Today June 6th Marianne Walles turned in 300 nomination petition signatures, 50 more than the required number. She is the first to submit qualifying signatures in the race. A lifelong resident of Somerville, daughter of an immigrant and mother of two boys, Ms. Walles enters the race determined to address issues like affordable housing and local jobs that have long been ignored by the incumbent mayor.
“I see too many people struggling to survive Somerville’s ‘success.’” said Walles. “As a social worker, I’ve been closest to the pain and suffering in our community. I will advocate for affordable housing, to make elite institutions pay their fair share, and to create a transparent city government that will work for the people — not special interests.”
One example of incumbent Mayor Curtatone’s support for special interests over community concerns: He recently supported the statewide “Housing Choice” initiative to spur housing production without any requirements for building affordable housing and no protections from displacement.
“Somerville doesn’t need more luxury developments that will intensify gentrification and lead to displacement of existing residents, businesses, and our community institutions,”said Rand Wilson, an organizer with SEIU Local 888 and labor activist in Somerville.“Somerville doesn’t need leadership promoting worn-out ‘market-based’ solutions. Somerville needs a progressive leader like Marianne Walles.”
In her career as a social worker, Walles serves a diverse set of working-class people every day, working with families to assess their struggles, identifying a path to improvement, and providing support for them to be successful.
A long-time leader in her union, SEIU Local 509, Walles has been very involved in the fight for good-paying jobs in Somerville, affordable housing, and getting billion-dollar nonprofits to pay their fair share in lieu of taxes.
For more information about her campaign, please visit the campaign website: marianne4mayor.org or the campaign Facebook page: facebook.com/mariannewalles
The market is reality–it is supply and demand. So Ms. Wells is promoting non-reality based solutions?
The problem with housing is that there is too little of it where people want to live. Make more housing by raising taxes on LAND and lowering them on buildings and improvements. This will make holding a large lot for parking or all those single-story strip-mall-type stores you see up and down our main streets far less attractive, and reward building more housing, stores, etc.
Reward builders that build many small apartments vs a few large ones. I could go on.
This isn’t magic, which I guess is why Ms Wells isn’t interested in it. Woo-woo dim bulbs promising magical solutions always come out when people are feeling afraid.
Citizens of Somerville….they are having a private fund raiser June 19 at Sean O’donovans law office for mayor Joey….go by and see who the actors are!
So you can vote for ms.walles,we need a change of the guard in this city
Never heard of her but she is right about Joe 100%.