Meet The Candidate: Waltham Ward 2's John Saxe

WALTHAM, MA — This August, when his father passed away at 90, John Saxe spent a lot of early mornings walking his dog in Ward 2 thinking about what he'd learned from his dad.

His father, he said, helped shape him as a man who focused on accomplishments, not accolades and instilled in him a desire to make his surroundings better.

"If you get beyond doing things because you can do them and do them because they might have an outcome that might make things better for other people you start operating on a whole other level," said Saxe who is running for City Councilor for Ward 2 against incumbent Bill Fowler.

Saxe, who came to the area several decades ago for school and then fell in love with his wife and the city has never run for office before. The former teacher has been on a school subcommittee but, like a few other newcomers to politics, this election season he has jumped into the race in the hopes of helping the Watch City move forward in a proactive communicative way.

Leading up to the city council's vote to taking eminent domain off the table, the former teacher and mediator sent a letter to all city councilors asking them not to do it, because he thought it was a big mistake. He reached out to neighbors and friends in the city, explained his rationale — and urged them to reach out to the city council, too.

Friends and neighbors came back and asked him if this meant he was going to run for city council. He brushed that aside, but the idea took lodge.

He started having meetings with people in the city trying to better understand how Waltham operates.

"I knew a little bit early on. I know a little bit more. But what I know now is that there's a whole lot more that I still don't know but I don't see that as a negative. I see it as an opportunity," he said. An opportunity to go out seek experts and bring them back to the rest of the city council to learn from.

Who is this guy?

Saxe, is a father of two daughters: a 6- and 9-year-old. He's a soccer coach, and he works at a marketing agency Scratch Marketing + Media in Cambridge. But he also worked with the Framingham Court Mediation Services as a mediator for several years. That position, he said, was about listening, building consensus and looking for common ground; and those skills have stuck with him.

"In general, we need more listening and fewer people who want to be or think they are the smartest person in the room. I see my job [as city councilor] as going out to find the smartest people to inform on the situation at hand and try to build from there... It's not about ego."

It's by really listening to people who think differently that you do that you can often find the best solutions, he said.

The issues:

The issues folks most bring up to him as he's canvassing involve planning and development, traffic and transportation, and education and the new high school. "And all three are tied together," he said.

He lays out a vision on his website for each of these subjects, and explains how he will go about tackling them moving forward.

The specifics involve building sidewalks, limiting development, supplementing public transit with a municipal shuttle service, phasing in sheltered bike lanes and creating a planning board.

In September, he and two other city candidates went to MassDOT's Complete Streets conference as a way to learn about potential solutions to Waltham's traffic problems.

"It made me aware that there’s a lot more we can and must be doing to allow alternatives to getting in a car and driving," he said. Like somehow connecting the work force in Waltham to the jobs in Acton.

"Doing things like that are really important, but we are only going to find out about them if we do more to education ourselves. I just feel like what I want to bring to City Council is the willingness to go out explore and bring the people with experience and can inform and help us make improvements and bring people together to accomplish these goals."

On the High School:

Saxe has long said he sees the Stigmatine property as the perfect spot to fulfill the School Department plan for the high school. Building on the existing site wouldn't just compromise the educational plan as it's laid out, it would nix the building to use as a k-8 down the line as the city faces increasingly crowded classrooms, he said.

He recently went to visit Father White over at the Stigmatines, after realizing he'd been advocating for something and he hadn't actually chatted with the group.

"It was excellent. I do understand that there are different perspectives on what has transpired between city and Stigmatines. I can appreciate the importance of the ministry that the Stigmatines offer the community and I can appreciate why Waltham is an excellent location for the Stigmatines," he said.

And yet, he said why couldn't the city work with them to have them stay in Waltham in some serene location that serves their needs?

"I hope that we could find another location that wouldn’t continue to put stress on the relationship that the Stigmatines and the city currently have," he said. He still thinks the Stigmatine property would be a perfect spot for the high school, but he notes any move should be collaborative.

"If ever there was a case for mediation then this is it." he said.

On Communication:

Earlier this summer the repaving of Lexington Street took folks in his neighborhood by surprise, he said. Yes, it was part of a master transportation plan back in 2016, but a year later residents were only reminded days ahead of time.

"That's an example of a missed opportunity to proactively engage the community," he said. Many felt like they had no say in what was going on with the paving and then the lane reduction shortly after. "You gotta go to the people to understand instead of assuming you know the answers. Otherwise you don't address the totality of the situation," he said.

"There’s a difference in fulfilling a minimum requirement and actually communicating. We should be doing much more to reach out to people to say this is coming and there’s an opportunity to provide input," he said.

That could take many forms, he said. But he said most of all he saw it as the responsibility of the city councilors.