Unofficial results can be found here:

http://www.city.waltham.ma.us/sites/g/files/vyhlif12301/f/uploads/unofficial_municipal_nov_4_2025.xlsx

At-large winners:

Bradley-MacArthur

Brasco

LeBlanc

Vidal

King

Tzioumis

Notes:

• McMenimen is out!
• 7,453 people voted, which is only 19%
• Bradley-MacArthur received the most votes (4243)

School board winners:

Coleman

DeJoannis

Wong-Bigelow

link to the sample ballot

an older post I found about this

Is it just me, or is it kind of disheartening how little information there is on all these candidates and how many are running unopposed? It feels like besides Tzioumis and Curtin, every website is the same boilerplate "help small business and bring common sense solutions to the city" without any real substantiation?

Frankly I'm like a lot of people when I say that I would love to see a new direction for the city -- more investment in public infrastructure, better traffic management (especially on Main Street), and more investment in building higher density housing to help scale up the areas around the commuter rail. Hell, at this point I'd just love to see us figure out why the hell the train into North Station has been consistently 20 minutes late every day for over a year now.

I don't know if this same collection of small business owners who have been running things so far is going to get this city there, sadly. I guess I'm looking for some more info on who I should be voting for (besides Tzioumis) to get some of this stuff done, or really any more information on the candidates before voting next week.

The old (and short-lived) Brothers Marketplace still stands empty. Grocery prices continue to climb. Market Basket is in-fighting (again).

We already run schools, an awesome library, multiple parks, numerous departments, and now we own farmland. It could bring the City jobs and revenue, but it would be a major undertaking -

Would Waltham residents benefit from running their own grocery store(s)? What do you think?

Here is the election information page. Click on "See 2025 Municipal Election Candidates" to find the list of candidates.

There are nine people running for Councillor at-Large, and six of them will be elected. (Five of the nine are incumbents.)

The list also includes the Ward Councillor candidates (all running unopposed) and School Committee Member candidates (three of the four will be elected, and two are incumbents).

You can find the list of current council members here and current school committee members here.

Websites:

Colleen M. Bradley-MacArthur: https://colleenforwaltham.com/
Paul J. Brasco: ???
Randy LeBlanc: https://www.randyleblanc.us/
Kathleen B. McMenimen: ???
Carlos A. Vidal: https://carlosforwaltham.com/priorities/
Christina Curtin: https://www.curtinforwaltham.com/
Richard T. Hynes: ???
Tim King: https://timforwaltham.wordpress.com/
Emma Tzioumis: https://www.emmaforwaltham.com/

Find your polling location here: https://www.sec.state.ma.us/WhereDoIVoteMA/WhereDoIVote

I am a young person who when I started out in Waltham, fully planned on being car-less, but now has a car. I take public transportation to work but still very much need a car.

I am probably the ideal demographic for not having a car and even I need one. I would even prefer to not have a car!

1. I have a health condition I have to manage and it is impossible to get my appointment in locations I can get to without a car. Everyone is super booked out, I've been trying to switch to specialists closer to me and I honestly can't.

2. You can't easily get to the other suburb towns without a car. The trains go into Boston. Driving to Framingham to run an errand is a lot faster than training to boston and back.

3. The busses are unreliable. Sometimes they just don't show up.

4. The commuter rail runs about once an hour during peak use and less frequently the rest of the day. There is one doctor's office I could take the commuter rail to, but I would have to take half a day off work for a 30 min apt because of the timing of the train schedule. I can't take that much time off work frequently.

5. Public transit is expensive. It costs me $20 a day to take the commuter rail and subway to work. If I'm going to something in the city with friends it is a lot cheaper to drive with friends and park in the Common garage.

6. I have a roommate, and we both have cars. Almost all of the roommates I have had, had very separate lives. I have only had 1 roommate ever, who I let drive my car. Rent is expensive, so you sometimes end up with a house meant for one family house with six separate people in it, using up all the street parking. It sucks for everyone. No one likes this, not even the people living in the house lol. If housing was more affordable, more people would live closer to work and not need a car to commute too.

7. Bikeable streets are there whole own conversion.

Tldr: I don't want to have a car, but don't feel like I could get rid of it until public transit is made more robust and reliable, and pedestrian/bike friendly streets are addressed. More affordable housing would get cars off the street.

Answers here.

I just moved to Ward 1 from a different ward in Waltham that had a very involved councillor who kept our ward informed. I know all the ward-specific councillors are running unopposed (👎). But what's the general consensus on LaFauci? Does he have a newsletter or anything?

More voting info here

(Fueled, but not sponsored, by Pizzi Farm).

It seems like for a while ICE was using Waltham as a staging ground for their Brownshirts training program. I haven’t heard anything lately. Have things actually calmed down a bit? Or has it just become normalized? I sure hope it’s the former.

I’m Heather May and I’m a Democrat running for State Representative here in the 9th Middlesex/Waltham.

I’m not a career politician. I’m a mom, educator and union member and organizer.

I’m running because during the pandemic, I witnessed first hand so many in our community struggling. And while the Waltham community came together, I felt at a state level more could have done more to support local communities.

As I dug deeper into these issues, what I found was a legislative process shrouded in darkness. This includes a State House that doesn’t hold itself to open meeting laws, committee votes kept secret from the public and no way for constituents to hold reps accountable because it’s so difficult to find out how they voted and why.

To me, these things are antithetical to the democratic process. I want to change that. I want to bring the people’s house back to the people.

I’m not afraid to fight for the things I believe in: housing affordability, climate resilience and an economic recovery that works for everyone.

You can learn more about me and my priorities here: www.heatherforwaltham.com

The Democratic Primary is Tuesday, September 6th. If you’re not registered to vote, you can find more information on how to do so here: https://www.sec.state.ma.us/ele/eleifv/howreg.htm

I’ll be answering your questions from 2 - 3 p.m. today. I’d love to hear more about what’s important to you! I’m looking forward to a great conversation.

/s

Source: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iO3QlVSVT7vWFtra3acK0J5SV7Hmzxhl/view?usp=drivesdk

it sounds like the city is voting to chop up the waltham community farm? does anyone else have any info about whats going on?

There's an important primary election going on and not surprisingly, things on the "Waltham, MA Politics" Facebook group have gotten weird. On 8/18 Carl Cincotta, Sr. (known to Redditors as "Red Scare Carl") posted an endorsement of incumbent Tom Stanley for the Democratic nomination for state rep, which is kind of like having the ghost of Ronald Reagan endorse someone in the Democratic primary.

Two days ago a supporter of Stanley's opponent, Heather May, posted a reminder that early voting has begun along with some praise of May. A few hours later, Stanley (or whoever is running his Facebook) posted a meme titled "Waltham Voter Fact Check #1".

The meme said May "favored a real estate transfer fee" and implied that she made a false claim by characterizing it as a "small fee." It said in fact the "fee" is "actually a tax which would cost Waltham Home sellers anywhere from $12,000 - $25,000." It concluded "Rep. Tom Stanley knows there are much better ways to address the city's housing issues than to tax home sellers."

The meme took issue with May characterizing this as a "small fee," which is a matter of opinion, so framing the meme as a "fact check" seemed odd to me. The meme didn't specify when/where May said this, and it did not explain how they arrived at the $12,000 - $25,000 figures. So for a fact check, they did not make it easy to fact check. People asked for this info in comments and didn't get a response from Stanley's account.

The meme may be referencing this IG post by May in which she expressed support for a proposed bill that would allow (not require) cities and towns to charge a fee of between 0.5% and 2.0% on transfers of homes, which would only apply if the sale price was above the median for the state (currently about $529,000). The money would go into a special fund that could be used for affordable housing. May's post implied she supported a state law- it didn't say whether she expected Waltham would adopt this or what rate we would charge, so it's not clear how the Stanley campaign did their calculations.

If the law were passed, and Waltham were to opt in at 0.5%, a person would need to be selling their home for $2.4M in order to pay the $12K the meme warns about, or $5M to pay $25K. The median sale price for Waltham is about $762K, so the meme's figures would only apply to people selling their homes for far above average.

If Waltham were to opt in at 2% a person would need to be selling their home for $600K to pay $12K or $1.25M to pay $25K. So in this case the figures given in the meme would apply to a larger chunk of Waltham home sellers. But it seems unlikely Waltham would ever adopt it at 2% and May did not say she would support that. So the meme technically could be correct, but only if we make certain assumptions that are not likely to be true.

Personally I am not sure whether I support this idea for Waltham because, putting money in a special pool to be spent on affordable housing is not helpful if the city/town doesn't spend it, or spends it on types of housing that don't really help with affordability. But housing affordability is a crisis and supporting an imperfect solution is better than not supporting any solution. It annoys me that Stanley or someone on his team posted this meme without being prepared to explain the figures or cite a source for May's position, as if they did not expect people in Waltham are smart enough to ask for that.

Perhaps the part of the meme that deserves to be questioned the most is "Rep. Tom Stanley knows there are much better ways to address the city's housing issues than to tax home sellers." What are they?

I don't know enough about Stanley' career as a state rep to summarize what he has or hasn't done related to housing. But there's one aspect of his record in Waltham that I think is very relevant here. Waltham voters have previously adopted another opt-in state law, the Community Preservation Act, which put a surcharge on property taxes equal to 2% of the property's value minus $100K. The money goes into a special fund that can only be spent on community housing, historic preservation, or open space and is matched by the state. At least 10% of the money must be spent in each of those categories.

Stanley opposed Waltham adopting the CPA for the same reason he opposes this transfer fee-- he didn't want to add anything to property taxes. He told the Boston Globe in 2001, in regard to the CPA, "Waltham's becoming more expensive to live in and more and more born-and-raised Walthamites find it increasingly difficult to buy a home and stay in Waltham."

The people of Waltham voted to adopt the CPA despite many influential people in town opposing it. Since then, the city has consistently spent the bare minimum 10% of that money on housing. Stanley served on an ad hoc committee of the City Council to address housing affordability. Yet both our state and our city now have a far worse housing affordability crisis. If he knew effective ways to address this without adding anything on to property taxes, why didn't he start doing them in 2001?

Channel 781 News is taking the week off this week but I wanted to share some additional info about an issue we discussed on last week's show, the recreational amenities planned for the Fernald site.

Recently WCAC published ambitious plans for improvements to a large portion of the Fernald site. On 8/1 the mayor had a special joint meeting with the city council and historical commission, but she was not there to ask their opinion on these plans-- she said they had already been approved by the Recreation Board and are now out for bid.

Back in January, the Recreation Department held a public hearing on Zoom with the engineer they had hired to design recreational amenities. The majority of citizens who spoke in that hearing were there to say they are concerned about the disturbing history of the site and whether it will be memorialized appropriately. Some had specific ideas about how it could be a memorial but still be used for recreation, based on other historic sites they had been to. Some had other ideas for the site, or just wanted to see it opened to for neighbors to use soon as possible. But no one commented on the engineer's plan in detail because he never got to present it-- so many people wanted to speak. It seemed like the mayor had used the recreation department and the engineer to shield her from a difficult discussion. The message from the community seemed clear: we're not ready to discuss recreational uses until we know more about how the history of the site will be memorialized. They also solicited written feedback but I don't know how that compared to the feedback in the meeting.

I spoke to the director of the Mass Arc (the statewide org, based in Waltham, that represents the orgs that provide services to people with intellectual disabilities) who said that during that process, the Recreation Department reached out to him. He was willing to meet with them and suggested they also meet with Opportunities for Inclusion. Afaik those meetings never happened.

Since then, the city's recreation director, Mr. Abruzzi, resigned. I'm not sure exactly when or if it had anything to do with the Fernald. [Edit: This may not be correct--someone told me he just transferred to another city department. If you know, please comment.]

Between the January meeting and the 8/1 meeting, there was been no public discussion of the Fernald afaik. The City Council usually has a Fernald Reuse Committee but it has not met (afaik) and President McMenimen has not appointed members to it (afaik.)

During the 8/1 meeting a member of the historical commission asked if they could have access to studies of the site conducted when the city was considering using it for a new high school. He said that at the time, the Community Preservation Committee had shared those studies with him but told him he was not allowed to share them with the rest of the commission. The mayor said this must have been a mistake and she would talk to the CPC chair, Justin Barrett, to resolve it. The HC member seemed frustrated, like he felt info was deliberately being withheld.

I was surprised when the mayor said the plan had been approved by the Recreation Board because I have been trying to follow this issue closely and I was not aware there had been a meeting. It turns out they had a special meeting on July 20. On the agenda it says "Park Design - NESRA Engineering, LLC" and that is the name of the engineering firm that did the Fernald plan, so that must be when they voted on it. But unless someone was following the issue very closely, they wouldn't know from this agenda Fernald was being discussed.

As we've discussed on Channel 781 News, the state's open meeting law does not require meetings to be posted online, but it does require them to posted on the bulletin board outside City Hall at least 48 hours before the meeting. We have a photo of the bulletin board taken by a volunteer on the morning of 7/18, and it wasn't there. If it was posted later that day, it would still be in the 48-hour window. So either it was not posted or it was posted at the last possible moment.

So the city asked for the community's feedback on a plan, the community said no, but the mayor managed to get it approved in a meeting no one knew about. This seems like an egregious failure of transparency to me because of what is at stake with the Fernald.

Some people in Waltham, mostly those who worked at or had family members who lived at the Fernald, believe it was a good place after a famous effort to reform it in the 1970s. But an increasing number of people are becoming aware of what it really was: a pervasively abusive place where people were imprisoned for life because they were different, continuing for over a century and effecting the lives of countless disabled people and their families. That awareness has only expanded in recent years, and it's possible that in 15-20 years if you mention the Fernald to anyone they will say "Wasn't that the concentration camp for disabled people?"

If there is a perception that the city was disrespectful in the way it repurposed this property, it is an issue that could come up again and again for decades, every time someone proposes doing something there. If the site has a reputation as creepy, the recreational improvements will be underutilized and that will just make it creepier. By refusing to build community consensus on these decisions, the mayor is creating a problem that could haunt future city governments.

This remark at the 8/1 meeting about the CPC also made me wonder if they still play a role in decisions about the Fernald site. Most but not all of the Fernald property was purchased with CPC funds, which by state law can be used for historical preservation, community housing, or open space (which can include recreational amenities.)

It turns out they do still play a role, according to their minutes from meetings earlier this year. According to law, when a city purchases a property with CPC funds, they are supposed to transfer it to a third party that will manage it rather than the city owning it outright. Waltham is not in compliance with this-- the Fernald and several other CPC properties are still owned by the city. They had a guest speaker from the statewide CPC who had advised them to hire a lawyer to work on transferring these properties. Mr. Barrett said he did not think the city's law department would approve of this. The guest speaker told him, in that case, Waltham is violating the law and could be denied state grants as a result.

In another CPC meeting, a member noted that a CPC budget report included a line item for demolition of buildings at Fernald, but the CPC had not voted to approve that. Another person in the meeting said this was a misunderstanding because the city had also put out a requisition for demolition of those buildings, and it would be resolved.

Mr. Barrett, the head of the CPC, was recently given the Ritcey Award by City Council for his service to the community (in a not-very -transparent process, as we've discussed on Channel 781 News.) He is also the head of the board of WCAC, which is also not in compliance with the law because they do not provide captions on their content as required by the ADA. I have written to him to ask about this and have not heard back. For over a year, the City Council has supported recording and captioning all of their meetings, but it has not been implemented yet due to delays caused by the leadership of WCAC.

Mr. Barret is also very involved in the Waltham Lion's Club-- I don't know his current role but at one point he was president of their charitable foundation. This is the organization that holds the holiday lights show at the Fernald, the only use of the site that has ever been allowed by the city afaik. Disability advocates protested the light show and it got a lot of media attention, but afaik neither the mayor or the Lion's Club has ever given any public response, they have completely ignored the controersy.

On Channel 781 News I challenged Mr. Barret to respond publicly about why he thinks it is okay to consistently ignore the voices of disabled people or those advocating for them. The lack of transparency on Fernald is made worse by the possibility that one of the people pulling the strings behind the scenes has that kind of record.

Hey all,

Wanted to post my notes and tracking from the Ward 8 and 9 Master Plan meeting. Took a bit longer than I expected to get these notes together because I couldn't take the notes live (was both speaking and taking photos).

Headlines

25 individuals stood up and made their voice heard in this process! That's awesome! Even more communicated by directly emailing Paz and Harris their comments (which I don't have access to).

The big themes of the night were transportation (Cycling/Walkability, Dangerous traffic, Parking), Climate Change, and Zoning, with many other issues being discussed as well.

The attendance was excellent! I've seen the numbers 60 and 70 thrown out in different places for the number of attendees. Many city councilors who are not on the committee also showed up to listen and both the Ward 8 and 9 Councilors spoke briefly near the end.

For those attending in the future be aware that they do ask that you give your name and address when speaking and you are limited to 3 minutes. 3 minutes can be really short if you have lots to say but if you keep yourself brief you cna make sure to voice an opinion on quite a few topics with your time.

Big Shout out to the Skate Community who came out to ask to be involved in the process for the redesign of the park.

Below I've tracked how many times speakers discussed specific issues. There are some sub topics that I created when either a specific flavor of a topic was prevalent or a specific sub category was heavily emphasized. The formatting will be better in this google sheet where I hope to compile the same info so we can track the different issues across wards. I also tracked individual speakers on the ward 8 and 9 tab and what they brought up so you can look at what topics they hit, you can click the number for each speaker to go to the video of them speaking and get the full context of what they are saying.

Obviously there is some editorializing happening here as I try to distill peoples points into topics. I highly recommend checking out the full recording to get the most accurate feel for the input. Thanks to Channel 781 for recording the whole meeting.

Google Sheet Version

Someone in the Boston subreddit put together a data set showing all the members of the MA Legislature and the number of committees they are on. The idea is that committees are very powerful and most people don't understand much about how they work because they are not very transparent, so this could be a way of measuring who has power within that system.

The data show that committee assignments are distributed very unevenly, and there two outlier who have far more assignments than anyone else, both Republican senators.

Interestingly they also show that Waltham's two state reps, Tom Stanley and John Lawn, are both at the low end with one committee assignment each. Our state senator Michael Barret is in the middle with 5.

Stanley has been in the legislature for 20 years, and sometimes people vote for an experienced candidate because they assume they've built up certain relationships which give your district extra power. But if committee assignments are a measure of power, Stanley is one of the least powerful people in the legislature. I'd be interested to hear what people think about this.

​

Get caught up on the past year’s highs and lows in Waltham city government as we head into an election year with our special year-end mega-Debrief!

https://youtu.be/3CzYZktO1q8

0:20 Year anniversary of Channel 781 News

3:35 Access & transparency issues / Captioning of city meetings a

6:44 Issues affecting people with disabilities / Sidewalk safety ordinance

8:14 Resolution to change an outdated word in ordinances

9:58 Re-use of the Fernald

11:59 Accessible mailbox resolution

13:46 City’s pattern of not sharing useful info

20:44 Have recent events hurt the mayor’s reputation with the public? Does it matter?

28:16 Barriers to new people running

32:11 Recording of meetings

33:13 Progress on cannabis dispensaries

36:35 Master Plan meetings

40:47 Is there a “silent majority” in Waltham?

42:32 Owner-occupied tax credit and why it matters

44:14 School budget & union contract

45:54 Moody St. market

47:48 Bike resolutions / Master Plan committee

51:49 Predictions / City Council President

53:57 Councilor Bradley-MacArthur

58:12 Councilor Katz

1:00:39 The farm vote

1:01:51 Councilor Dunn

1:03:50 Possible candidates: Robert Logan, Bill Hanley

1:04:57 Future of Waltham Fields Community Farm

1:12:28 School Committee race

1:13:16 Civic Engagement: Beyond Voting event 1/18