Cyrus Dahmubed: Ward 4 At-Large

It’s important to recognize that our elected School Committee has the most direct impact on our schools, and that this year will see seven of the nine school committee seats change (one seat is the Mayor), so everyone should be well informed on these races and be sure to vote in them on 11/4. One thing the Council can do for our schools is to help ensure that adequate funding is available when NPS and our School Committee tell us it’s needed. This can be done by growing our revenue through new commercial and residential growth. Doing so may also have the benefit of making Newton more affordable for our public servants, like our school teachers, so that they are able to live in and be part of the communities they serve. Given the City Council’s limited direct role in the schools, I would also advocate for more and more effective communication between the Council, School Committee, School Department, and Mayor, to help understand goals, priorities, and challenges as early as possible.

I would prioritize the implementation of our recently approved Walk, Roll, and Bike Network Plan, which will make our streets safer for everyone, reduce traffic, and create safe pathways for young people to get to and from school. I’d work to make our school buses free again, thereby disincentivizing driving young people to school and getting more traffic off the roads during peak hours, while also incentivizing parents to keep their students in our public schools. I’d also prioritize working with the MBTA to understand what it will take to get our Commuter Rail stations rebuilt as safe and accessible stations that can open the door to offering frequent, clean, and quiet local and regional connections, and work with the T to explore a free bus pilot for our express buses to further reduce traffic. Finally, I’d seek to transition us away from natural gas and restore native river and wetland habitats to reduce the risks of catastrophic flooding.

Newton is fortunate to be a safe community, thanks in large part to the culture of community care that we foster. We should continue this by finding common ground, reaching across divides, and prioritizing empathy in our public lives. This means working to heal divisions and disagreements with a “Hate Has No Home Here”-stance on bullying and creating safe, inclusive, enriching spaces for our young people. We can combat hatred in all its forms, latent and overt, and take strides to foster shared cultural understandings that bring us together, even and especially in challenging times. I’d seek better use of resources by eliminating overnight policing of individual vehicles in the winter, and instead reinvesting these resources in traffic calming around our schools, and community policing and engagement. This will be key to helping us achieve our aspirations as a Welcoming City by protecting friends, families, and neighbors in the era of increased federal activity in our communities.

First, I’d support reestablishing a maintenance budget for our parks and open spaces separate from capital improvements to ensure our open spaces are safe for people and healthy for the planet. Continuing efforts to restore native ecosystems and natural waterways will help with this because natural systems survive well with minimal intervention, but thrive with focused and thoughtful investments that work in harmony with natural systems. I’d also encourage a thoughtful, regional strategy to the open spaces at our municipal borders, working in tandem with our neighboring communities to create mutually beneficial and accessible parks and open spaces. I’d support investments in natural outdoor play and learning spaces for young people, and efforts to improve green links between existing parks that create open space connections and improve interconnectedness for habitats and ecosystems.

I would propose a first-of-its-kind Small Business Preservation Plan modeled on inclusionary zoning programs, and intended to work with anticipated growth in our Village Centers, by encouraging developers and owners to keep small businesses in their communities, and providing a strategy for their survival and success even during construction periods. I’d also recommend streamlining and clarifying the process for opening businesses, and for making small, commonplace changes to their spaces. This should help to minimize upfront costs so businesses can get their doors open quickly and efficiently, and ensure they feel supported throughout the process. By reducing the costs to open, we also help make these businesses more affordable for customers to shop at. Finally, I’d support creating new areas for business through a “form-based-light” zoning in our underused and unused industrial/manufacturing areas that would create options for residential, mixed-use, and commercial growth.

An important part of how we achieve our net-zero by 2050 goal is how we use our land; by allowing for highly sustainable buildings that can house more people while using less land area, we can have a lighter touch on the environment. I’d encourage new multifamily construction to limit provided parking (if any) to electric vehicles, especially if building in the village centers. I’d support the work currently occurring in our Public Facilities committee to transition the city away from natural gas toward a more sustainable, electric future. I’d seek to decrease the cost of solar PV and other building performance adaptations for residents, especially in Environmental Justice communities, and aim to swap carbon-based fuels for solar PV at Newton Housing Authority properties. I’d support a municipal compost pilot, restarting our rain barrel program to help with stormwater management, and other tactical but impactful programs that can have direct benefits for residents.

I’d seek to provide more accessible options for our seniors to be able to age in community. Newton currently has very few options for seniors looking to downsize while remaining in their communities, and even reasonably cost-effective fewer options. Many seniors face the difficult decision of having to leave the community they’ve built their life or continuing to remain in homes that are too difficult and expensive to maintain, especially on a limited income. In addition to creating new housing options to downsize into, I’d support an exemption to our Prop 2 ½ override specifically for seniors who live on a limited income and are still paying mortgages on homes below the city’s median single-family home value of $1.7 million. No one should feel priced out of their own home, just as they shouldn’t feel pushed out of their community. Finally, I’d seek to better utilize our transportation resources to create better options for seniors to safely get around the city.

I’d encourage the creation of new, sustainable housing near commercial and village centers, and around transportation. Following the laws of supply and demand, this will help to slow the increase in the cost of housing, especially given the regional strategy and context we are now operating in. I’d support an exemption to Prop 2 ½ overrides specifically for seniors who live on a limited income and are still paying mortgages on homes below the city’s median single-family home value of $1.7 million. My Small Business Preservation Plan, and improvements to streamlining permitting and approvals, would help make our local business more affordable for residents and decrease the cost of creating new housing, which is translated to residents through rent and sale prices. Finally, I’d seek to combine priorities around preservation of our trees with preserving less expensive and moderately scaled homes in our neighborhoods, particularly in cases where no net-new housing is being created.

The first thing we can do is encourage more residents to live in our commercial areas and village centers. More residents mean more customers for our businesses. I’d also support creating new areas for business through a “form-based-light” zoning in our underused and unused industrial/manufacturing areas that would create options for residential, mixed-use, and commercial growth. Finally, as someone with a background in the arts, I’d strongly support efforts to create a new Office of Arts and Culture, to bring new types of business and community building opportunities to Newton.

I would champion creating a safer, more accessible, more sustainable future for the city by working with the MBTA to finally get the investments in our Commuter Rail stations that our community deserves, and complement this with a free express bus pilot to reduce traffic, emissions, and wasted time. This has been a passion of mine ever since I met State Representative Kay Khan at the Cold Spring Park Farmers’ Market when I was 7 and she explained to me the work she was doing to get our Commuter Rail stations rebuilt. Today, the imperative is greater than ever, and I am eager to continue her work and finally see this happen for our city.