Quincy Sun Profile 2019
Ward One is a politically active and knowledgeable constituency and they not only deserve a responsive councilor, they demand it. Far too many residents have told me that they do not hear back from the current councilor. I will also prioritize community meetings and office hours that allow for citizen-input before decisions are made on projects. Presently, meetings are called only to inform the citizens about the decisions that are being inflicted on them.
A renewed focus on infrastructure and the basics of local government: The current administration has been focused on vane and luxurious development while neglecting our 400 year old city’s foundation. Get outside Quincy center and you’ll find our streets are pocked with potholes that cost drivers a hidden car repair tax. Our sidewalks are often untraversable for our disabled, elderly, or strollers. Eighteen months after the March 2018 flood there still has not been any significant coastal resiliency projects done to our seawalls or tide gates. After years of rehabilitating our coastline, our storm drain systems have been left to rot and we are being sued by the federal government for failing to protect our own waters.
I would also call for the creation of a green-zoning task force. This would be a collaboration between some of the talented, experienced builders we have in Quincy and environmental experts to modernize and innovate our zoning codes. With all of the revitalization and building Quincy is undertaking, we should transform ourselves into a leader in energy-efficient building practices. Construction practices have a significant impact on greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions as well as the affordability of residential housing. Modifying current practices can do much to lower GHG emissions and the cost of housing.
To help mitigate the current practice of inflicting decisions on our residents with little or no input, I’m also proposing Quincy begin a participatory budget program. This is a democratic process in which residents decide how to spend part of a public budget. It would give Quincy’s people a real say over real money.
Finally, due to the past, present, and future plans to amass monstrous debt and unfunded pension liabilities, the city needs an independent, outside financial review of our current fiscal situation as well as our forecast and plans. We can not let lofty designs leave our children and retirees in a financial mess.
I understand that the job of Ward One Councilor is to be our representative at City Hall, not the Mayor’s deputy in our community.
The current councilor’s special relationship with the Mayor has not rendered adequate attention or service here in our ward. And while the current councilor was not dealt an easy hand, with two significant storms hitting us early in his tenure, the lack of urgency shown after these events did not rise to the adversity we faced. For an administration that has never met a piece of debt it didn’t like, they suddenly found caution when it came to funding seawalls, tide gates and storm drain rehabilitation. This shows the types of projects that the mayor and our councilor value, and what they are willing to wait on. With another four years of this administration all but certain, pulling in ideas from outside the Quincy political clique is more important than ever. We need more independent voices who are willing to ask tough questions and say “no” when appropriate.
My desire to serve my neighbors as city councilor came from my previous career in the music industry. I was a union representative for AFM Local 47. When not on a gig, I spent my days fighting to enforce contracts, proper conditions, and decent treatment of working musicians. I chased payments and residuals and fought to keep their benefits in tact. I hustled to find them new work and pushed to keep that work “union.” It was challenging, rewarding, and fun. I used creative problem solving to bring employers and musicians together, to find a way for live music to exist. Serving as a city councilor will bring me a similar challenge, the same reward, and the same fun.
Quincy needs city councilors who understand and know their true role, and Ward One needs someone who isn’t satisfied to sit back and wait for solutions. As councilor, I will be available and accountable to you. Your concerns will be my concerns; your fights will be my fights.
Thank you to all my friends and supporters for giving up their free time and energy to help me. You inspire me and I will never feel worthy of the sacrifices you and your family make for this campaign. Thanks especially to my family for your patience and support. I love you Cheryl, Maddy, and Ellie.
My remarks from our event at SALA
Hello
I’d like to start off with the thank you portion of the night:
First, thank you all for being here.
Thank you everyone at Sala, Erin McMillen, my inner campaign circle: Dan, Dave, Walter, Merideth, Jill, Deb, Gail, and everyone who has donated their time to helping.
It is a huge undertaking to run for office. And it feels even bigger when you get great people helping you. Letting yourself down is one thing, but letting others down is quite another. You all inspire me to keep working hard.
Thank you very much to School Committee member, Katherine Hubley for coming by. And a special thank you to School Committee candidate, Courtney Perdios for attending and for being a source of friendship, support, and ideas as we both run.
Thanks especially to my girls. Cheryl, my best friend, my partner, most of what I’m doing here is to try and make you think I’m cool. My daughters, Maddy and Ellie, you are the sweetest kids in the world and I can’t believe your mine. Most of what I’m doing here is so you grow up thinking your hometown is cool.
I’m running for city council and I think you should donate to my campaign. I think we can do something very special here. If I’m elected I will have beat back a 400-1 funding disparity. Imagine the message that sends to the special-interests and developers the next time they want to open their wallets to buy influence...if someone like me--who takes no special-interest or developer money can win, then what good is their bought and paid for agenda...why waste money on campaigns when someone who just gathers his friends, neighbors, and community, gives them Cheese and Chicken and says “will you help me help our community?” That’s an amazingly powerful message.
I’m running for city council and I think you should volunteer. Again, we can do something very special here. When we stand out tomorrow morning and wednesday evening, those cars that go by are going to see faces they know. They are going to see parents from the school yard, fellow band boosters, small business owners from the neighborhood, the couple who walks the boxer past our house. They are going to see the faces of their community. What they won’t see are strangers from a special interest or union who wants a candidate to help them get on the next big job site, a variance or license, or access to the next big city-funded project. Our volunteers are friends who got to know me through PTO or the climate action network, or parents who know me from play-dates. Neighbors and residents who read my blog, watched my video, or listened to a speech and decided I was someone worth getting behind. I’ll take 5 people like that over 50 strangers who were told to show up and stand.
I’m running for city council and I think you should vote for me. Vote for me because you miss having a city councilor who communicates with you. Because you are tired of having decisions inflicted on you rather than discussed with you. Vote for me because you care about ideas, and you value character. You believe the job of the city councilor is to represent us and not the mayor. Because you want to get an answer from your city councilor even if it’s not the answer you want. You want our agenda and timetable fought for at city hall and you aren’t satisfied to wait for timetables convenient to the administration.
Vote for me because you care about the earth and you believe there are ways to save the environment while saving money and jobs.
You believe that citizens should at least have a small but direct say in how their tax money is spent.
Because while you are happy for progress in the city, you know that a 425 Million dollar unfunded pension liability is unacceptable and the time has come to get an independent set of eyes to review our finances.
And vote for me because you know that infrastructure can’t be neglected, and a 400 year old city needs upkeep not just fancy green spaces. Because you know that getting sued by this federal administration’s EPA is not that easy to do.
So there you have it. You should donate, volunteer, and vote. And one last thing...get your friends to do the same. Get your family to do the same.
What’s scary about where we are is this. IT IS IN REACH. Don’t wake up Nov. 6th and see that we almost did it...don’t give yourselves 2nd thoughts. Leave it all on the field this month.
Thank you all...
Draft Submission to Quincy Sun*:
I’m Joe Murphy and I am running for city council to represent Quincy’s Ward One.
I first ran for this office in 2017, making this my second attempt. I learned so much from talking to my constituents in my first campaign and I feel like I have a better understanding of what they want, and what they are lacking in representation. If elected, I will be available and accountable to all Ward One residents. I will be independent and focused on improving the lives of the Ward One residents from all our neighborhoods.
The priorities of my campaign are infrastructure repairs and upgrades, coastal resiliency, encouraging smart-development projects and a greater variety of amenities for Quincy residents. I will continue to stand up to the MBTA mistreatment and work to make Quincy more walkable and bikeable to help relieve much of the traffic issues we now face. My ideas are outlined at my website, www.votejoemurphy.com. My campaign priorities and solutions come directly from conversations with Ward One residents.
When you knock on a door in Ward One, there are themes and topics that come up repeatedly. On one street, it might be a cracked sidewalk that has not been addressed in years and neighbors will tell you how often people trip over it. The next street over folks will point to the grass in a park that is routinely overgrown. Another set of residents will show you a storm drain that backs up during every big storm and sends water into their basements. Near Bernie’s in the Neck, people point to the blighted house with the shattered windows that has been allowed to haunt the neighborhood for the better part of a decade. Further down Sea St. they’ll bring up the boat ramp that remains unusable for most of the day. They point to the Maritime Center that was shuttered before the plans for a replacement were finalized and initiated. In Merrymount you’ll hear about commuters racing through their neighborhoods to shave off a few minutes and get further up Quincy Shore Drive. In Quincy Center you’ll hear about ill-conceived traffic patterns that make getting around impossible. People don’t need to look far to point out the ways the city could improve their lives.
No candidate will possess a magic wand that can solve all our problems easily. But we can ask that our leaders start discussions and formulate strategies to start picking these problems off one at a time.
To make myself as available as possible, I will host weekly office hours at locations around Ward One so that constituents who want the ear of the councilor can come and talk in person. I will also host regular community meetings to get the input of residents before decisions are made. Too many times, our community meetings are held to tell us what decisions are being inflicted upon us rather than making us a part of the discussion.
I will use social media to let constituents know what we are working on, to take in their concerns, and get them answers quickly. In 2019, we need to be able to find people where they are: online, offline, in their homes, during office hours, and on the phone. It should not be hard for residents to reach and get a response from their Ward Councilor. If we are willing to walk around the neighborhood to win your vote, we need to be willing to be around to earn your vote.
It’s important that we send new voices to city council. The city works best when there are checks and balances and a mix of experience and fresh ideas. If elected, I will support the good initiatives, and push back on the bad. I will partner with fellow councilors to enrich life in Quincy but the needs of Ward One will always be at the center of my work.
*This submission to the Quincy Sun was made to late in the election cycle. If I’m fortunate enough to get past the primary it should run then.
QATV five-minute pitch/speech:
Hi Everyone:
My name is Joe Murphy, and once again, I’m running for City Councilor in Ward 1. In 2017 I ran on a platform based on enriching life for the people of ward one. That goal is still at the heart of this new campaign. But after getting to know so many of you, I now have a wiser and more focused approach on how to make our community stronger, safer, and better equipped for the challenges coming our way.
It’s clear that Quincy needs to focus on infrastructure. The roads all around the city and especially in ward one form an obstacle course of potholes for us to navigate. The sidewalks are also a mess. Quincy citizens pay more in property taxes each year and see little improvements on the streets they live on.
We also need to talk about investing in our sewer and storm drainage system. The city is now being sued by the EPA because they have not prioritized keeping our waters clean. This is not something the federal government does lightly and this was not done out of the blue. Our current leaders were not taking this problem seriously enough. Our coastline and waterways are the crown jewels of Quincy and we need to treat them as such. Luxury projects need to wait for the bones of our old city to be repaired.
This leads into our focus on coastal resiliency. We need to expedite seawall and tide gate projects. There are ward one families who are still not back to normal since last year’s flood. Quincy’s current strategy seems to be “let’s hope a storm like that doesn’t happen again.” And we have yet to take further steps to modernize and green our environmental policy. Renewable energy is now competitive in terms of cost to fossil fuels and we should be moving forward with municipal green aggregation for our electric supply. Any new commercial construction should be required to take steps that reduce their carbon output. To that end, I think the city should form a green zoning task force consisting of energy experts and experienced builders working together to lead Quincy’s revitalization in a responsible direction.
Amidst Quincy’s revitalization, does it feel to you that nearly every available property becomes a luxury apartment complex? This adds students to our schools, people for our first responders to protect, and additional traffic on our streets. I want us to be a thriving city...that means more than being a boarding house for Boston. We need to encourage a broader mix of amenities for the citizens who are already here.
Speaking of the citizens who are already here….we need to keep them here. We can’t let long term quincy residents to be squeezed out by rising property taxes. We need to talk about more abatements for our seniors, disabled, and veterans. We need to help people afford to stay with access to good paying jobs.
Many of these good paying jobs are in boston and cambridge...This means daily commuting. No one has spoken out for the citizens of quincy against the mbta mistreatment louder than I. If elected, the MBTA will know that there’s another city councilor that won’t let Quincy commuters be pushed around.
I believe the people of Quincy should have some direct control over the projects that are important to them, so I want to create discretionary funding in the form of participatory budgeting. This would be a pot of money that will go towards projects proposed our citizens. We would then post the projects online and survey the residents to see which projects they want funded. Whether it’s planting trees, park repairs, community block parties or concerts, the citizens could have a direct say in how a small part of the city coffers are spent.
And the time has come to hire a completely independent outside financial consultant to review the city’s financial plan and forecast. With all the money we are borrowing, it’s important that we don’t leave a financial mess for the next generation.
As your representative, you’ll always be able to get in touch with me. I will hold weekly office hours for anyone who wants the ear of the councilor, and I will use email, mail, and social media to keep you better informed on what’s happening at city hall. We will start having real community meetings again, and we will discuss all the issues, popular and unpopular.
No elected official will have a magic wand to easily solve all our problems, but some of our issues can be solved with some hustle and organization. Remember, the job of a city councilor is not to be the Mayor’s representative in our ward, but the people’s representative at city hall. As your city councilor, I won’t be beholden to the political clique, I don’t owe anyone’s son’s friend’s roomate any favors and I fund my campaign completely with small dollar donations from people who know me and the contents of my heart. If you elect ME, you’ll be sending someone who wants to represent YOU. Your concerns are my concerns, your fights will be my fights.
I would be honored to have earned your vote in the upcoming preliminary election. Thank you all.