Precinct: 2
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.
Following my recent retirement from a career in healthcare consulting, I have been able to devote more of my time to trying to give back to the Town where I have lived since 1994. I was first elected to Town Meeting in 2021. I live in the historic Moon Hill neighborhood, and enjoy working in our woodland garden of (mostly) native plants.
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?
As part of the Lexington Cluster Housing Study Group, I helped Town Meeting members understand zoning for multifamily housing, provided the Planning Board suggestions for zoning and regulatory improvements, and urged passage of the MBTA-Communities and Special Residential Development bylaws in 2023.
Since 2021, I have served as the Lexington representative on the Hanscom Field Advisory Commission, a forum for receiving updates from Massport and hearing community concerns.
Since 2019, I have served as a Conservation Land Steward, including leading volunteer projects to remove invasive plants, leading nature walks, and co-leading the annual City Nature Challenge.
I co-organized and participated in a workshop to identify potential bicycle and pedestrian paths in and through the newly formed MBTA-Community districts.
What is the most important issue in this election to you personally, and what ideas do you have about how to address this issue?
To the greatest degree possible, I want to see Lexington stand by and energetically implement the goals we represented in our 2022 Comprehensive Plan. Town Meeting members have an important role in both representing residents in decisions and providing direction to improve the quality of policies that affect the Town. As a Town Meeting member, I feel it is my responsibility to learn as much as I can about areas of importance to me, to explain what I have learned to others, and, in some cases, to provide concrete suggestions for article improvements. As the first Massachusetts municipality to pass a bylaw for the MBTA-Communities Act, we showed our desire to go “beyond the minimum” in addressing the town’s and region’s housing shortage. Similarly, we chose to participate in the state’s pilot for a specialized building code to limit the reliance on fossil fuels in new construction. These are two examples of Lexington’s forward thinking. As a Town, we are at our best when we show we are confident in our ability to accommodate the kinds of change forward-thinking implies.