Dear Supporters and Volunteers,

Thank you for your votes, your emails and postcards and phone calls to your friends and family and neighbors, your help distributing campaign literature, your help calling voters, and all your other contributions of time and money.

With your help, I rose from relative obscurity to receive over 3,900 votes, despite little, if any, media coverage of the Alderman at Large election.

Over the course of the four months of the campaign, I personally visited or telephoned some 1,500 voters. Overall, our campaign directly reached some 3,300 voters, left voicemails or knocked on the doors of another 3,200 voters, and sent literature to a total of 15,000 voters.

Our follow-up calls indicated that the overwhelming number of voters that I contacted became supporters. Many became supporters because of confirming messages from you. Many others who I never personally met likewise gave me their vote because you effectively communicated your confidence in me.

Unfortunately, it wasn't enough - see the Election Results (PDF document).

In the end, the fact that we'd had person-to-person contact with less than a third of the 10,400 Election Day voters was probably the single most important reason for my loss. Campaign literature and endorsements may have delivered a credible message, but they weren't enough to overcome my lack of name recognition and personal connection with the voters.

So..... we go on.

There are a lot of pressing local issues that will need our energy and attention in the coming year: protecting the affordability of our housing, leveraging responsible development, planning for the Green Line in a way that minimizes displacement of existing residents and businesses, filling some of the critical service gaps, addressing the access barriers that prevent seniors and persons with disabilities from more fully participating in our city, implementing community policing and otherwise restoring confidence in our public safety, ramping up our attention to pedestrian safety, .....

The list is long. It got even longer for me, over the course of conversations with all the many hundreds of voters that I met for the first time during the campaign.

Again and again, I heard about the challenge of making ends meet in an increasingly difficult economy. Too many residents are facing fundamental choices about staying in Somerville: can they afford to stay in the City they've lived in all these years? Will their adult children have to leave, for lack of affordable housing options here?

In the context of a larger political economy that accords no person the right to live in their community of choice, we need to somehow find a way to help our neighbors remain in their home community, both for their sake, and for the wellbeing and stability of our city. I believe that the solution includes building more affordable housing, protecting as best we can the affordable housing we already have, and helping Somerville residents get the higher paying jobs they need in order to be able to afford to stay here. Although, of course, more federal and State support would help, we do already have some of the tools we need. It's up to us to make the best and most creative use of what we have, taking care to understand and address the issues and concerns and impacts on both renters and property owners.

I am looking forward to returning to the Board of Somerville Community Corporation, where I can continue to work on these issues, and I invite my supporters to join SCC www.somervillecdc.org and support our efforts.

While housing and development may be the "biggest" issues facing the city, they are by no means the only important ones. Hearing people describe how they are personally affected by crime or fear of crime, by parking challenges, by the lack of safe street crossings, by the uneven enforcement of snow and ice removal from sidewalks, by the lopsided snowplowing policy of the city, by the roar of low-flying planes, by the inadequate number and maintenance of play fields and parks (including places that accommodate dog-owners and their pets), by the challenges of navigating the bureaucracy that issues permits for home repair or starting a business...... those issues took on a new depth for me, and I look forward to joining with those of you who are working to address them.

We are a community that has changed demographically, and that change has created new tensions and new challenges for us all. Tensions have only been exacerbated by the longtime residents' frustrations at being unable to find affordable housing, at being stuck in jobs that don't pay a living wage, and at being increasingly unable to make ends meet.

Mayor Curtatone's City of Hope resolution, which welcomes all newcomers to Somerville, is an important symbolic step in strengthening the fabric of our community. And the festivals and arts celebrations that the Mayor has supported, and that the Arts community has energized, are likewise important strategies for building bridges among the diverse segments of the population.

Those efforts all deserve our support, but they are not enough.

Somehow, in a Massachusetts and national economy that increasingly pinches and marginalizes ordinary working people, we have to find a way to help Somerville residents regain the sense of stability that is the wellspring of our more generous instincts. When we are comfortable, we are much less inclined to begrudge our neighbors their opportunities. When we are feeling cornered or denied our due, we become more stingy with our taxes and our welcome.

Which brings us back to housing and development. In Somerville, new opportunities for development in Union Square, Assembly Square, Inner Belt, and Brickbottom represent a real source of hope for generating the jobs and tax revenues that can help turn the tide. No matter where we live, the shape and nature of that development will impact our wellbeing, and should be of top concern and interest to all of us.

Perhaps the most untapped resource in Somerville is its people. Delivering more complete and timely information to residents, and inviting and meaningfully involving stakeholders in the decisions that affect us was a cornerstone issue in my campaign, and something that I remain deeply committed to. Whether in supporting public education, or after-school programming, or planning for development, or figuring out our spending priorities and budget, there is a willingness to get involved and a base of energy, experience, and expertise that could truly make difference....if only people are welcomed and feel valued and heard.

We can and must do better. Somerville has made tremendous progress as a City, but we have much more work to do. I look forward to joining you in that work in the coming year.

One way or the other, see you at City Hall and in the community.

Fred