Vote Team13

Your vote for Brookline Town Meeting is important and will make a difference

Issues that we've heard from you – and are critical to us:

• Ensuring the continued excellence of our schools and public services
• Supporting strategic commercial development and affordable housing
• Brookline's debt burden, which has grown 300% in 10 years
• Dramatically escalating property taxes for many
• Opposing Warrant Article 19 – the proposed biased anti-Israel resolution
• Repair our roads for improved pedestrian and cyclist safety

As your Town Meeting Members, we commit to:

• Represent your voice and concerns
• Increase government transparency
• Advocate for sensible environmental measures
• Support sustainable fiscal policies

YOUR VOTE COUNTS!

In the last Town election:

• The Select Board race was decided by only 26 votes
• In Precinct 13, the fifth Town Meeting seat was decided by just 5 votes
• The $200 million-plus debt override won by only 306 votes
• The composting question was defeated by only 72 votes

VOTE FOR TEAM 13 ON MAY 7.

Anna Chiumenti

Anna grew up in Brookline, and attended Baker School and Brookline High School. She returned to Brookline in 2015, where she lives with her family, including one child attending the Roland Hayes (formerly Heath) School, and one entering this fall. A lawyer by training, Anna has spent her career in nonprofit fundraising. She is running for Town Meeting to advocate for thoughtful, collaborative measures that best address both the urgent and the enduring priorities of Precinct 13 and the Town.

Mark Gerber

Mark is a 30-year resident of Brookline and father of three. Two of his children attend Hayes School. Graduate of Cornell University's College of Engineering and Boston College's Carroll School of Management. Mark currently works in the commercial banking industry as a credit officer. As a former TMM, Mark is an advocate for household rights, sensible environmental protection measures, thoughtful town development, and the construction of a year-round ice rink at Larz Anderson.

Lee Selwyn

Lee has lived in Brookline since 1967. The Selwyns have three children, all attended Heath and Brookline High. Town Meeting Member 2009-2023, Advisory Committee member since 2009. Lee is an economist specializing in telecommunications and electric utilities and other regulated industries. He founded the consulting firm of Economics and Technology, Inc. (Boston) in 1972 and served as its President until 2022 (he is currently Senior Vice President). Lee has a Ph.D. in Management from the Alfred P. Sloan School of Management at MIT.

Michael Shepsis

Michael Shepsis lives in Brookline with his wife and son. Growing up in Brookline, he attended Lawrence School and Brookline High. As a practicing attorney with audit and tax experience, Michael brings a unique blend of legal and accounting skills.  He is running for Town Meeting to help keep Brookline inclusive, safe, and fiscally responsible.

Our commitment as your Town Meeting Members:

• Represent your voice and concerns: To be effective, Brookline’s representative town meeting system requires two-way communications between Town Meeting Members and voters. We will do our best to keep you informed as to key issues being decided by Town Meeting and to be accessible to you to learn of your concerns and to assure that they are well-represented.
• Increase government transparency in Brookline: The absence of a printed local newspaper has undermined citizen involvement with local government. But our town form of government – with more than 275 elected officials and hundreds more serving in various appointed positions – helps to assure transparency and citizen access. Current efforts to transform Brookline into a City form of government cut against these values, and we will oppose them.
• Advocate for sensible environmental measures: Policies that are adopted for Brookline need to be timely, sensible, in harmony with State efforts, and not punitive.
• We will oppose Warrant Article 19: the “resolution” to be voted on by Town Meeting that is based upon anti-Israel propaganda and that would call on our state and federal representatives to undermine Israel’s ability to defend itself and to free American and Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas.

Issues that you’ve told us are critical and that we will aggressively address:

Strategic commercial development and affordable housing

• Increased commercial development in the Town is one way to reduce the tax burden on residents. More commercial development would be good, but it is unrealistic to see this as a “silver bullet.” Brookline is a built-out community that offers little opportunity for extensive additional residential or commercial development.
• Some in Town Meeting want to eliminate all single-family zoning, reduce minimum lot sizes, and increase housing density in all parts of Brookline. But such measures will fundamentally and irreversibly change the character of the Town and its neighborhoods.
• We support the efforts of Brookline By Design to develop a Comprehensive Plan that incorporates the need to maintain the character of the Town and its neighborhoods while affording opportunities for appropriate and sustainable residential and commercial development.
• Increasing the number of affordable housing units is important, but needs to be accomplished in a manner that is consistent with the Comprehensive Plan that we support and that is fiscally sound for the Town overall.

Brookline’s debt burden

• Prior to 2017, the Town’s total annual debt service payments were less than $10-million. Projected debt service payments for FY2025 are more than $36.8-million – which represents roughly 8% of the total Town budget, almost as much as the Town spends on Fire and Police departments combined.
• Nearly all of this $27-million in additional debt service cost is due to a series of unnecessarily costly school reconstruction/renovation projects. We need school building projects, but their cost has been far in excess of what was actually required, particularly since K-12 enrollment in the Brookline public schools has decreased by nearly 10% since the onset of Covid in 2020. We are building unnecessarily fancy and overly large and expensive schools.

Escalating property taxes for many

• In May 2023, Brookline voters approved an $11.98-million “operating override” that, together with the normal 2.5% annual property tax increase, resulted in an average jump in residential property taxes of 6.48%, contributing to unaffordability of living in Brookline. More overrides and other new taxes in the offing will make Brookline less affordable, for both homeowners and renters.

• Another ongoing effort that currently seems to have at least some support in Town Meeting is the introduction of a Brookline Real Estate Transfer Tax (“RETT”) of as much as 2% that would be imposed on the seller of property at the time of sale.
• Sellers who are forced to pay the RETT would likely seek to force buyers to share in some or all of the cost by simply demanding a higher price for their home, thus further contributing to making Brookline less affordable.

USE YOUR VOTE WISELY

AND VOTE FOR TEAM 13 TOWN MEETING MEMBERS WHO WILL BE PRUDENT, THOUGHTFUL, AND FULLY CONSIDER THE MERITS OF EACH ISSUE

Anna Chiumenti    Mark Gerber    Lee Selwyn    Michael Shepsis