“A vote for me is a vote to prioritize listening to community advocates and neighbors, a vote for looking at solutions for affordable housing, and a vote for someone who approaches city problems holistically, with a systems thinking mindset.”

This is how Lisa Gordon, long-time Newton resident running for one of the at-large City Council seats for Ward 6, frames her candidacy.

“It’s a vote for inclusivity of all viewpoints, whatever you feel passionate about in Newton, you’ll find an open and eager listener in me as your at-large councilor.”

Before getting into any discussions of her own priorities, Gordon wanted to take time and thank Ward 6 at-large Councilors Victoria Danberg and Alan Lobovits, who currently hold Ward 6’s at-large positions and who have both announced they won’t seek reelection this year.

“They both leave quite the legacy, and certainly big shoes to fill.”

Connections and community

Gordon’s life and work are anchored in neighborhood-level action. A Newton native who returned to start a family in her hometown after nearly a decade abroad, she has spent most of her life turning concern into organized action—from co-founding Friends of Newton Centre, to running grassroot drives and school campaigns.

Gordon has run before—in 2019, 2021 and 2023—and she’s hoping fourth time is a charm.

Gordon said that entering local politics was “an incredible opportunity for me to really give back to the community that raised me, and that I chose to come back to.”

In high school, she helped care for seniors in a nursing home, a formative role that she cited as a motivation for her long-standing interest in community support and elder care.

At Friends of Newton Centre, Gordon has worked diligently with fellow residents to organize village clean-ups and a continuous upkeep of Newton’s public spaces. “The way the village looks now is largely because our members have acted to keep trash off the streets and to keep our bus stops clean.”

Her record of direct service in Newton is complimented by her active civic engagement. When funding cuts threatened the jazz program at Newton South, where one of her children was a student, she worked with a group of parents to protect the program. The following year, she helped lead efforts to save the strings program in the city’s elementary schools.

She also helped to organize Newton Eats, a community dinner supported by the Newton Food Pantry, a local church, and volunteers, aimed at highlighting and strengthening local food security.

Gordon’s organizing efforts have even crossed international borders. While abroad in the United Kingdom, she served as the first executive director of Youth Against Racism in Europe.

Experiencing antisemitism early on in her life and racist bigoty in Europe helped her in listening to and bringing together individuals with completely divergent views with techniques she hopes to apply as a city councilor.

When the Russo-Ukrainian War broke out in 2022, Gordon organized a peace rally at City Hall, which was “really well attended.” At this rally she also helped to collect supplies to be sent to support Ukrainian civilians.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, she raised more than $5,000 for Newton relief organizations, and also created signage which supported frontline relief workers.

Gordon’s service work extends into high-level nonprofit leadership. She is currently the executive director of the Acton Food Pantry, where she oversees operations serving and supporting vulnerable populations in Acton and surrounding towns.

Affordability and fiscal management

Much of Gordon’s platform comes back to balancing steady growth with community-backed preservation. She spoke in-depth about the need to sensibly address Newton’s housing challenges, stressing the need for affordable housing for seniors who wish to age in place, young families who are looking to plant their roots in the city, and long-time residents who are also facing steep housing costs.

Gordon says she supports development that would help address these gaps, but she feels the city needs to negotiate harder to ensure that any new projects come with meaningful community benefits. And even then, many new developments come with units priced way above the means of working class families and others on fixed incomes.

She also noted that even those who currently own or rent homes find it hard to look for places to downsize to with appropriate price points.

As an example, Gordon mentioned a friend who had downsized from a 6,000-square-foot house, but due to receiving a fixed income, “they’re not so comfortable that they can just go buy another giant house, or even just buy another house.”

Through all of this, Gordon called for more efficient use of city data and resources to work to address the city’s affordability issues.

“We have a lot of data, and as a city, we are not so great at using modern technology or analyzing data in a way that could be helpful for us.”

Housing for seniors, in particular, is an issue Gordon takes personally. “I have a mother who wants to age in place, and I know how difficult it is to get resources for these seniors.”

She argues that many seniors, who also live on fixed incomes, are being steadily outpriced out of the homes and neighborhoods where they have lived their entire lives, contributing to a weakening of the longstanding intergenerational fabric of the city.

Fiscal responsibility means protecting services and exhausting available means before going to a Proposition 2 ½ override (the state has a law that limits how much taxes can be raised unless voters approve otherwise).

Gordon favors adjusting the city’s pension payment schedule as a lever to ease short-term pressures, saying, “we are planning on funding it eight years early, which is a 6.6% increase every year.”

“It would not be our decision, we have to work with the retirement board,” she said. “We could not pay it down so early, (and) that could ease pressure without hurting retirees.”

A  Proposition 2 ½ override, Gordon emphasized, is serious and she wants it to be a last-resort measure.

“[Overrides] tear our communities apart rather than bringing them together,” she said. “An override makes Newton more expensive.”

Down to business

Gordon sees a strong commercial base as essential to Newton’s community life and future.

“Small businesses, along with schools, are the lifeblood of this community, and we should be supporting them,” she said, stressing that the city should treat small business support as a core responsibility, not as an afterthought.

“I know of a number of small businesses that closed recently because they did not get the support they needed from City Hall,” she noted. “The fact I know of at least three [recent closings] is a sign that something is not working properly.”

The gradual shrinkage of Newton’s commercial tax base is a major concern for Gordon. She attributed the problem to the city’s complacency and missed opportunities, explaining, “we have, over the last 20 years, eroded it by turning some commercial spaces into housing, instead of maybe marrying the two so that we could keep our commercial bases and the housing that we need.”

Gordon added that the city should take a hands-on approach to bringing business into the city and filling vacant storefronts.

“When there are open storefronts, I have personally called up businesses and asked them to please come look at the space,” she said.

Transportation and green space

Another thing Gordon points to as a major problem is Newton’s reliance on cars for transportation, which leaves many non-drivers stranded when attempting to travel around the city.

She has experienced these concerns as well, with her husband having to travel far longer to get to a job in West Newton than he had to travel to get to his job in Boston.

Gordon wants a system that strengthens village-to-village connection and accessible alternatives to cars, and she suggests planning a shuttle program which would link villages and surrounding neighborhoods, perhaps allowing for residents to flag the shuttle down between stops.

She noted that a pilot program would be necessary to work out any possible kinks, and that various state-level grants were available for cities that wished to pursue shuttle transportation options.

And she wants to continue to care for Newton’s parks, lakes and waterways. She points to Crystal Lake as a clear example of where a holistic review is needed.

“[It] needs some investment and improvements, and it needs a good 360 look at how we want to preserve the land around the lake,” she said. That review, she argued, must work to balance preservation with public enjoyment. “We want to ensure that our residents have access to the lake, but we also want to protect it.”

Gordon extended this principle to other environmental landmarks such as Bullough’s Pond Dam. While the city is working to find a way to repair the structure, she argued for a pragmatic approach.

“The dam needs work, and we need to do it in a way that makes sense today, not the way it was done a hundred years ago.”

Newton’s election will be Nov. 4.