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District 9 City Councilor candidates — Liz Breadon (incumbent) and Pilar Ortiz — shared their visions for Allston-Brighton and the City in a candidate forum on October 13.
Moderated by Caitlin Gillooly from Allston-Brighton Progressives, the one-hour-long forum gave Breadon and Ortiz the opportunity to speak about their stances on issues ranging from affordable housing to immigration in the same Zoom room.
Allstonia compiled a summary of the debate with specific attention to nuances and details on where candidates agreed and differed.
Click below to get each candidate’s perspectives on your issue of interest:
- Opening Statements
- Federal Budget Cuts
- Climate Change
- Immigration and Policing
- Transportation
- Jackson Mann Community Center and Chronic Underfunding
- Housing
- Rapid-Fire
- Closing Statements
Opening Statements
In her opening statement, Breadon leaned in on her nearly three decades of experience, beginning with local activism to save the Faneuil Library and preserve the Presentation School to working for local to presidential campaigns before landing her role as City Councilor where she navigated in 2019. She cites her “disgust and frustration of how housing was being developed” as the primary driver behind why she decided to run — emphasizing the lack of affordable housing and representation in impact advisory meetings for Allston-Brighton residents.
Ortiz began with a call for coalition building, particularly with young professionals. An alumna of Boston College and a seventeen-year resident of Allston-Brighton, she says that she considered running ten years earlier when she was 24 because the representation “didn’t take the time to converse with people my age.” Ortiz spoke about her experience learning the ins and outs of local government while working as Chief of Staff in the Mayor’s Office of Law under Mayor Michelle Wu.
“My goal here is to bring every generation of A-B together,” Ortiz says. “We are a diverse group of people. We are seniors on fixed incomes. We are students. We are young people trying to start a family. Together, we can really change the tide for what we’ve seen in the last couple of decades for Allston-Brighton.” (Return to top)
Federal Budget Cuts
The Trump administration’s policies loomed throughout the first part of the debate, which focused on how the candidates would respond to federal budget cuts and ICE activity.
Both candidates agreed that renters and residents should not be responsible for the brunt of the money lost. Ortiz urged transparency and caution when it comes to making state budget cuts, saying that the City should prioritize cutting line items in departments rather than personnel. Honing in on federal cuts to SNAP, Breadon supports alternative models, including publicly-owned grocery stores in Boston. Breadon and the City Council recently passed a hearing order to consider these grocery stores. She also calls for alternative streams of revenue and cited a figure that 53% of property goes untaxed in Boston. (Return to top)
Climate Change
When it came to climate change, Breadon called for creating resilient infrastructure, such as improving stormwater infrastructure and adding greenery to mitigate the heat-island effect. Ortiz supported measures to empower homeowners with the resources to prepare their foundations to mitigate flooding and accelerate the shift from gas to electric.
While the candidates shared views on many of the issues throughout the debate, the question introduced a momentary break between the two. Breadon prefaced her response, saying that “it’s unlikely we will see salty sea water in Oak Square” — referring to the decreased risk of flooding in Allston-Brighton compared to other neighborhoods closer to the sea.
In her response, Ortiz pushed back pointing out that other areas of the neighborhood, including North Brighton where she is from, are at risk of flooding during heavy rain. “These things all connect. The river feeds into the ocean, the oceans start rising; the river starts flooding, and there goes my backyard along with many others,” she says. (Return to top)
Immigration and Policing
Ortiz called for scrutinizing Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC), a database that acts as intelligence and information sharing between police departments. She claims that the gang database was ineffective and could be used against immigrants in courts during deportation proceedings. Later in the debate, both candidates said they would support shutting down BRIC.
Breadon referenced her support for the Trust Act, which restricted local authorities’ compliance with federal agents, such as Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE), only to instances related to public safety. She says that she was concerned with police surveillance and recently voted down an ordinance that allowed police to use social media to gather intelligence. Breadon says that she would support banning face masks for immigration police — which Ortiz later agreed with. (Return to top)
Transportation
Twenty minutes in, the forum shifted more to hyperlocal issues, beginning with a question about concrete steps to improve Cleveland Circle. Breadon drew on her experiences working with state and city officials, citing an assurance from the MBTA to fix the potholes near the tracks to improve safety. However, she describes these solutions as “band-aids” and said that long-term solutions would require relaying the tracks and repairing the asphalt.
Calling Cleveland Circle the issue that inspired her to run, Ortiz called for more urgency when it comes to working with state and city officials to make the intersection more accessible and safe. Like Breadon, Ortiz called for repairing the roads, but she also supported adding sturdy bike lanes and adding trash cans to reduce litter. (Return to top)
Jackson Mann Community Center and Chronic Underfunding
Both candidates agreed that the Jackson Mann reflects a broader trend of underfunding in Allston-Brighton, but each emphasized different approaches. Regarding the chronic underfunding of Allston-Brighton, Ortiz calls for institutions, primarily colleges, to pay their PILOT taxes. As a graduate of Boston College herself, she criticized her alma mater for only paying 23% of its PILOT taxes.
Breadon called the lack of a fully-functional community center a “longstanding disinvestment and underinvestment in the community in Allston-Brighton going back decades.” As City Councilor, she focused on working with the city to redevelop the community center, which included a city council hearing in Jackson Mann drawing over 300 participants as well as a commitment from the Wu administration to “get the ball rolling” for redeveloping Jackson Mann. (Return to top)
Housing
Both candidates support the need to increase middle-income housing. There were subtle differences in their approach for increasing housing affordability. Breadon focused primarily on building, acquisition and rezoning, which include turning triple deckers and small lots to increase density and building more middle-income, family-sized housing (as opposed to one or two bedrooms). Breadon also supports a consideration on rent stabilization.
Citing lack of city-owned land in Allston-Brighton, Ortiz supports increasing grants for middle-income homebuyers (as opposed to building more housing). She heavily emphasized tenant’s rights, including a 90-day notice for no-fault evictions, the right of first refusal and rent control. (Return to top)
Rapid-Fire
The candidates gave identical answers during the rapid-fire round: “yes” on real estate transfer fees on property sales over two million dollars, ranked-choice voting in municipal elections, shuttering BRIC, legalization of overdose prevention clinics, and creation of an unarmed emergency response program for mental/behavioral health crises. They expressed mixed feelings about expanding the parking minimum to all residential developments and unilaterally rejected a majority-elected school committee. (Return to top)
Closing Statements
The debate closed with one-minute-long closing statements from the two candidates. In a statement that spanned from supporting families and small businesses to establishing an arts district in Allston, Breadon closed with a theme of creating a neighborhood for everyone. Acknowledging the anxieties that families feel about staying in the neighborhood, she listed out “checkpoints,” which included schools, housing, transit and childcare as aspects of community infrastructure that she worked to improve. “We have to make it an affordable, liveable and family-friendly neighborhood for all those who want to stay,” she says.
Ortiz ended with accountability, affordability and action — referring to them as the pillars behind how she worked. Alluding to the chronic underinvestment in Allston, she says that “it’s not just mismanagement; it’s really a failure of accountability.” She highlighted proactiveness in making sure that promises made to the community are delivered. “Everything takes time, but if you’re really focused and really wanting to know how it works, we can get these things done much sooner than they do,” she says. (Return to top) ■
