1) Winthrop is a diverse community with a diverse array of needs. What skills will you bring to town council that will help address the needs of all constituents?

Financial Stability - We cannot control the cost of living increases or the overall economy, but what we CAN do in our role as elected officials is move the town towards financial policies and practices that make the cost of living more predictable. While I believe prior town leaders had the best intentions at heart when pushing off fee increases, debt exclusions, and overrides, that has inadvertently lead to structural deficits in our budgets and, as we've seen recently, this leads to large, sporadic, and unpredictable asks of our tax payers. Thoughtful financial policies also allow for more accurate budget forecasting which better prepares us for future needs.

1A) What do you see as Winthrop's top two priorities and what do you propose we do to address them?

Accessibility and Transparency - This is often touted as a need for communities, certainly not only Winthrop, but I do see a significant need in this area for our town. I firmly believe that the key to ensuring access and understanding of our local government is education. We have the opportunity to build resources to educate our residents on the form of government we have, which bodies, boards, or departments handle certain issues, and methods of involvement. By empowering the community to understand the 'ins and outs' of our municipal government - from the make up and role of the Town Council to the basics of municipal finance - we will open the conversations up to community members with new ideas and perspectives. Transparency follows education naturally, as processes become more clear. By ensuring that information is easily available to the public who wish to get informed, there will be a natural push for more transparency in decision making.

2) The recent construction on Revere Street and the lack of signalized pedestrian crossings at the intersection with Main St are just some recent signs of how inhospitable our streets are for young kids. How do we ensure residents feel safe walking/biking /letting their kids walk/bike to and from school?

As the council liaison to the Commission on Disabilities, I have learned so much more than I ever knew about the importance of walkable streets for everyone as well as the added stress and danger that construction causes. The Commission has discussed applying for a grant for a full accessibility study of the town. These take a remarkably detailed account of accessibility not only of streets and sidewalks, but also of all public spaces. This information paired with a robust 'sidewalk policy' that is well defined, vetted by appropriate public safety and accessibility experts, and applied to all future plans involving our streets would help ensure safety and accessibility for all.

3) Traffic in Winthrop has gotten worse for a number of reasons. How can we make alternatives to cars more appealing so fewer people choose to drive? What ways do you see Winthrop being able to alleviate traffic?

Traffic is undeniably an issue not only in Winthrop, but in the region. With the expansion of the Ferry service, I am hopeful that this will begin to alleviate some traffic. The MBTA understand the importance of regional access through water transport, and as a community we must continue to push for additional enhancements - namely year round service, reduced fares, and free transfers to bus or subway lines from the ferry. We must also continue to advocate for right-sized bus service that not only connects us to the blue line, but also connects all parts of our community to each other. Winthrop could do more to promote walking/biking through simple efforts just as wayfaring signs (for example, signs at the municipal lots indicating the length of a walk to notable locations such as the Center, different beaches, etc.)

4) The rising cost of homes and rents is the driving force behind the cost of living crisis that is pricing many long term residents and families out of Winthrop. How will you ensure that families can afford to age within our community and not be priced out of our community?

While we do not have the ability to influence the larger economy and cannot control the cost of living, what we CAN control is our ability to plan. Winthrop has historically been highly reactive rather than proactive in addressing the need to generate revenue, leading to sporadic and costly overrides, fee increases, and unpredictable costs of services. By taking a more strategic approach and increasing costs on a regular cadence, people can adequately and appropriately make financial plans well into the future.

5) Winthrop still must come up with the funds for other big ticket items such as repairing the utility lines and pipes under our streets, and pay for climate mitigation work, despite the recent success of the override. What is the most impactful thing you suggest the town do to better improve its budgetary outlook?

Education is the single factor that will make paying for the extensive work we need more acceptable. Decisions of the past 20+ years have put us in the position we see today with multimillion dollar projects looming not nearly enough revenue to cover them. To be fair, this is not due to malicious intent, but rather the result of running a municipality on a shoe-string budget for far too long without taking the time to plan proactively.

6) What are the neighborhoods with the greatest resiliency/flooding needs? How do you see that being addressed? How does this affect your precinct if running precinct specific, or the town if an at large position?

The Climate Commission has done an incredible job of identifying 'hot spots' around Winthrop that are presently feeling the impact of flooding. Notably, the Morton St. neighborhood, Tileston/Girdlestone, Pico Ave, Corinha Beach, and parts of Point Shirley come to mind as particularly vulnerable areas. As a town with roughly 7 miles of coastline, it has been a failure of our government up to this point to have not addressed growing climate and resiliency concerns until now. We are working at a great disadvantage to not only address acute flooding impacts, but also to develop proactive practices to fortify our coastal resiliency into the future. While many of our flooding problems are infrastructure related, environmental factors are inextricably linked. It is costly to repair aging infrastructure and put in place modern resiliency measures, but it is even more costly to make our community inaccessible due to preventable and workable issues such as these. We need to take a regional approach to ensure we exhaust all options for funding solutions and proactive approaches before we ask our community to shoulder the burden of these costs.