In the Ward 7 elections held on November 7th, 2017, incumbent Neal Anderson reelection.
Neil Anderson (incumbent)
Opening Remarks:
“Let me tell you how pleased I am to be here and take part in this very worthwhile and very important political forum…I was first elected in the city council back in 1984. Since, that I have served 11 terms in the Malden City Council. I have been the Malden City Council president for three years. I was two years in a row Malden city president. I made history when I was the first city council to be elected two years in a row. Which has never happen in Malden’s history. It is an honor to have my colleagues let me come back two years in a row. I have been the chairperson, even a member of everyone of the sub-committees. the important subcommittee of the malden city council. The hallmark of my candidacy is as a city councillor is has been working collaboratively with the residents of Malden with building coalition with the neighborhood government, and making sure good things happen as a result of that collaboration. Years ago I was involved in helping with the continuation of the lincoln school. Thank You.”
Affordable Housing:
“We can’t overlook the 40b issue of any new construction going on and that we’re implementing restrictions that are enforcing development to have set a sides, that’s we used to call it back in the day, set asides for at least 10 percent of affordable housing. We are going to be slowing down, clearly. i think we are all in agreement that we are going to be slowing downing the new construction that’s going on. There are other places where affordable housing needs to kick in. We need to consider how we treat the regular residential houses in our city. We got large single family and two-family houses that are owner occupied and people are living at, that could well be resulted and people for people who need small space. Not someone who may need a whole house. Where rooms will be rented out, and they will be part of a family. By doing that, it will help not only the owner of the property but also the person who need affordable, real affordable housing. Thats an idea out of the box that is very important. We need to make sure that we keep our affordable housing inventory above the 10 percent. So, we need to be looking at requiring more affordable housing, and looking at more out of the box ways to be looking at individual homes.”
Thoughts on Public Comment:
“I think the real issue really here is transparency. The issue is, how do we make sure our residents have direct access to the people that represent them, their city councillors, their state representatives, their Mayor, and the rest of that? Now, the idea of having public comment is a nice glitzy idea. That, unfortunately most people would disagree, I voted against that. I voted against that because I think the better way of focusing on transparency and dealing with the public is dealing with people on a one on one basis. My whole candacy and my whole run as a city councilor, the hallmark of that has been my collaboration with people in the neighborhood that are always in the neighborhood talking with people. We have something special in ward 7 that many of you know about, we take a float and go through it during the holiday season with Santa Claus. Where we are stopping at each of the streets in Malden to bring children onto the float to take pictures with Santa Claus. While that is happening, I am there talking to the residents. I am there hearing their concerns, hearing their issues, responding to their concerns. I do that at Christmas time, I do that at easter, we do that at the fourth of July. I am constantly in the neighborhood, that is how we can talk to our residents. We currently have a way for people to talk at the city council meetings, be in touch with the council or through phone calls emails, letter writing. You come to me and ask me to be sponsored, we will get you up there.”
School Funding:
“That is a softball question…There is no question we need more money for our schools. We need as much money to put into our schools. Mr. Ciccone has mention that he partially right, that the city council can’t add to the budget but we can only cut from the budget, but the budget comes from the mayor which comes down to the school committee. We look at the totality of the budget. Our job as city councillors is to see how we can find the most money for each of the services we provide for the city of Malden, not just the school, the police, the fire, the D.P.W, all of that. We got to balance, we have to balance the amount of money we have coming in to the various sources to divide it up in a way that provide the services at the right level. Do we need more money from the schools? Yes we do. You know the education of our children is the most important, you all are our future, we want to see you become the future of our city and community. So, we need to do all that we can to get money in our schools. Thank you”
Scott Ciccone
Opening Statement:
“I am a lifelong ward 7 resident. Been up and down the streets of ward 7, every single one, Newland street, Harvard Street, Holyoke Street; which I have lived on my entire life. I am running for the same reasons why people want race in ward 7. We have hit over 2000 doors, and going to door to door we kept hearing from people their want their roads and sidewalks to be a priority in ward 7. They want a councillor who is accountable to them. That’s going to listen to them. That’s going to be for things, like for public comment, and things like public forum. The other reason why I am running is because there is no one on the council that has a public safety background. What I currently do for work is I am a program coordinator for The Firearms Record Bureau at the Department of Criminal Justice Information Services in Chelsea. Something that I am very honored to be apart of. Very happy to work there. What we do there is I have a large part in running people’s background, and make sure people who should not have firearms are not getting fire arms. I am a point of contact for all federal, state, and local agencies when it comes to that position. It’s a great honor. i have been an athlete in Malden. So, that is something I would like to have a part in. Pushing kids to get interested back in sports. I also, referee football. I’ve seen while reefing Malden High that there has been a drop in number of kids participating and that is something I think I can push. Get kids interested. Those are things why I am running. Thank You.”
Affordable Housing:
“Malden currently stands at the 10.2 percent. If it was to fall below the 10 percent of affordable housing we would fall under the chapter 40b. For those who aren’t familiar with that, that is what allowed developers to build more densely and would require developer to malde 25 percent of the new housing units to have affordable housing. Something that people are against with the new development. There are about 2,400 current, available units in Malden. About 1,000 of those will be coming up shortly, where they could lose their long term affordability regulation. I think we need to do everything that we can to make sure that the 1,000 coming up soon, we are increasing that. We can do that if we push the state legislature to adopt certain things and certain revisions to chapter 40b. Like making double homes… Also, looking at things that aren’t directly affordable home, bringing in commercial businesses, bring in high tax revenue. We could use that tax revenue to use on the affordable housing that we do have currently. We could build specialty for senior housing. that is the one thing people in ward 7 were in favor of. They wanted to stop development overall, except when it came to seniors. Especially, because you’re not going to be moving when you’re retired, it’s crazy to have you move out.”
Though on Public Comment:
“As for public comment, I stand with it 100 percent. that is one of the biggest thing ward 7 residents has talked about when I go door to door.Is what can we do to be a more transparent government? I think public comment is a very easy segment that we con add to city council. There are seems to be some back and forth on city council, like ward 3 mention the council meeting got over nearly at mid-night last night. I have a flu time job, personally if it would take until five in the morning, I would do that. Especially if it has an opportunity for people to come in, and ward 7 residents to come and voice their concerns to the city council. I think that is something I would add. My opponent did state before he was for it in a questionnaire. Unfortunately during the vote. he did vote no. i am sure he had his reason why he did vote no. Some of those reasons are based on length of time. That the current system is okay. I do disagree with that. A lot of that was you could contact our counselor currently, and they can sponsor you and have you come in front of the city council. I think that is not enough. I think we should have it at every council meeting. Especially, if you tired t in the past, not councilor anderson, any government official, if you tried to contact them in the past, is it easy to do on the first try? No. I think the easiest way to get people’s opinions stated in front of elected officials is for something like public comment to be implemented. Cities around us have it, Medford has it, Everett has it I believe, it has worked well for them, the school committee has public comment section. I love to that added to see that added to the city council.
School Funding:
As far as funding, no you don’t have enough funding. It’s not enough funding to go around. I wish it was more. I wish we could print money. A lot of people will point at the school budget and say “it goes up every year, what are they doing with it?”. As far the percentage of the budget, it has stayed the same. Inflations has gone up, the budget has gone up but it doesn’t mean anything. What we should do is as far as the city council we don’t have a control over it, that comes from the school committee. We can’t add to it we can only subtract, as a city councilor I don’t think I would ever subtract from it. I don’t think we have enough of it, like I said. We could push the state to have revisions to the chapter 70, how they fund the school system. Especially, we will get more funds based on the greater number of students coming in but it is still not going to be enough. What I will like to do if elected city councilor is set up quarterly meetings with the school commit. Not to usurp their power, but to hear what their issues are, and how can we help them. If it would help if we reach out to our state representative, our governor, whoever can help. Does that that little help from the city council help the school committee, can we get more of the budget? Also, focusing on things I mentioned before that is not directly related to school budget, issuing we are developing apartment complexes we are developing commercial businesses. That can bring in tax revenue and automatically bring in more school budge because we have more money to spend.
