Tell us a little about yourself. You can include your personal background, family, outside interests that are important to who you are as a person and a candidate.
I came to Lexington in 1983 from Cambridge, England, with my husband, Oliver Hart, and our two sons. We’re both academics (I teach literature). Our sons went through the Lexington school system and the younger experienced a disruptive but immediately inadequate renovation of LHS. That experience has made me a staunch supporter of the new high school. I was on a couple of committees at Clarke and earlier, town-wide, and have been a member of the Cary Lecture Committee for some years. While I was local chair of a group called Stand for Children, a few of us ran for Town Meeting in 2009. I’m running for re-election at a crucial time and am eager to work on the best solutions for Lexington.
Why are you running for Town Meeting?
From as early as I can remember and like many of my generation, I felt an obligation to fight racism, violence and injustice, perhaps because of what I learned from my parents. My student years coincided with widespread activism (and optimism) about what America could do. I’ve tried to be socially active all my life, wherever I was, and Lexington, with its historic and highly democratic Town Meeting, was one way to help locally and even see the results of our decisions.
I was honored to be elected and would be honored to be re-elected.
How has your past experience — whether in your professional life, elected office, or as a community leader — prepared you for a role in Town Meeting?
In Town Meeting, I was particularly glad to take up safety issues for all users of our streets. Some of these applied to Precincts 1 and 2 especially. In 2015, after a fatality and several injuries on Mass Ave, I proposed an article on street safety that passed, and the Town has been working on the issue continuously. I supported a traffic light at the intersection of Mass Ave and Pleasant Street for the same reason, though it had surprisingly stiff opposition, and also the building of the Waterstone complex across Route 2, again with a lot of opposition. These measures were all needed, the first for improved traffic and safety, the second because housing for seniors was in short supply. Solutions are never perfect, but I’ve tried to help make our Town more equitable, flexible and beautiful, and it can be gratifying to see the results in real time.
What is the most important issue in this election to you personally, and what ideas do you have about how to address this issue?
Our vote in Town Meeting 2023 on Article 34 was a proud one for me. We were not only obeying the state-mandated MBTA Communities Act, itself a response to the housing crisis in the Commonwealth, but we intended to go above and beyond, increasing total housing and also the share of affordable housing in new buildings. We didn’t expect development to start quite as intensely as it did, and I’ll be paying close attention to the final version of Article 2 to see how we can manage new construction fairly and with the support of most constituents. There are always many opinions, and ultimately Town Meeting members must use their best judgment when they vote. We volunteer in good faith, and I hope our constituents will let us know what they think. We are easy to reach and welcome their comment and questions!
I’d like to say more about the Cary Lecture Committee and its many contributions to Town life. Coming up in March in honor of the 250th anniversary, we’ll have Jonathan McPhee, director of the Lexington Symphony, discussing the contributions immigrants have made to American music; and in early May, Stephen Breyer, a retired Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, will be our lecturer, much needed in the present environment. The collaboration with colleagues has been and continues to be a joy. We’ve worked together with many other groups in town, most steadfastly with the Cary Memorial Library, and will continue to expand our contacts.
My experience in academia, where departments sometimes hardly functioned at all and sometimes ran with respect and efficiency, has taught me that weak communication is the single most important aspect of working together. I hope that communication is one of my strengths, as a teacher and as a citizen.
Just a word about trust and mistrust: we’ve all seen the erosion in civic discourse at every level, and it’s my hope that we can remember our values and our respect for one another as we move forward. The new high school is one example. Though many Lexingtonians’ children are long grown, we have a responsibility to the children of today and to each other that reaches into the future and beyond immediate self-interest. Town Meeting exemplifies those values and I hope always will.