a little help. Unfortunately, what I see all too often is that they’re being pushed into nursing homes, and they didn’t need to be there. They just needed a little bit of a helping hand,” he said.

“We put up two beautiful new buildings, great housing for seniors,” he said. “It helps people stay independent in their own neighborhoods.”

Trane has worked with Mayor Joseph Curtatone on several initiatives, including efforts to push through the Group Insurance Commission earlier this summer. “That was extremely tough for me,” he said. “My own mother was up there testifying against GIC. Imagine the over-whelming pressure that I was getting at home voting on that issue.”

However, Trane said he did it because it was the only way to save the city from further debt. “You can’t make the same decisions over and over again, you have to make a change. We’re putting money aside so that anyone who has an on-going chronic illness, we’re going to be able to help those people so nobody ends up not getting help,” he said.

“I’m going to keep an eye on this all the way through, so if it’s not working for us the way it’s supposed to work, I’ll be the first one to stand up and say ‘let’s make a change.’ Right now, anyway you go, it’s the only option we have,” he said.

Trane noted that low testing scores had led to the perception that their schools were not functioning properly. As a former chairman of the school council of the West Somerville Neighborhood School, he said that he didn’t know why this was, considering the many stellar students who pass through the system.

“So many people put stock in the MCAS scores, and that’s it. They don’t look at the big picture of what’s going on here. You have to look at it from the perspective of what it is,” he said.

Trane also recently proposed an ordinance to stop late-night parties, especially after one of the groups of partiers in Ward 7 had defaced the property of a neighbor who complained about the noise. Calling it a waste of City resources, Trane passed the ordinance that would place more of a burden upon absentee landlords in the area.

“If you’ve got kids who have to go to school in the morning, or you have to get up at seven o’clock to go to work, it’s not a great thing,” he said.

Looking at the status of Somerville, Trane said he was proud of how the city drew the envy of many of its neighbors.

“We want to make Somerville a great place to live and to work, and people from outside the city see that too, and they want to be a part of it,” he said.