Ward Hamilton Is Running For Melrose City Council

MELROSE, MA – Ward Hamilton, a Melrose business owner and life-long resident, is running for Melrose city council, in an announcement on April 24.

Hamilton is a resident of Ward 4 and is pursuing one of the four at-large seats on the Melrose City Council.

He was born and raised in Melrose, and has ties to the community spanning four generations. His great-grandparents, Herbert and Ruth Hamilton, moved their family to Melrose from Revere in 1907.

"Since then, four generations of our family have gone through the public schools and graduated from Melrose High School," Hamilton said in a news release.

Hamilton attended Auburn University as an undergraduate and earned a master's degree in 2012 from UMass-Amherst. He owns Olde Mohawk Historic Preservation on East Emerson Street, a business specializing in masonry restoration, traditional roofing systems, and architectural woodwork.

"We've been fortunate to work on some really great buildings, but my favorite projects have involved adaptive reuse," he said. "By repurposing existing buildings for affordable housing and other uses, we can prolong the useful service life of structures that would otherwise end up in a landfill."

Hamilton is the vice president of the board of directors at Congregational Retirement Homes, a non-profit which owns and oversees one third of the affordable housing stock in Melrose.

In 2020, he was elected to represent Melrose on the Northeast Metro Tech School Committee. In 2021, as the school embarked on its plan to build a new $317 million dollar high school, he was selected by his peers on the committee to serve as its treasurer. He is also the treasurer of the Friends of Melrose Football, a position he has held for over a decade.

"My motto is, 'Be of service to others,'" Hamilton said in the release. "I have a strong sense of civic responsibility and care about what happens in Melrose."

Hamilton has also served on the Melrose Historical Commission, including two and a half years as its chair. In 2020, he was appointed to the superintendent of Melrose Public Schools Screening Committee. He has also served on the Melrose High School Site Council, the Melrose Public Safety Building Committee, and coached middle school football for several years.

"Good government is about good stewardship," Hamilton said. "The people of Melrose deserve to be represented by elected officials who will follow best practices in the allocation and oversight of the City's resources. As some in our community vie to advance special interests and promote their own agendas, we must stay focused on being fiscally responsible, caring for our aging infrastructure, and delivering services to our residents."