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Local activist and past City Council candidate Kristen Strezo will fill the seat to be vacated by current Councilor At-Large Stephanie Hirsch. Strezo announced the news in a post on her Facebook page:
“City Councilor Stephanie Hirsch has announced that she will be stepping down from her role as City Councilor at Large. I am grateful for her hard work and commitment to Somerville and wish her the best as she moves on into her next role.
As the 5th largest vote earner, I am thrilled to honor your past support as I step up to serve in Councilor Hirsch’s place. I am, as ever, wholeheartedly devoted to making sure you’re living your best life here. And while a goal that big is truly a community effort, as your City Councilor, I assure you that I will give you my all to make it happen.
I’ve listened to your priorities this past year and they included sustaining and building an affordable Somerville, a greener city and safely enhancing our many modes of transportation like walking, biking and public transit. I am committed to, and believe in, all of these values. Your priorities are my priorities.
Over the next several weeks, I am working to make this transition as seamless as possible. I am in the process of compiling and studying past agendas and diving in deeper into our most pressing issues like COVID-19 preparedness and response. If you’d like, please share any insights you may have on the topics that each committee is discussing. Your voice matters to me.
The city will be issuing me an official email address that I will send out in my next update. If you’d like to contact me immediately, the best way is strezoatlarge@gmail.com.
I look forward to collaborating with you in this lovely city of ours.
Respectfully yours,
Kristen Strezo”
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Losing Stephanie is a hit to the city. Before becoming a councilor she had spent years working within the community to advance all sorts of things of benefit to residents – dealing with the minutia of everyday life here for residents / parents. She has an eye for detail and an awareness that neighborhood issues matter. I think she was viewed with some suspicion by the slate Our Revolution put on the council, as they viewed the job as more a springboard for national issues / response to trump, with local issues being more a matter of calling 311 & not worth their time, or even running contrary to their platform. I’m sure they’ll be glad to have Stephanie out, and Kristen (one of their own) in.
While I don’t doubt Kristen’s sincerity, I think she has a huge amount of catching up to do. Buzzwords like “affordable”, “green”, “transit”, etc.. check off the prerequisite Somerville boxes nowadays, but they represent only a sliver of what we actually need our councilors to focus on.
Anyway, welcome to the council, Kristen. Here’s to your following in Stephanie’s footsteps.
Kristen will do just fine. She’s smart, sincere, and highly driven to serve the city’s resident’s best interests. Her community service cred is just as viable as Stephanie’s. As for being a product of Our Revolution, I’m not so sure about that. She was not among those endorsed by them in the latest election. I think the previous commentor’s conservative agenda is showing. So congratulations Kristen! I know you’ll do a great job.
Kristen has been active in Somerville for years. She is/was a member and chair of the Somerville Commission for Women before Our Revolution was even a thing. Affordable housing, a greener city and accessable transit are all also goals for Somerville which predate Our Revolution.