Mayor Mark Laredo sat down with The Newton Beacon and NewTV last Thursday night to go over his administration’s first 100 days.

Here’s just some of what what we learned from Newton’s new mayor as his administration marks 100 days and the city looks toward an uncertain next few years.

1. He really, really likes his team

Laredo started the conversation with a shoutout to his administration, which has taken shape with people like Josh Morse as chief operating officer, Lauren Berman as economic development director, Meryl Kessler heading up the new Arts and Culture Department, to name just a few.

“And that’s something that the Bloomberg Center at Harvard, which does a lot of work with new mayors, talks about,” Laredo said. ”If you build the team, then everything else follows accordingly. I have a fantastic team in the executive office.”

That team, Laredo said, is his biggest achievement so far.

Executive Aide Jaclyn Norton, Chief Community Services Officer John Rice and Chief Operating Officer Josh Morse await the swearing-in of Mayor Marc Laredo on Jan. 1, 2026. Photo by Bryan McGonigle

2. He’s been listening

Laredo has met with department heads to see what the city needs, and he’s been on a listening tour throughout the villages, getting feedback from residents and business owners about what’s most important to them.

“Some of the concerns were hyper-local,” he said. “Others were more city-wide, and others may be affected by national—or even international—issues, but listening to those folks is really important.”

The most common complaint he hears relates to the roadways, things like sidewalk disrepair and potholes.

Laredo said his team plans to be out at community gatherings talking to people on a continual basis.

“I’m really looking forward to the spring, because we have all of our village days that are coming up, and I love going to those events. It’s a great opportunity to meet people. Most importantly, listen to them.”

And for all the complaints the mayor hears, one things remains the same: People want to stay.

“But when you dig down a little bit and you ask people, well, what do you think of living here? They love it,” he said. “They love Newton.”

3. Superintendent’s “Thrive” budget goal remains uncertain

Superintendent Anna Nolin has a bold vision for Newton’s schools. She also has a color-coded set of budget options she presents each year ranging from a budget with service cuts to a budget with full funding and innovative program additions called the “Thrive budget.”

The “Thrive” option is expensive. Last year, for example, getting to “Thrive” would have required a 9 percent increase in funding. And last year, a complex deal had to be made between then-Mayor Fuller’s administration and NPS  just to get to a level-services budget.

But a “Thrive” budget is in line with Nolin’s vision as well as the long-term goals of the district and the expressed wants of NPS families. And Nolin has said she’d like to see that “Thrive” budget made into reality by Fiscal Year 2030.

So, does the new mayor think that’s realistic, and what is he willing to do to get NPS to “Thrive” by 2030?

It’s unclear. He expressed a desire to help the schools but wouldn’t commit to Nolin‘s “Thrive” option any time soon.

Laredo did help NPS in a big way this year. He based the NPS FY2027 budget allocation—which was unanimously approved by the School Committee and is about to be voted on by the City Council—on the final FY2026 NPS total after that level-services budget deal was made by setting aside free cash, rather than the original FY2026 allocation before the deal. This meant starting with a higher dollar amount for FY2027.

That meant a 7.4 percent increase rather than a 5.75 percent increase. And 5.75 percent would have been a larger-than-normal increase itself.

“What I would say is education is expensive,” Laredo said. “We’re not the only city or town dealing with expensive needs. I will say this: On the city side, we don’t use the term ‘level services’ as much as, ‘how can we do our job better?’ So, we look at each and every department and say, ‘Are we delivering services?’ Good services—frankly, great services? Are we doing it as efficiently as and effectively as possible?”

So, Laredo isn’t committing to Nolin’s “Thrive by 2030” goal, but he said he’s open to ideas for working with the NPS budget and leadership to get the schools into a better position than they’ve been in for the past several years.

“There’s always a trade-off, but I am confident that we are going to get the schools to a place where they will thrive,” he said.

This chart, made by Superintendent Anna Nolin, shows five school budgets with varying amounts of increase. Newton Public Schools

4. The pension payment schedule is being adjusted

State law mandates cities and towns across Massachusetts pay their retirement pensions off by 2040.

Newton moved its payment schedule up to 2032, which would free up millions of new dollars each year after that. But that meant the city had to pay more now, and given the inflation crisis and health insurance cost increases Newton is grappling with, that would financially hobble the city even more than it already is.

“If that had played out, that would have placed a tremendous strain on city finances, because our obligation would be increasing at six, or close to 7 percent, every single year before we funded anything else,” Laredo said. “That’s 7 percent above the millions and millions of dollars we were funding.”

So, the administration went to the Retirement Board and asked that repayment be pushed back to 2035. And a couple of weeks ago, the board voted to do that. And Laredo is going to ask the City Council to increase the base amount for a cost-of-living increase, from $15,000 to $18,000 over a three-year period.

“I actually think that’s a good thing,” he continued. “It’s good for our employees, retired employees whose purchasing power was falling way behind 10 to 15 years after retirement.”

5. And Laredo wants to bond that pension repayment

The administration is also pursuing a new path with the pension payment, something he calls a “game-changer.”

That’s a pension obligation bond, which allows the city to pace the payments differently.

“A pension obligation bond is where you go to the state and ask for permission to issue a bond to pay off your pension obligation now, and you stretch out the payments over a 10-, 12-year period.”

The prior administration under Mayor Ruthanne Fuller was opposed to doing that, but given the tightening budget crunch, Laredo met with members of the School Committee, the Finance Committee and finance experts from the private sector, and they unanimously decided a bond was the way to go.

That bond option will go to the City Council for a vote next week.

The mayor cautioned people not to take the pension payment change as a fiscal windfall.

“We predicated this year’s school allocation and this year’s budget on our belief that we would be successful with those endeavors,” Laredo said. “We’re going to be able to fulfill our commitments, which is the right thing to do. But I wouldn’t want anybody walking away and saying all of a sudden the city is flush with cash. Rather, what we have is a sustainable path to fund city services and school budget in a manageable way over the next 10 years or so, and I think that at least in the next five years is going to position us very well.”

Mayor Marc Laredo listens to public comment about the FY2027 NPS budget on March 30, 2026. Photo by Bryan McGonigle

6. Affordable housing isn’t easy

When asked how his administration is addressing housing affordability—or rather, unaffordability—which he called “an extraordinarily difficult issue,” Laredo said Newton is not going to resolve the issue alone.

The City Council passed zoning reform, known as the Village Center Overlay District, in 2023 that put the city in compliance with a new state law mandating high-density housing near MBTA stops, but that has not yielded much participation from builders.

Laredo said he’s met with developers of a planned all-affordable (with rents set below market rate) complex set for the former Rice Valley location in Newtonville.

“We actually wrote a letter of support for them for state funding, because it’s a by right project,” Laredo said, adding that he’s also looking at ways to streamline the often lengthy, complicated path to approval.

“We are also talking to our developers and making it quite clear that we want to help them get through the process quickly,” he said. “That doesn’t mean we’re going to lower our standards. Okay, I want to be very clear about that. It doesn’t mean we don’t expect them to be speaking to the neighbors and taking their concerns into play. But on the city side, in our administration, in our planning department, we’re looking at projects to approve, and probably as importantly, and maybe more importantly, in places like DPW and inspectional services, when we could either help a project move forward or delay it by inaction. If we approve a project, I want it built.”

7. There’s a plan to deal with ICE, but he’s not giving details

As Immigration and Customs Enforcement amped up its crackdowns in Minnesota last year, Newton officials took notice and insisted the city do something to protect Newton residents and employees from ICE.

Laredo has attended protests against ICE activities and has said he supports the rule of law and does not believe ICE is following the Constitution with some of its activities.

“I cannot be clearer than that,” he said. “I do not view the tactics that ICE has used in places like Minnesota as consistent with our constitutional values. So that’s a starting point.”

Newton has a Welcoming City ordinance, similar to that of a sanctuary city, meaning that city staff are prohibited from helping federal immigration officials with enforcement or apprehension of immigrants, and city staff is prohibited from reporting someone’s immigration status to the federal government.

And Newton, Laredo said, is collaborating with other cities and Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office on potential responses to ICE activity.

Laredo said the city is preparing for possible ICE raids in Newton this spring and summer, but he wouldn’t clarify the details of their developing plan.

“Am I going to go through exactly the protocols that our police are going to use, or our school staff are going to use and put it out there so ICE can read about it? I don’t think that’s a particularly good idea, to be blunt,” he said. “But I can assure you that we are well prepared, and our police in particular, are well trained, and I think that training is very important, and our officers understand that they are there as our guardians.”

8. The city is building a new website

Countless complaints about the city’s website—it’s confusing, it’s not user-friendly, information is scattered with no rationale—have led the administration to order a new website, some time this year.

It’s part of a transparency push in City Hall, Laredo noted.

The League of Women Voters submitted a question for the interview about whether or not Laredo plans to follow the guidance in the sobering report they released in late 2024 showing widespread dissatisfaction with local government transparency in Newton.

“You’re never going to be able to adopt every single recommendation in a report for a variety of reasons, but I thought that the League’s report was very well thought out,” he said. “It gave us a lot of guidance as to ways we can do better. I sat down with the leadership to talk about that. So we’re going to do a number of things.”

And the first priority is getting a website that doesn’t incite frustration and rage.

“I think that’s going to go a long way toward opening up the work that we do,” he said.

9. Washington Street redesign is getting redesigned

The Washington Street Pilot—a temporary reorganization of Washington Street in West Newton designed to slow traffic down and encourage bike travel with two bike lanes—has been controversial. The bike lanes are popular, but the parking situation is a mess and people have been complaining about traffic chaos where the whole point was to calm the area down.

Laredo said he’ll give the plan another look and make adjustments where it makes sense.

“I don’t want to spend your dollars on consultants and plans that realistically have no chance of fruition over the next eight to 10 years or more,” he said, adding that he would have approached Washington Street in a different way than Fuller’s administration did.

“I think the protected bike lane on a busy street like Washington Street is good for cyclists. It’s actually good for motorists,” he said. “There are other aspects of the Washington Street pilot that I’m, frankly, not a fan of.”

Laredo said he doesn’t like the big round metal planters placed in the middle of the project, which he says make driving difficult.

Carl Pasquarosa of the St. Mary of Carmen Society shows off freshly painted street lines at Nonantum’s Italian-American Festival on July 20, 2025. Photo by Tami Nguyen

10. He learned something from the Nonantum street lines saga

Last June, the Fuller administration sent a DPW crew to blast the Italian flag-colored lines off of Adams Street, citing state law that required a double yellow line down the middle for streets that have a certain amount of traffic and more than a certain amount of drivable roadway area.

This caused an explosion of backlash that made national headlines and fanned the flames of a culture war in Nonantum.

Laredo’s administration has come up with a solution that allows the red, white and green lines and adds parking spaces to decrease the “driveable” roadway area and therefore get the street in compliance with state law.

What did Laredo learn from this bizarre chapter in Newton’s history?

“I would say this: Pick and choose your battles,” he said.

Laredo said that, as an attorney who’s sworn to uphold the law, he also likes to look for creative solutions to problems.

“The lines in Nonantum, while seemingly small to some folks, symbolize a lot more, and symbols do matter,” Laredo said. “Tradition does matter. We should honor tradition at the same time that we welcome every single person in this community, whether they’ve been here two weeks, two months, two years or generations.”

Look for those lines to be repainted later this spring.

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