News

Dear friends,

Happy New Year! This month, I will preview key issues for the City Council in 2025, share information about the city’s recently completed “Aging in Newton: A Community Needs Assessment,” summarize the importance of the recently enacted BERDO ordinance, and give an update on my campaign.

City Council Work in 2025

Much of the City Council’s work relates to zoning and land use issues, and 2025 will be no exception. Here are a few topics of note:

• The Zoning and Planning Committee will continue to consider responses to teardowns of less expensive homes to be replaced by larger and more expensive ones, as well as how to help new development fit in better with its surroundings. In addition, it will also work on adjusting the existing ordinances about accessory apartments to meet recent changes in state law, modifying the Village Center Overlay District zoning as needed to comply with state law, having the zoning match the underlying use where feasible, and making the rules for commercial and industrial zoning fit better with the properties they affect.

• The Land Use Committee is likely to see the return of the Riverside (for the fourth time!) and Northland projects as the developers seek to change their mixed-use proposals to ones that are entirely or primarily apartments. While I understand the economic realities that developers throughout the region are facing due to the lack of demand for certain types of commercial space, as a city we should be concerned about this trend. Commercial development is critical for our city’s finances – it is taxed at a higher rate and uses far fewer city services than residential development. As Mayor, I will lead our efforts to think creatively about how we encourage commercial development in the city.

• The Real Property Reuse Committee will receive the report of the Joint Advisory Planning Group (JPAG) for the Walker Center (the property in Auburndale next to Williams Elementary School) and then will be tasked with determining how to best reuse that parcel. This may require resolving potentially competing priorities: expanding Williams School and providing additional multi-family housing in the city.

• Electrification will be an important topic for the Public Facilities Committee as we continue our efforts to transition from fossil fuels. This is a particularly challenging task for our City Council given the relatively limited regulatory authority that local municipalities have regarding utility companies.

• As always, we will undertake our annual budget review in April and May.

Aging in Newton

In conjunction with the groundbreaking for the new Cooper Center for Active Living (set to open in the fall of 2025), the city’s Department of Older Adult Services commissioned an assessment of our services for older adults in Newton. Tonight (January 7), there will be a presentation on the assessment in the Druker Auditorium at the Newton Free Library (you also can attend virtually – email seniorprograms@newtonma.gov or call 617-796-1675 for the link).

The report prepared by the University of Massachusetts Boston, entitled “Aging in Newton: A Community Needs Assessment,” is an important guide for how we can improve our older adult services. As a City Councilor now, and hopefully as your Mayor, I am keenly interested in your feedback on this report and any other ideas you have on making Newton an even better place to live for our seniors.

BERDO

On December 16, the City Council passed the Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure Ordinance (BERDO), a significant step in addressing climate change in Newton. Our BERDO ordinance requires commercial building owners to report on the level of greenhouse gas emissions from their buildings and, in future years, take active measures to reduce, and ultimately eliminate, these emissions. After considerable debate, we decided not to extend these requirements to multi-unit residential buildings or individual homes. Likewise, Newton-Wellesley Hospital was exempted from many of the requirements because of its unique issues as our city’s only hospital.

BERDO demonstrates the tradeoffs among competing priorities that can exist in creating new legislation. On the one hand, climate change must be addressed. At the same time, we must consider the costs associated with these new reporting and reduction requirements, including expenditures that will make housing more expensive in an already costly housing market. The Zoning and Planning Committee, working with the Administration and listening closely to residents and businesses, did an excellent job balancing these competing interests and Zoning and Planning Committee Chair Lisle Baker and Vice Chair John Oliver deserve special thanks for their efforts in getting this new ordinance enacted.

The city will now be developing regulations to implement BERDO. As City Council President, I will nominate four of the nine members of the BERDO Advisory Commission, the group charged with creating the new regulations (the mayor appoints four other members and the Newton Citizens Commission on Energy appoints one member). We need volunteers, so please email me at my city government email address (mlaredo@newtonma.gov) if you are interested in serving!

Our work on the new BERDO ordinance is illustrative of the promise that I made when I became the City Council President that Vice President David Kalis and I would “work closely and collaboratively to ensure that all of our members feel heard, all perspectives can be shared and discussed, and all deliberations are respectful.” We will continue this collaborative, consensus-building approach as we tackle the issues that we will face in 2025!

Campaign Update

Here are some highlights of the campaign to date:

• I have been listening to residents throughout the city at small group meetings. Let us know if you'd like to host or attend one.

• Our list of public endorsers continues to grow, and we now have over 300 people on the list. Please let us know if we can add your name!

• Check out our Facebook and Instagram pages and sign up to follow the campaign.

• We raised over $85,000 from more than 250 donors in 2024. Donations are critical to the success of a campaign. If you have not done so, please donate – the link is here.

As always, I welcome your thoughts, questions, comments, and criticisms

Thanks,
Marc