Candidate Profile: Alex Anderson, Ward 7 City Council

SOMERVILLE, MA — Alex Anderson is one of four candidates running for Ward 7 city councilor in the Sept. 14 preliminary election, which will whittle down the field of candidates ahead of the municipal election in November. There will also be preliminary elections for mayor and City Council in Ward 5.

Somerville Patch asked candidates to answer questions about their campaigns and will be publishing candidate profiles over the coming weeks.

Anderson has been a research associate at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement for 11 years. He and his wife Allison have two children, Riley and Cameron.

Are you running for office in Somerville? Contact Alex Newman at alex.newman@patch.com for information on being featured in a candidate profile and submitting campaign announcements to Somerville Patch.

Age (as of Election Day)

33

Position Sought

Ward 7 City Councilor

Party Affiliation

Liberal Progressive

Family

Allison (wife, 34); Riley (son, 3); Cameron (son, 1)

Does anyone in your family work in politics or government?

No

Education

BS in Economics concentrating in Business and Public Policy, Wharton School

Occupation

Research Associate, Institute for Healthcare Improvement (ihi.org) - 11 years.

Previous or Current Elected or Appointed Office

Mayoral-Appointed volunteer for the Somerville Bicycle Committee, 2014-2019

Campaign website

www.alexforsomerville.com

Why are you seeking elective office?

I am running for City Council because I believe local government is about ensuring everyone has access to and positive experiences with the right services to meet their needs so everyone can thrive in our community. Like the majority of our neighborhood, I am a liberal progressive committed to racial equity, social justice, affordability, and sustainability. And, I believe I have the experience and capability to translate these progressive ideas into practical solutions for our neighborhood.

I am a husband and Dad, systems thinker and health care researcher, racial equity and street safety advocate, and your neighbor.

As the only parent running in this race, I am committed to making our neighborhood work better for our kids. If we can make it work for our kids, it can work for everyone. I am especially focused on the walkability, bikeability, and busability of our neighborhood for two main reasons:

1) Ward 7 is predominantly residences with some businesses, parks, an elementary school, an important bus station at the Clarendon Hill Towers, and the roads that connect our neighbhorhood. We currently prioritize the cut through traffic that cuts through out neighborhood at the expense of quality of life, affordability, and safety of the people who live in the neighborhood.

2) The City Council is tasked by Somerville's Charter to decide what we do with our streets and sidewalks. The lever to make practical changes to how our streets and sidewalks work resides with the City Council.

We need to take bold action to prioritize the needs of our neighbors - especially now with so many important infrastructure projects breaking ground in Ward 7. Holland Street is slated for repaving after current underground work is finished. The Clarendon Hill Apartments will be redeveloped which will also bring about changes to Powder House Blvd and Alewife Brook Pkwy.

We need someone with practical experience improving our streets and sidewalks to get this major projects right so we set ourselves up for success for the long haul. And, we must do this while prioritizing affordability and sustainability in our neighborhood.

The single most pressing issue facing our (board, district, etc.) is _______, and this is what I intend to do about it.

There are a lot of challenges facing the City of Somerville - affordability and keeping the city accessible for people who live here and want to live here is top of mind. We need to be aggressive in addressing the affordability crisis in our community. In the long run, this means increasing the housing supply in Somerville. We need to buildings with more housing unit - especially near the new GLX stations. And, we need to incentivize responsible and equitable building across the city for more mixed income housing to make sure families can stay in Somerville. In the short run, we need to extend important protections for renters like extending the eviction moratorium to keep people in their homes until the uncertainty of the pandemic subsides.

In terms of how City Council can address affordability, sustainability, and health, we must be aggressive at transitioning all of our streets and sidewalks to liveable streets or complete streets -- streets that start by prioritizing the needs of our most vulnerable people (kids, people with disabilities) and make sure that our sidewalks, cross walks, and streets work best for them. People shouldn't have to cross highway conditions to get to the park or the grocery store in their own neigbhorhood.

Fixing our streets is something the City Council has the power to do - and can do so now. Neighborhoods that prioritizing walkability, bikeability, and busability are more affordable and more sustainable. And, most importantly, they are healthier. Living close to high car-trafficked areas is associated with worse health outcomes (higher cancer, asthma, and learning disability rates). And, most densely trafficked streets are Alewife Brook Pkwy, Powder House Blvd, and Broadway -- streets that surround our publicly supported housing that disproportionately serves people living on low incomes, people of color, older adults, and people with mobility needs. Our neighbors living closest to these streets experience a disproportionate burden of the harms related to accommodating cut-through car traffic. This is a racial equity issue, a class equity issue, a mobility equity issue, an environmental justice, and a public health issue.

If we want our neighborhood to be prepared for the future, we must get the big decisions right about how our community is built.

What are the critical differences between you and the other candidates seeking this post?

Maria stands apart from Becca, Judy, and me because of her alignment with the Tauro campaign and her absence from nearly all of the opportunities to participate in the public forums we were all invited to.

Becca, Judy, and I are in very strong alignment across all big picture issues - we agree on almost everything regarding affordability, sustainability, equity, and the future of Somerville. There are three key differences between Becca and Judy and me:
1) I am the only parent in the race and the only one with the experience of raising a family in the neighborhood. Getting to and utilizing Ward 7's public spaces - which are predominantly our parks and the West Somerville Neighborhood school - with kids is something that my family and I experience first hand. In a Ward with so much focus on family amenities and family needs, having a parent's voice advocating for the needs in the Ward is hugely important.
2) I am the only candidate that has done any work on street safety and improvement for walkability, bikeability, and busability. As mentioned above, the City Council is tasked with deciding how we treat our streets - how they are designed and used. For 8 years I have been active in Ward 7 and Somerville as an advocate, volunteer, and activist to make changes for pedestrain, bus, and transit safety. My time as a member of the Somerville Bicycle Committee gave me first hand experience of how the city goes about implementing streets projects. I've attended countless public meetings regarding changes to streets in the neighborhood (including the very contentious 2019 Powder House Blvd public meetings) - so I know the concerns of our neighbors regarding street improvement in a way that Becca and Judy do not. And, as a daily bike commuter for 11+ years in the greater Boston area, someone who bikes with kids on my bike, and someone who walks and drives regularly, I have the lived experience and advocacy experience for street safety.
3) I have lived in Ward 7 for 8 years and have been doing neighborhood level work during that time. Becca and Judy's work has been great and very important - but it has always been at the city, state, and regional level.

How do you think local officials performed in responding to the coronavirus? What if anything would you have done differently?

I think this is a difficult and challenging question to answer - having some of the pandemic behind us makes it easier to reflect on what we should have done. But, in the moment, that's not necessarily the case. Generally, in the face of uncertainty that affects the entire community, I believe we should be biased towards caution to ensure we are protecting the most vulnerable in our community.

During the beginning of the pandemic, my wife was pregnant and today we have a 1 and 3 year in our household. We have always been very covid-safe because of the uncertainty and known risks for pregnant people and young kids. I was very grateful for the covid response in Somerville because I felt it kept my family safe. At the same time, my family did not have school age kids. And, my wife and I both maintained our employment while working from home full time - much of that time without any child care!

Many parents have shared their frustrations with how long we waited to re-open schools. And, I understand this position - many other communities had students back in the classroom with the proper precautions much earlier than Somerville. At the same time, the variation in building quality/ventilation/etc. of our schools made any reopening difficult.

On the transportation and planning front for our streets, I was very happy and excited about the Shared Streets Pilot because it really slowed down cut-through car traffic and made our neighborhood more walkable. I would like to see Shared Streets come back with more permanence. At the same time, I think Somerville did not make as many big gains as Cambridge or Boston did during the pandemic. Cambridge and Boston both expanded their network of protected bike lanes more aggressively compared to Somerville.

I also valued the supports for small businesses - the Street Eateries/Streateries are a HUGE value-add to our community. We should invest more in them. I would have like to see these streateries met with more pedestrian friendly changes (ie. making Elm Street in Davis pedestrian only). I hope these become a permanent feature of our neighborhood. I also support the changes we made for local restaurants to make deliveries of their full menu (ie. allowing alcohol/cocktails to be permanently part of take-out).

Describe the other issues that define your campaign platform.

In Ward 7, the Clarendon Hill Apartment redevelopment will be the biggest infrastructure project in generations. Doubling the availability of housing at Clarendon Hill is a huge value add to our community. And, we must protect the needs of the tenants during the transition to temporary housing, throughout construction, and ensure all tenants who want to return can do so. We must ensure that families have the supports they need to make sure their kids can stay in their schools and get to and from their school and other kid-focused activities.

I am committed to long term affordability in the neighborhood. I believe this requires increasing the housing supply in our community by building more units. I believe we need to build high density, mixed-income housing with commercial retail at each of the new GLX extensions. These buildings should include the amenities that work for a walkable neighborhood (ie. locally owned coffee shops, produce stores, corners stores) and the houses in them should be available for people of all incomes levels with a guaranteed 30% of units permanently available to low income individuals and families.

I believe we need to take on the climate crisis as aggressively as possible. We need to address the environmental impact of our existing housing stock to make sure all of our properties are as environmentally safe and efficient as possible. Everything is on the table to address the climate crisis - from a city-wide composting program to increasing green spaces, the tree canopy, local pollinators, and water management. We need to be aggressive to prepare our community for the next 100 years.

What accomplishments in your past would you cite as evidence you can handle this job?

I have worked at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement for nearly 11 years. In that time, I have worked to improve health and health care worldwide. The bulk of my work is focused on:
1) Researching complex health systems to identify best practices, understand how they work, and share those ideas with other organizations. In this work, we take a system's view where we appreciate all of the stakeholders of a system, how they interact, and how we can work together to make improvements over time. My research has focused on change management approaches to improvements to population health, the experience of care, and the cost of care. I have worked with health care systems and public health departments at the city, county, and state level to get better results for population health and health care systems.
2) 10 years ago, I established IHI's equity work by founding and leading our Diversity and Inclusion Council. For nearly 10 years, I led IHI's equity, diversity, and inclusion work which involved completely redesigning IHI's hiring system (resulting in an increase of representation of people of color on staff from about 12% in 2011 to over 35% today). I worked directly with IHI's senior leadership and board of directors to re-invest funds from IHI's endowment to fund staff and resourcing for a racial equity strategy to improve IHI's operations, systems, and culture to be a committed anti-racist organization. I have attended and conducted countless racial equity trainings for our staff. And, IHI's internal and external strategy and operations are strategically focused on racial equity because of this work.

I am a system's thinker who has worked with health and health care entitities around the US and the world to get better results out of complex systems. I bring my systems thinking with a focus on racial equity to all of the work I do. And, I intend to bring this thinking to City Council.

The best advice ever shared with me was:

We have two ears and one mouth and should use them proportionately. Always start work by listening to those most affected by change. Start with those who have the worst experiences from our systems and center them and their wants and needs in designs and approaches. If we start our work there, everyone will be better off.

What else would you like voters to know about yourself and your positions?

As a first time candidate, it has been so fulfilling to meet so many neighbors during this campaign. Everyone has been so friendly and understanding of the working parent squeezing in door knocking, phone calls, forums, and late night emails whenever/wherever they can fit!

I don't consider myself an expert on everything. Instead, I have a consistent approach to decision making rooted in systems thinking, equity, and listening. I genuinely believe there are win-win approaches to all of our problems. I have been working for the last 8 years in Ward 7 to find those solutions. I am hoping to earn enough votes to make more of an impact so our wonderful neighborhood can work better for everyone.