Election Profile: Stephanie Hirsch For Councilor-At-Large

SOMERVILLE, MA — Voters will select four councilors-at-large from a pool of eight candidates in Somerville's municipal election Nov. 5. Stephanie Hirsch, 49, is one of four current councilors-at-large seeking re-election.

Hirsch lives in Union Square with her husband, Joe, and their three kids and cat. She works for the city and helped launch SomerStat, 311 and ResiStat.

Hirsch has over 20 years of experience in municipal management and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. She also completed the first phase of her Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Chicago.

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

Affordability: Unless we take dramatic steps, neighbors and friends will continue to leave as the community grows affluent and homogeneous. I consider this the biggest challenge.

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

Different councilors focus on different aspects of the job, and I value the contributions of all my colleagues. My focus has been on trying to communicate with people, to advocate for their issues, and to try to find policy solutions that are win-wins for different groups or at least reasonable compromises. Even if I can’t champion every issue, I can connect people who can then work together to advocate. A unique strength I bring is 20 years of leadership experience within municipal government -- in Somerville, Boston, New York City, and elsewhere -- including work on municipal finance, operations, community development, data analysis, and policy formation.

Describe the other issues that define your campaign platform:

• Quality of life – Traffic and Rats (plus flooding and noise): What’s worse than paying half your income on housing? Paying that much and STILL having to deal with traffic, rats, flooding, and traffic or airplane noise. These issues hurt our health and safety. They limit our ability to form community ties and erode our peace of mind.
• Community Institutions, Kids and Families: Our list of capital needs is long -- from streets to sewer pipes -- and much of our general fund budget gets eaten up by operational functions like public safety and public works. We also, though, need to invest in community institutions and social services. Helping non-profits stay in Somerville, and fully funding divisions like Library and Recreation, has multiplying benefits. When we help care for each child and each adult, we help relieve the stress of living in close quarters and/or of living check by check.
• Sustainability: Across all categories, we must think about our environmental impact. I believe we can do this -- even joyfully – by supporting a way of life that helps with all goals while also helping us reduce our carbon footprint. For example, we can build new parks next to dense housing with small units, allowing kids or seniors to step out of their homes to meet a diverse mix of friends. We can make small-space living manageable by creating shared living rooms in a new YMCA, teen space, or Recreation Center. We can cut transit fares, so that we make living in Somerville more affordable and reduce car use. Fewer cars means we can reclaim some street area for community space -- and these steps also move us closer to a carbon neutrality goal.
• Community Building and Problem Solving: How can we get this hard work done? We can use our density to our advantage by forming friendships with neighbors, and regularly practicing empathy and forgiveness.

With compromise and determination, we will see glimpses of this healthy future, where pursuing goals of equity, environmentalism, and community (plus the key goal of having fun together!) all line up… And IF we can do that, we’ll be a demonstration plot for a world that’s struggling with all of these issues.

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

During my time in Somerville, I have helped launch SomerStat, 311, SomerPromise, ResiStat, and the Community Cabinet. I have worked with the Superintendent to help school leaders develop improvement plans. As a City Councilor -- because of my conversations with thousands of residents -- I have focused on affordability, quality of life issues (traffic and rats), community building and community supports, and sustainability issues. We’ve made some progress, including: steps taken on the affordability front (though none are a silver bullet), formation of a new mobility division and pedestrian/transit advocacy group, addition of an out-of-school time coordinator, and addition of a staff person focused on reducing rat populations. All my goals and newsletters for each month in office can be found here: http://www.stephanieforsomervi... and here https://docs.google.com/docume...

The best advice ever shared with me was ...

Two pieces of advice my parents shared come to mind many times a day in Somerville. My dad says: "The best thing to do in life is show up, do what needs doing, and stay until the work is done." I hope to be that kind of person, and admire others who show up in so many different ways. My mom quotes a poem regularly that goes something like: "Living in community requires practicing forgiveness on a daily (in some case hourly!) basis." That also comes in very handy in a close-knit and physically close (aka crowded) community like ours.

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

I identify strongly with the more working class roots of my childhood home, and with years I spent living and working in communities where I was an outsider. While there are many priorities, my top priority and value is creating an inclusive community with people of different incomes, backgrounds, and ways of seeing the world. From my way of seeing the world, that's the most important problem to solve and solution to model in a divided time. If that means moving more slowly on other initiatives so that we have more consensus and people have more empathy for different perspectives, I think it's worth doing.