Braintree Election 2021: Julia Flaherty For Town Council

BRAINTREE, MA — The Braintree town election is less than two weeks away, and soon voters will hit the polls and elect new members to the Town Council and school committee.

Town Council contested races are in districts 1, 2 and 3., while the school committee will see seven candidates compete for three open seats.

Prior to the election, Patch is running candidate profiles to help inform residents on where candidates stand on the issues. Here's a bit more about Town Councilor Julia Flaherty, who is running for re-election in District 1, in the Nov. 2 town election.

Julia Flaherty

Age (as of Election Day)

46

Position Sought

Town Council, District 1

Family

My husband, Dan, and I have lived in Braintree for 16 years. We have a son and daughter who are both enrolled in Braintree Public Schools.

Does anyone in your family work in politics or government?

No

Education

BA, Smith College; MA, Boston University

Occupation

History Teacher, 10 years, Whitman-Hanson Regional High School. Currently a stay-at-home mom.

Previous or Current Elected or Appointed Office

Town Council, District 1

Campaign website

www.julia4braintree.com

Why are you seeking elective office?

I think local government works best when it functions as a partnership with the residents it serves. To that end, it is critical for elected officials to build strong lines of communication with residents to broaden understanding on complex issues, because this is how we create a foundation for finding solutions that work.

In my time in office, I have worked hard to make sure that residents have the information and resources they need to advocate for our community. This is why I issue a regular newsletter. But it is worth noting that at the bottom of every newsletter there is a button that says "Contact Me." Information is the most valuable thing that I can give you, but that has to be followed up with listening. The button is there to provide residents with a really easy avenue to use to provide feedback. I also make myself accessible to residents through in-person office hours twice a week, and I host larger community meetings on the biggest issues.

Residents don't need someone to tell them what to think. They need someone to be a reliable resource for them, and a strong listener to their needs and views so that we can work together to forge a path for Braintree.

The single most pressing issue facing our (board, district, etc.) is _______, and this is what I intend to do about it.

The single most pressing issue facing Braintree continues to be connected to development. In District 1, concerns often center around the Plaza, which continues to labor under the impression that expansion is the only way for it to remain viable. This is the path that it has followed historically, and I know that it has been profitable in years past. But infinite expansion is not a sustainable path, and I would like to see the Plaza work to be more creative in reinventing itself on the footprint it already has. The Town Council doesn't always have final say over these issues, but where we do have authority, I will use my position as District 1 Councilor to prevent the mall from infringing on our established residential neighborhoods.

What are the critical differences between you and the other candidates seeking this post?

What I bring to the table is a proven ability to bring the community together with information and a plan of action to fight for what we need. When the John Flatley Company proposed a 37-foot digital billboard that would bathe District 1 neighborhoods in its electric glow 24/7, I mobilized such a forceful opposition against it that the proposal was finally withdrawn because of "community concern." One councilor speaking out alone against something as profitable as a billboard can never be as effective the collective voices of many.

How do you think local officials performed in responding to the coronavirus? What if anything would you have done differently?

In my lifetime, Braintree has never seen anything like the pandemic we've experienced over the last year and a half. I was proud to see that our first instinct as a community was to come together to make sure that our most vulnerable residents were taken care of first. I especially commend our public health nurses and all of our first responders for their exemplary performance amid all the strain and uncertainty of that time.

On the council, discovering new ways to carry out our governmental duties safely was a steep learning process and there were bumps in the road for sure. But once we got the hang of Zoom, we managed, and the silver lining of it is that now we have a new set of tools to help give us flexibility when circumstances for meeting in-person aren't ideal.

Describe the other issues that define your campaign platform.

Braintree needs leadership to continue the fight against the compressor station. In my capacity as the Town Council Liaison to FRRACS, I worked with Alice Arena to help bring an air quality monitor to Braintree. This device will provide data sophisticated enough and reliable enough to be admissible in court so that we can finally begin to hold Enbridge and every other industrial polluter accountable to basic environmental safety standards.

What accomplishments in your past would you cite as evidence you can handle this job?

Serving on the Ways and Means Committee has given me tremendous insight into Braintree's municipal budget, and I have worked hard to build greater community participation into our budget process. Residents can and should understand our operating budget, but they don't necessarily have 20 hours to spend reviewing the raw numbers, and why should they when there are 5 councilors on the committee who have already done that?

I have employed numerous tools to lay out the fundamentals and produce a clear narrative on how much revenue is generated through different sources, how it is spent, and where and why cuts may have been made. Putting this information in the newsletter, creating a budget summary slide deck, and hosting a community budget forum for the public are all mechanisms that I put in place to help residents understand the complexities of our municipal budget.

Real financial transparency begins with giving residents the tools they need to understand our financial position--how we got where we are and what changes might be made to help the budget better reflect our priorities. People want to engage in local government. Leadership means helping them do that effectively, and that’s one of the ways that I serve residents best.

The best advice ever shared with me was:

Ask more questions.

What else would you like voters to know about yourself and your positions?

One of the messages that I have heard from residents in the many conversations that I have had recently is a powerful conviction that we have to do a better job taking care of our town. A lot of our infrastructure, from our school system to our fire headquarters to our sidewalks has aged to a point where it has moved beyond what would be considered shabby and into a place where the safety of using it is questionable. We shouldn’t be in a place where we can’t open our high school because we can’t turn the electricity on. Our firefighters shouldn’t be put in a position where they breathe carcinogenic fumes in their sleep.

Braintree desperately needs to have a conversation on what path we want to follow to improve in these areas. No councilor has the authority to direct funding, but we do have the ability to foster a meaningful conversation among residents on what the best path is for Braintree to follow. At the end of the day, it’s our money, and it should be a community conversation on how we want to spend it.