As a lifelong resident, Tina McBride says she knows how Lexington works.
A Precinct 7 Town Meeting member and environmental advocate, McBride has a passion for making Lexington more accessible to every demographic, and she says it was her love of the town and its residents that spurred her to seek a spot on the Planning Board. This is the second year McBride has sought a seat on the five-person board, after her first bid fell short last year.
“I’m a big community organizer kind of person. I listen to people, I talk to people. I want to hear what the concerns are and everything,” she said. “That was one of the reasons that I decided to run originally, because I felt like I was hearing all of these concerns from people, and they felt like a lot of these issues were not being addressed.”
McBride first won a seat in Town Meeting in 2018, and has been reelected by her neighbors every year since. She aims to take on the Planning Board next to help rebuild “the missing middle” — the middle class families she thinks Lexington has historically excluded, especially with the recent adoption of the MBTA Communities Act.
“Planning has to be about people and where they live, and we want to create more housing that’s better for more people,” McBride said. “Unfortunately, the MBTA Communities [Act] is not the tool that people were really hoping that it was going to be, and I’d like to address some of the issues and be at the table when these things are discussed.”
The MBTA Communities Act, signed into law in 2021 by then-Governor Charlie Baker, aims to ease the state’s housing crisis by requiring 177 Massachusetts communities served by mass transit to develop more multi-family housing. Lexington was required to come up with a plan to allow for a minimum of 1,231 units on at least 50 acres to accommodate this growth.
The town’s plan, known as Article 34, was approved in April 2023 and included over 227 acres of land in 12 districts — making it one of the first and most ambitious proposals for compliance with the law. While McBride says she’s in favor of more housing, she believes the rate at which this housing will be developed must be slowed.
“I hear a lot of people say, ‘Lexington is a wealthy town, and we can manage that.’ Well, not everybody’s wealthy. I am not wealthy, and I know a lot of people that are not wealthy,” she said. “We can manage something like that, but not at the rate that it is happening. I think it’s time for us to tap the brakes and take a breath. We can absorb it, but we can’t do it if it’s compounding every year.”
McBride voted against Article 34 in 2023 and is a strong proponent of Article 2, a citizen-proposed amendment that would slow the rate of development. The article would reduce the committed acreage from 227 to 78 and limit the number of districts housing the developments from 12 to two. The Planning Board is hosting a public hearing for the article on Feb. 26 at 6 p.m.; Town Meeting members are slated to vote on the petition March 17.
“If we want more affordable housing, more workforce housing, more senior housing, which is all the things that Lexingtonians say that they care most about, then we should be picking different tools to accomplish that,” she added.
McBride’s experience attending Planning Board meetings dates back to 2015 when she championed a demolition delay resolution that sought to save Lexington’s smaller, historic single-family homes. Her experience with the motion (which ultimately failed, but a similar law was passed in 2023) fueled her to advocate for affordability for “average families” looking for a starter home. Lexington’s history and public schools’ reputation makes it an attractive place for many people, McBride said, and welcoming diverse demographics will help the town thrive.
“As you drive around town, you see different types of housing that were built during different eras for different types of people,” she said. “To me, the idea that you have this really interesting, different demographic going on, my first concern isn’t just about availability and accessibility for people, but that this paints a picture of who we are.”
Beyond local politics, McBride can be found composting at Lexington public schools, where she’s volunteered for many years and established a pilot program designed to be a more sustainable solution than filling a landfill. McBride is also the director of Lexington ZeroWaste Collaborative.
“Working in any group, in any community, it takes work, it takes compromise, it takes listening, but really, the most important thing is not necessarily who’s at the table, but who I’m bringing with me to the table,” she said.
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