Ron Ricci was nominated at Town Caucus last Saturday night to run against three candidates for selectman who had already announced their intentions: incumbents Lucy Wallace and Scott Kimball and former Planning Board member Tim Clark. His decision makes it a four-way race for two open seats on the board. Ricci had earlier announced his intention to run for a third term on the Water Commission, but “I changed my mind,” he told the Press Monday.
Ricci, a resident of the town since 1985, has a couple of major issues on his mind that he’d like to address if he’s elected to the Board of Selectmen. “Every year we go through the same thing,” he said. “We have to choose between raising taxes, which hurts some people, and cutting services. I don’t have all the answers, but I think there are some things we spend too much on and some we can no longer continue to cut.”
Ricci also believes that Harvard doesn’t get its fair share of state aid to education. “We have one of the lowest per-pupil” rates, he said. He’d like to follow the lead of Acton, which, he said, has recently been able to get its state aid increased.
Ricci also wants to manage to the town’s best advantage what he sees as a coming surge in development. “The dam is about to burst,” he said; if some of the town’s farmland should go on the market, “it’d all be house lots.”
School Committee
Several new candidates were nominated at caucus for other offices, as were most of those who had already announced their intentions to run, but no one has yet come forward to run for the School Committee seat being vacated by Paul Wormser. However, Stuart Sklar confirmed Wednesday that he is seriously considering a run for the School Committee and is filling out nomination papers. He said, “my main motivation is to explore how the commonwealth helps fund municipalities and specifically the schools—as their budgets make up the lion’s share of town budgets.”
At deadline this week, no one had yet spoken up for the one empty chair on the Park and Recreation Commission.
Town Moderator
There will be a race as well for town moderator this year, James Yates having decided to challenge four-year incumbent “Doc” Westerling for that post. Yates, who moved to Harvard when he was four and went to school here, recently moved back after several years living and working elsewhere. Now an attorney—he does estate planning and child welfare cases—he ran for office because of his respect for “some of the people [who were in town government] when I was a kid—Dick Cronin, Mario Barba…” Specifically, he chose to run for moderator because he thinks the moderator can “help to calm differences, to create a smoother operation of town government.” And besides, he said, “I wanted to be involved. I love the town, obviously, having grown up here.”
Board of Health
Lorin Johnson and Tom Phillipou have changed places: Johnson will run for a full three-year term on the health board and Phillipou for a one-year unexpired term; originally they had intended to do it the other way around. Phillipou said this week that it just happened that way, but that it works out to his advantage; he will be free in a year to “seek another office,” he said. Asked which one, he replied only, “there are several that I’m mulling.”
Housing Authority
Current Housing Authority member and former selectman and planning and zoning board member Robert Lerner was nominated to run for a three-year uncompleted term on the Housing Authority, while Christopher Ashley, so far unopposed, will go for a complete five-year term. Ashley, an engineer who has served three terms on the pond committee and was responsible for the pump facility used in the pump drawdown of the pond, has lived in town since 1999. “I tend to get drawn into things when building is afoot,” he said; he hopes to see progress on the authority’s Mass. Avenue affordable housing project. “Affordable housing is important, and it’s certainly being talked about in town one way or the other,” he said, “and we have a need for affordable elderly housing as well. This is a way I can help the town out.”
Water Commissioner
With Ron Ricci having chosen to run for selectman instead of water commissioner, Bolton Road resident Curtis Howes stepped up to the plate instead and was nominated at caucus, unopposed, to go for the water board spot. Howes has been in town for 10 years and is a member of the Warner Free Lecture Trust, also an elected position. A 22-year Marine veteran and a consultant in the automatic identification technologies business (“bar codes and such,” he explained), he lives in the first house on the water system—the first house, that is, to receive town water as it starts on its way from the Bolton Road reservoir to the town center. The town water system serves only the center of town, including the schools.
“I believe in community service,” Howes said when asked why he’d decided to run; he’s interested in maintaining the quality of the town’s drinking water supply.
Warner Free Lecture Trust
Margot Holtzman, nominated Saturday night for one of the two positions open on the Warner Free Lecture Trust, is interested in “people with local connections,” she said. For instance, she’d like to put “local writers, local adventurers, local historians” on the trust’s programs. In particular, she has in mind a person she hopes to book soon who has sailed several times to Labrador with his family and is “a great speaker.” And, she added, we should be taking advantage of the “great new meeting place in the library by bringing in new programs.” Holtzman, a special educator in the Cambridge public schools, is a 21-year resident of the town.
Marcia Conant told the Press two weeks ago that she, too, will run for one of the two open positions on the trust. But Conant was unable to make it to caucus last Saturday night and so will submit nomination papers before next Tuesday’s deadline.
A quick caucus
Caucus, always a speedy procedure, ran for nine minutes last Saturday night, start to finish, convening at 7:05 and “dissolving,” according to Town Clerk Janet Vellante’s notes, at 7:14. Forty-five people showed up at the event this year out of a total of 3,665 active voters in town. It was moderated by Janet Wilhelm, long-time caucus chairwoman Betty Stone being out of town and thus unavailable for the first time in many years.
The caucus can nominate up to two candidates for every vacancy, though others may also run by submitting nomination papers by the March 13 deadline. Caucus nominees are noted as such on the town ballot.
