Mark Sandeen moved to Lexington shortly after graduating from college in the 1980s.
“I was absolutely convinced Lexington was the best town in Massachusetts, that’s why I moved here,” he said.
Seven years after moving to town, Sandeen got married and later had two children, both of whom attended Lexington Public Schools.
If you know Sandeen, you know sustainability is his passion. His drive to make the world a better place for his children sparked after Hurricane Katrina, he told the Observer.
“I want to make the world a better place for my kids…and for everybody’s kids…that’s sort of been my mission since I woke up and said we’re on a trajectory where it’s not going to be a good world for our kids if we don’t start changing the world today,” he said. “So that’s my motivation.”
Following that realization, Sandeen began volunteering at the local level “to try and make actual and tangible change,” he said. He passed the Stretch Energy Code — a Massachusetts-specific building energy code that exceeds the state law, requiring higher energy efficiency and performance in new construction and major renovations — in Lexington in 2010. Lexington was one of the first towns in the state to do so. In the same year, the Select Board subsequently asked Sandeen to form Sustainable Lexington, and he did. He later decided to take his volunteerism to the next level and ran for Select Board in 2019 so he could influence town policies. His first term was only one year long because he filled state Rep. Micelle Ciccolo’s seat when she departed from local office.
Jump to today, Sandeen is still on the Select Board, is chair of the Hanscom Area Towns Committee, a founding member of Sustainable Lexington, and holds a seat on Lexington’s Affordable Housing Trust.
Asked why he is running for Select Board, Sandeen told the Observer, “to finish the things I started.” That includes seeing Lexington’s new high school be built.
“The biggest project in the history of Lexington is coming up and I want to see that through,” he said.
As a Select Board member, Sandeen helped the town create its capital stabilization fund, which now holds over $40 million, to pay for the new school.
He also aims to continue his efforts to make Lexington more sustainable.
In addition to bringing the Stretch Energy Code to Lexington and creating Sustainable Lexington, Sandeen was a driving force behind the green technology coming to the new high school. The new school will have solar arrays, electric vehicle chargers, a sustainable HVAC system, and — best of all, in Sandeen’s eyes — a battery. The battery will charge up when the school is not in use and Eversource can buy the energy it generates from the town.
It’s a sustainable choice and a fiscally responsible choice, he argued.
“No matter what your position is on climate or sustainability, the fiscally responsible choice is to be making your own energy,” said Sandeen.
Sandeen argues the revenue the town could make off the battery could take financial pressure off residents.
Affordability is another key issue for Sandeen.
“What we’ve been hearing for years is, ‘wouldn’t it be nice if Lexington seniors can afford to stay in Lexington’ and ‘wouldn’t it be nice if Lexington police officers, and fire fighters, and teachers, could afford to live in town,’ ‘wouldn’t it be nice if people’s kids could afford to move back to Lexington,’” he said.
Sandeen and the Select Board are confident the MBTA Communities Act will help mitigate the high cost of housing in the community and could offer seniors, people who work in town, and young people more affordable places to live. He is also confident that bringing more housing to town will help the community become more vibrant, which is something residents have told him they want for years, he said. Sandeen is particularly excited about the 100 percent affordable housing coming to North Street and Lowell Street — that development will help lower-income people reap the benefits of living in Lexington and will be built sustainability.
Sandeen also noted that the cost of running the town is increasing, which contributes to the issue of affordability. He cited the cost of salaries, health benefits, and pensions as items that are driving Lexington’s operating budget up. He plans to help the town manage that in part by finding ways to increase commercial tax revenue.
Maintaining a strong sense of community in Lexington is another factor driving Sandeen to run for Select Board once again.
Town issues such as the high school building project, zoning for new multifamily housing, and national politics have challenged Lexington’s neighborly cohesion. Sandeen vows to have and facilitate difficult conversations with residents so people can feel listened to and the town’s sense of community can be maintained.
“If we can sit down across a table from one another and say, yes, I understand, you know, there’s this thing pulling us in this direction, there’s this thing pulling us in this direction, and we’re going to sort of meet in the middle here, most folks are okay when they are able to feel like they’re heard, so that’s a commitment,” he said.
Having difficult conversations is one thing, but many residents have complained that neither the town, nor the boards that help run it, are transparent enough with residents.
Asked about his thoughts on the issue of transparency, Sandeen said in his experience, he finds those whose ideas are not being adopted are normally the ones who complain about transparency.
Sandeen noted how the School Building Committee, Permanent Building Committee, and School Committee have collectively hosted hundreds of meetings to discuss the new high school. Those meetings have all been public and the vast majority have been recorded and are online for anyone to view.
“We’ve had a lot of meetings, I think there are folks who are not happy that the suggestions that they made were not implemented and that can feel like a lack of transparency,” he argued. “I’m not really sure that more meetings are really going to solve this problem.”
To residents who are frustrated because they feel their concerns have not been listened to, Sandeen encourages them to get involved like he did when he wanted to see policy changes to make the town more sustainable.
“There is no better place or easier place to influence your quality of life than at the local level. There are five Select Board members, you can call them up and talk to them and they will listen to you. But at the end of the day, towns run on policies and law, so if you want a different outcome, there is no better place, no easier place, to change those policies and laws than at the local level,” he said. “Let’s work together to put a policy and procedure in place to make sure that happens for the long haul.”
LexObserver asked every candidate running for local office, ‘who is a politician or leader, local or not, who you look up to?’ Sandeen chose former president, John F. Kennedy.
“I still remember John F. Kennedy stood up and said, ‘we do these things not because they are easy, but because,’ and I would change it to, ‘because they are right.’” (Kennedy, in his famous speech about the country’s space exploration, said, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”)
Kennedy taught Sandeen that people should have bold goals for the future and that those bold goals are attainable for people who are willing to work to make them happen.
“That’s sort of been my whole life from that point on, like, how do we make the world a better place? How do we have bold goals for our future? And pull them off, not because they’re easy, but because they are right,” he said.
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