If you haven’t already, please go watch the Ward 5 candidates forum among Councilors Deb Crossley and Andreae Downs and challenger (and former Alderman) Paul Coletti, competing for the two Ward 5 at-large councilor seats. This is a particularly entertaining and informative instance of the informative forums hosted by the Newton League of Women Voters and produced by NewTV Government. 

My impressions are no substitute for your own. If you have to choose between watching the video or reading this analysis, definitely watch the video. But, if you can do both …

Here are some takeaways, in no particular order.

1. I was really looking forward to this debate to get a sense of what motivating Alderman Coletti to jump back into the fray after ten years of retirement — after 32 years on the Board of Aldermen. Was not disappointed. He was in critical mode the whole session, taking issue with the council generally, though not directly criticizing his opponents, with one notable exception. See below. 

2. With all the issues to choose as priorities, Alderman Coletti cited ridding our streets of double telephone-poles as his second priority, after finances. Double telephone-poles. Okay.

3. Alderman Coletti’s lack of preparation for the forum and, by extension the campaign, is, in many ways, even more glaring than Lisa Gordon’s, given that Alderman Coletti’s explicit reason for running is that he’s not happy with how the City Council is being run. Councilors Crossley and Downs repeatedly corrected him on his factual assertions. Alderman Coletti was made to look foolish on the compensation question, when he proposed that additional compensation be tied to enacting strong ethical rules and Councilor Crossley noted the significantly stronger ethical rules enacted and training provided since he left the board. Alderman Downs decisively shut him down when he accused 15 councilors of violating open-meeting laws, explaining that the meeting had been pre-cleared with both the city clerk and the legal department as not subject to the open-meeting laws because it covered processes and procedures.

While Councilors Downs and Crossley kept Aldermen Coletti honest on most of his assertions, they let him slide when, during a question about transparency of all things, Alderman Coletti accused both councilors of refusing to help some residents, but refused to say what the issue was.

Another factual error that the two councilors did not correct Alderman Coletti on: in a discussion of the height of buildings at Riverside, he claimed that the 8-story Gateway Center is one of the tallest buildings in Newton. It’s not even the tallest building on its block, shorter than the 11-story Crowne Plaza hotel next door. And, Gateway Center is meaningfully shorter than the Towers at Chestnut Hill (at least 15 stories) and Imperial Towers (10 stories). 

Councilors Crossley and Downs were quick to correct most of Alderman Coletti’s many misstatements. But, the sharpest rebuke was far more subtle. Councilor Crossley said she ran for Alderman Coletti’s seat because the city’s finances and infrastructure were in “disarray.” The previous 24 years, he had been chairman of the Finance Committee. Zing.

4. I’ve been a fan of Councilor Crossley’s for a long time, but I was really impressed. This format really suits here. She distinguished herself with her keen grasp of the facts and policies and her ability to tell the story of city problems, her leadership on solving some of them, and the challenges we face … all in clear and cohesive paragraphs, delivered with measured passion. Her opening was the best by any candidate I’ve seen so far.

5. Best line of the forum: Alderman Coletti on sewer inflow and infiltration of water into our sewer system.

I assume that my colleagues that are standing here both voted for the sprinkler, second meter for sprinklers, which has just exacerbated the problems because everybody’s front pipes in their front yard their sewer lines are all leaking and now all this free water is going in there and it’s run the new [I&I] numbers back up to 41%.  

Not sure that the systems work like this, but anybody who wants to bash the second water meter for its obvious (even then) baleful effects on the environment, I’m here for it.

6. Councilor Downs, not surprisingly, was crisp on the various dimensions of the city’s traffic and transportation problems: providing safe options for walking and biking, multi-mobility users, control over new development, parking, crash data, street design, and the role of housing in our transportation.

I’m still waiting, though, for a candidate to lay out a specific plan for what the City Council can do to move the needle on reducing vehicle trips. Remove a certain number of parking spaces to make way for bike lanes. Add requirements to DPW to fix bad street and intersection design as part of the roads program. Create car-free zones around schools during drop-off and pick-up. Require all road-design projects to include as part of the review process a no-compromise-on-safety design.

7.  Honorable mention line of the forum: Councilor Downs on Washington St.

Right now Washington St. looks like a highway service road. We can do better than that in Newton.

8. Top moment of the forum: Councilor Crossley describing all the work that she does to meet a complex set of development objectives, noted that she attends planning and zoning meetings even though she’s not on the committee, dropping her all-business tone to abashedly confess, “because I love them.” A lovely moment of a respected elected official revealing her inner municipal-government nerd. Watch. It’s at about 38:00.

9. Hate to keep on picking on Alderman Coletti, but not sure his logic on the size of the council works out. He favors a larger council because it’s harder for developers to line up the super-majorities required for special permits and zoning changes. But, doesn’t a smaller council make it proportionally easier to muster the votes to defeat?

10. I loved the use of a shot from behind moderator Debbie Winnick’s shoulder, over the timing lights, to show all three candidates. (If any video nerds can share the technical term for the shot, please comment.) 

11. I really don’t know what to make of this from Alderman Coletti’s closing:

I would just say to you that there are a lot of people in Newton who see the writing on the wall that their lives are becoming more and more controlled these days and that life is not the same as it used to be in Newton. And, many of them have decided to voice their dissatisfaction by moving. Seeing a lot of houses on West Newton hill. Some of the smart people have already decided it’s time to leave. We have a mayor who’s deciding who’s going to buy their electricity from who. Unless you’ve opted out, now, you’re buying your electric energy through the mayor’s office in the city of Newton. And, I have never seen something like that ever happen before. I really think that this council has stopped listening to average citizens and dealing with their problems every day rather than trying to tell them how the city should function. And take a look at the Austin St parking lot, now, and just take an example of what happens when people start thinking for you.

This doesn’t seem healthy. Whether you like the outcomes or not, what’s happened in Newton is the result of electoral outcomes. It’s not some conspiracy to control your life. Lots of government decisions shape our lives. Alderman Coletti and his colleagues shaped Newton for good and bad before he ran for mayor and lost. He made an earlier comment about how street changes were forcing people out of their cars. As if the decisions he and his colleagues made during his 32 years on the Board of Aldermen didn’t force people into cars. 

12. This boiled down to a contrast between the bluster, bombast, and nostalgia of ye olde politics and the technical competence and data-driven, best-practice decision-making of the best of today’s city legislators.