Sitting Somerville City Councilor-at-Large Willie Burnley Jr. announced on Feb. 2 his candidacy for mayor of Somerville, joining fellow Councilor Jake Wilson and two-term incumbent Mayor Katjana Ballantyne in the mayoral race.
Burnley emphasized his background as a community organizer as well as his legislative record on the City Council when discussing his decision to run for mayor.
“I’m someone who, from my entire adult life, has been organizing on the ground with different organizations, pushing government to do better and also learning how the system operates in order to best advance the demands of my neighbors,” Burnley said. “And I think right now, we need folks to take the helm who are going to make decisive choices that reaffirm our values and don’t take any steps back in this moment,” he said.
On the council, Burnley is a member of the Finance Committee and chairs the Licenses and Permits Committee.
“As chair of licenses and permits, I’ve learned a lot about our local business community. I’ve been able to support them in their earliest stages when they’ve needed help navigating through the city’s labyrinthine permitting process,” he said.
Zachary Yaro, a Somerville resident, has been frustrated by the lack of answers from the city about important issues.
“There’s certain projects where it feels like they know an update with bad news is going to get complaints, whereas a lack of update, most people will ignore. … I would like to see more of a, ‘If we said we’ll give you an update in six months, we’ll give you an update in six months, even if the update isn’t good news’ [attitude],” Yaro said.
Recently, Yaro has been working with others to form the Davis Square Neighborhood Council and appreciates Burnley’s explicit support for the neighborhood council model.
“With [Burnley], I appreciated that he’s really supportive of more neighborhood councils forming and being those sorts of bridges between people who live in particular neighborhoods and the government, and particularly on issues of property development,” Yaro said.
As Somerville continues to grow, Burnley believes that the city will receive an influx of developers and sees neighborhood councils as an important way to ensure development is beneficial.
“I foresee a future in which there’s not a spot in Somerville where developers don’t want to start to move. And before that happens I think we need to be connected as a community and in conversation, so that we can build up the kind of guardrails necessary to change as a community, but change in a way where we don’t lose what made us special in the first place,” Burnley said.
Scott Zaccheo, a Somerville resident of 30 years, would like to see better traffic enforcement in bike lanes.
“I honestly think [bike lanes] are … being misused,” he said. “They have to learn to share the road instead of having their own.”
Burnley, a member of the City’s Bicycle Advisory Commission and avid cyclist himself, intends to make road safety a priority.
“I would be in the community far more trying to show up, trying to hear feedback, going with residents to see their concerns around road safety,” Burnley said. “Whether you’re a pedestrian or cyclist, there are some roads that people feel are very unsafe.”
With the mayoral election still some months away, both Yaro and Zaccheo are still undecided as to how they will vote. Still, Yaro is optimistic about Burnley’s campaign.
“I’ve seen him showing up in person … and interacting in a way that feels … like he’s actually showing up and engaging in a genuine way,” Yaro said.
As the only renter currently in the race, Burnley said feels he has an important perspective to contribute to the city’s leadership.
“Part of the reason I got into this race, frankly, is because I’m impatient. I’m impatient at the pace of response to all of these crises that we’ve been talking about from the administration. I’m impatient to see us actually seize opportunities when they present themselves. And I think in this moment in particular, it is important for a community like Somerville — that is heavily tilted toward renters, a very young and vibrant city that is struggling in some respects right now — to have someone in a leadership position, who’s actually a renter, who actually comes from a lot of the shared backgrounds that contribute to this city’s culture, whether it is as a young person, as a queer person, as a renter, as a cyclist,” he said.
Mayor Ballantyne did not respond to the Daily’s request for comment.
