Evan Ross: District 4
What would you say are the biggest challenges Amherst faces?
As a community, housing is one of our greatest challenges. Amherst is experiencing a housing crisis resulting from decades of housing production not keeping pace with growing demand. The result: a shortage of units and high housing costs. Amherst’s high rents threaten the economic security of renters as they spend increasing portions of their paychecks on rent. The result is that low and moderate income folks are pushed out of Amherst, threatening our commitment to diversity and opportunity. The impacts of our housing crisis ripple throughout our community. High housing costs and few starter homes mean fewer young families are settling in Amherst, impacting enrollment in Amherst's schools. Strong demand for rental housing puts pressure on single family homes, and residents in Amherst are watching their neighborhoods change as owner-occupied homes are increasingly converted into rental properties. Tackling this housing crisis is essential to a more diverse and equitable town.
As a Town government, our greatest challenge is meeting the demands and priorities of our community with inadequate budgetary resources. We have extensive capital needs, both the day-to-day capital or roads and sidewalks and major capital building projects. These building projects will require significant amounts of bonding and utilization of reserves that the Town has built up. Our operating budget is stretched thin. Keeping up with the increasing costs of health care and personnel while staying within the limits of Proposition 2 ½ is a challenge. And the funding needs are only increasing. Meeting our climate action goals will require money. Making the new community responder program successful will require significantly more funding than at current. And there are new personnel needs. Funding all these priorities often requires us to make tough choices and pit priorities against each other. Growing our budget is essential to providing the high quality services our residents demand.
What relevant experiences and qualities would you bring to the Town Council that would help it work through these challenges constructively and effectively?
I have experience working on the Council to understand and address our major challenges. On housing, I put in the work to research the problem and the solutions and in 2020 proposed my ‘First Steps Housing Plan’ that identified 11 policy actions the Town Council could take in the short term to address our housing crisis, with a focus on security and opportunity for renters and moderate-income residents. That plan was the result of over a year of research and meeting with stakeholders and experts to understand the problem and identify solutions. Some of those policies are now moving through the Council zoning process. I have experience navigating that process and working with Town Planning staff to revise and refine zoning amendments. This attests to my ability to research, learn, write policy, and work with others (including finding common ground and compromise) to refine and adapt those policies. All of this is happening within the context of me being the only renter serving on Town Council. This perspective informs my ideas and my actions, and I always seek to be a voice for renters in our community.
I also have experience with multiple municipal budget cycles, navigating the process and understanding the often-complicated details surrounding municipal finance. FY23 will be a difficult budget year, especially as the community responder program will expand and be fully operational. It will be beneficial to have Councilors with knowledge of and experience with the budget and the budget cycle.
Have you ever served on an elected board or committee in Amherst and if so, what were 3 of your most challenging votes?
The most challenging vote I faced on the Town Council was the FY22 budget. The Town Manager prepared a strong budget with one exception: the new community responder (CRESS) program was underfunded. Facing pressure from the Council and the community, he increased the budgeted number of responders in the first year to four. I felt this was still insufficient. While I did not expect the program to be fully staffed and funded at the level recommended by the Community Safety Working Group in the first fiscal year (especially given the program would only operate for a portion of the year), I still believed that a true commitment to the program and to addressing concerns about racial inequities in policing required a larger initial investment for more responders. The challenge was in balancing my values with the budgetary realities. I knew paying for more responders would be financially challenging. I also believed it was needed.
In addition, the Council was receiving significant public comment from the community, and the commenters showing up were noticeably different from the usual folks. Students, renters, people of color, and young people dominated public comment on this issue. The Council listened to hours of public comment from newly-engaged voices motivated by this issue and representing the diversity of our community. This is what we always say we want: new and diverse voices. And they were nearly unanimous in their demand: fully fund the CRESS program or vote down the budget. How can we say that we want and need these voices in our deliberations and then not be responsive? How can we keep these folks engaged with their local government if when they speak up we do nothing?
This all made navigating a vote on the budget difficult. On the floor of the Council, Councilor DeAngelis introduced a motion that would direct the Town Manager to find funding for a minimum of 8 responders. I seconded and supported the motion. The financial implications of the motion were significant, and I worried that we were micromanaging the Manager and blurring the executive/legislative lines. But I also believed it was the right thing to do. It was a compromise that acknowledged tough budgetary realities while still being responsive to the demands of the public, even if not fully living up to the demands. It gave me the ability to support the overall budget, even if it wasn’t perfect.
What steps would you take to engage low-income residents, renters, residents of color, and other underrepresented voices?
Engaging new and underrepresented voices has been a challenge and I believe the Council never figured out the best approach. But we did see one place where it did happen. When COVID shifted all public meetings to Zoom something new happened. Folks who normally couldn’t or wouldn’t attend meetings started showing up (virtually). Instead of spending hours sitting in the Town Room, the public could log on from home, have the meeting on in the background, and give public comment without it consuming their entire evening. We saw more young people attend, more parents of young children, and more renters. As we emerge from the pandemic we must maintain that accessibility. And where meetings return to person, beyond offering a hybrid option, we must remove barriers to attending meetings. These include: holding meetings where people already congregate, providing translation, providing childcare, and tapping into existing networks and community leaders. The public forums of the Energy and Climate Action Committee and the meetings led by the Sustainability Coordinator for the municipal Vulnerability Program should be used as models.
“One Town, One Plan” has been in development and in public discussion for over a decade. The plan is designed to meet the town’s most pressing infrastructure needs in a financially responsible way, and prioritizes the following four projects equally: the Jones Public Library Renovation & Expansion, the Elementary School Building Project, the Department of Public Works Building, and the South Amherst Fire Station. Do you support this plan? Why or why not?
Yes. All four projects are important to our community. These four major capital investments will be costly, but our town has positioned itself to do them. Through building up our reserves over time, coupled with upcoming debt retirements, we can fund three of the four projects through bonding alone. That allows us to do all four projects while only asking the voters for a single debt exclusion override, likely for the schools. In doing so we can address the serious deficiencies of these buildings while limiting the burden on and impact to taxpayers. I refuse to pit projects against each other. We have a library that doesn’t meet the needs of our residents with disabilities, English language learners, or children and teens. We have two elementary schools whose buildings are failing the students they serve. We have a DPW facility that asks our hard-working DPW staff to work under substandard conditions. And we have a central fire station that doesn’t work for our firefighters and is too far from South Amherst. We can’t ask our community to pick and choose between these projects. We can, and should, do them all.
As a member of the Town Council, how would you engage and communicate with your constituents, including those who have not previously been active in town politics?
This has been a challenge for the Council. I have attempted to engage and communicate with constituents across several platforms. I maintain an active Facebook and Twitter, which I use to communicate information. Together, these are followed by over 430 people. I also maintain an email list for District Meetings and other alerts, totaling over 100 people. I have strived to collect comments and feedback from constituents through varied means. In the spring I created an online survey to collect opinions on the proposed North Common renovation options, and many folks reached out to thank me for providing a quick and easy way to provide feedback that didn’t require attending a meeting or emailing the Council. There is room for improvement, but I believe using varied venues, platforms, and media to communicate and engage without requiring people to follow the Council or show up to meetings can cast the widest net. We also have opportunities for engaging through community events, and I have strived to attend events ranging from the Juneteenth celebrations to mini golf at the Jones Library so as to be visible in my community and accessible to my constituents.