Kimberly Vandiver Seeks Election to City Council

Kimberly Vandiver is excited to announce her candidacy for the Ward 5 seat on City Council. The Ward 5 seat is currently held by Councillor Shawn MacMaster, who has decided not to seek reelection. To orient Melrosians who may not be familiar, Ward 5 is the southwest corner of Melrose; some landmarks include The Cascade in The Fells, the Lower Washington and Russell Park Neighborhoods, the Wyoming Hill Commuter Rail stop, southern Main Street, and Oak Grove Village.

Prior to seeking election in Ward 5, Kim has held a variety of roles spanning operations, management, and data analysis. After earning a degree in engineering from MIT, she began her career as an operations and management consultant with Stroud International, fascinated with solving real-world tangible problems in manufacturing. Since then she has been a part of building and improving the operations of various startups including modular furniture company Lovesac, medicare advantage company Clover Health, and data annotation service Scale AI. She was proud to be a part of the team running the operations of VaccinateCA in the early days of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. VaccinateCA helped Californians find and sign up for vaccine appointments and accelerated the pace and efficiency of the rollout. Across her various roles, Vandiver has managed teams, untangled messy data, and worked cross functionally with people from engineers to designers to physicians. She has experience working with many different groups to ensure that everyone’s ideas are heard and prioritized, and to work together to achieve difficult goals.

While Vandiver has traveled and moved to several states during her early career, she has been grateful to find a warm and welcoming home for her family in Melrose. Melrose has a bit of everything; families, hiking, community events, an active downtown, and access to the greater Boston area – we are all so lucky to live here. Vandiver is excited for the opportunity to deepen her connection to this community as a City Councillor and to serve the people of Melrose.

Vandiver’s focuses for Ward 5 include promoting safe and enjoyable streets, building connected community, supporting homeownership, promoting racial justice, improving access to quality childcare, and supporting public education. She believes it is important that we have safe and enjoyable streets so that residents feel at ease traversing their neighborhood however they travel – with a stroller, in a wheelchair, by bike, on foot or by car. We need smooth sidewalks and streets, and we need to manage traffic to separate faster cars from walkers, bikers, and children. She also believes that we can better connect our community; Ward 5 is currently separated physically by the commuter rail tracks, and Vandiver wants to promote better access for residents to parks and businesses on either side of the tracks as well as to Main Street and our many community events in Downtown Melrose. Two ways that this could be achieved are through a pathway or walking bridge across the commuter rail tracks or through increased public transit options in this section of Melrose.

Vandiver also believes that it is important to support attaining and maintaining homeownership. Many first-time homebuyers and long-time homeowners alike are struggling to afford homeownership; Vandiver wants to ensure access to and benefit from existing supportive programs such as First Time Home Buyers Workshops in Massachusetts, Melrose's Senior Property Tax Work-Off Program, and other Real Estate Tax Exemptions in Melrose.

Vandiver will be hosting in-person events listed on her website KimForMelrose.com and can be contacted by email at Kim@KimForMelrose.com. Visit the website to learn more about her campaign platform and to sign up for future email updates.