After a hard fought campaign, and tons of work from dozens of volunteers, the election results are in.
First and foremost, we are excited to celebrate Brookline’s newest Housing Authority Commissioner, Kimberly Richardson. As we’ve said repeatedly, Kimberly brings a phenomenal mix of professional and lived experience to the position, and will ensure the needs of BHA residents are a top priority while simultaneously working hard to ensure the current and upcoming Housing Authority projects stay on track and BHA staff have the support they need.
While the Select Board results are not what we hoped for, we’re proud to have supported Alec Lebovitz and truly appreciate him for putting himself out there as a candidate. Alec’s team ran a strong campaign, and we’re excited for Alec to continue serving on Town Meeting and working hard to help Brookline live up to the values so many of us share. Congratulations to both Bernard Greene and David Pearlman on their successful campaigns, and we look forward to working with both Select Board members on issues of housing, land use, transportation, climate action, and economic development.
In Town Meeting races across town, we are incredibly proud of all 65 candidates that Brookline for Everyone endorsed, including 41 first time candidates.
Overall, 69% of our endorsed candidates for Town Meeting were victorious on Tuesday.
Once again, our endorsed incumbents had a great night: 23 of our 24 endorsed incumbents won on Tuesday! We’re equally excited that 22 of our 41 non-incumbent candidates were successful as well, adding 22 new pro-housing voices to Town Meeting. We’re particularly excited for our 5-seat sweeps in Precincts 8 and 13, where B4E-endorsed slates carried all of the 3-year terms. Both groups of candidates worked hard, campaigned together, and carried a strong pro-housing, pro-climate message to victory.
And the best news of all: Town Meeting has more pro-housing members today than it did on Monday.
While not all of our candidates were able to celebrate a win on Tuesday night, they all worked hard talking to voters new and old, meeting neighbors, and shaking hands through the campaign season. We’re already working on continuing to expand and improve our outreach efforts for next May, and we hope any candidate who didn’t win will help us plan for a victory in 2025 with more name recognition in their precinct and a better sense of how local government campaigns work.
While the election is behind us, there’s still a lot ahead of us. Some highlights:
- The major housing issue facing Town Meeting in just a few weeks will be making it easier to build granny flats and basement apartments (known as an “ADU,” or accessory dwelling units). We’ll be providing tips on how to engage with your Town Meeting Members to encourage them to support this modest, yet important, policy change.
- Keep an eye out for an upcoming announcement for an in-person Brookline for Everyone event this summer, and more opportunities to connect going forward.
- The Chestnut Hill area study is underway, with more opportunities to engage ahead, and the comprehensive planning process is on the horizon. We’ll be sure to keep you updated on when and how your voice can be heard!
And finally, we can’t say thank you enough to everyone who ran for office; volunteered to talk to residents, pass out B4E lit, and text voters; stood at the polls shaking hands and encouraging last minute undecideds; emailed their friends and neighbors with their recommendations; or simply went out to vote for pro-housing candidates. Progress will only be made if we have a lot of hands helping move us forward, and we’re fortunate to have a great community to rely on!
Thanks,
Jeff Wachter, Katherine Haenschen, Katha Seidman, Amanda Zimmerman, and the entire Brookline for Everyone Board