I am glad to be running for my 18th term on the Newton City Council as the Ward Councilor for Ward Seven, located in the eastern part of Newton that runs from Newton Corner to Chestnut Hill. I want to continue to preserve and enhance the community we share.

For example, I want to help our new Mayor work successfully with Boston College to preserve and protect for public use the important wooded land behind the former Temple property at 300 Hammond Pond Parkway, known as Webster Woods, bounded by City or DCR open space.

That is the kind of local work that is valuable city-wide, and is why I believe we should keep our current City Charter as I wrote in July 26 article in the Newton TAB: http://newton.wickedlocal.com/news/20170726/commentary-your-local-voice-on-city-council.

More of my background can be found at www.councilorbaker.org, so I will not repeat it here, as other candidates want to tell their stories on this forum and I am unopposed for re-election. In summary, however, I have used my long experience with land use and zoning, including teaching at Suffolk Law School, to save open space, preserve historic properties, and help win neighborhood support for affordable housing.

Policy and practice aside, here are just three examples of what I bring to Newton’s City Council:

  • New learning: An example is my three-minute speech to the 2016 Newton South High School graduates growing out of my recent Master’s degree in positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, aided by my colleague, Councilor Ruthanne Fuller: https://vimeo.com/174544888/a8dcd700e7.
  • Vitality: While I am the senior member of the City Council, I felt it was important that someone at City Hall demonstrate how to rake leaves in a contest with a powered leaf-blower: http://village14.com/2015/11/05/leaf-blower-demonstration-at-city-hall/#axzz4oJSbJ1SHr.
  • Useful information: I want to make the work of the Newton City Council more understandable through my series of interviews with colleagues on the award-winning NewTV series, Councilors at Work, available at on NewTV’s Government Channel and online at http://www.newtv.org/video/councilors-at-work.

Please call me at home at 617-566-3848 if I can be of any help to you.