In near-unanimous voice votes, special caucus attendees nominated two residents with town government experience Monday to compete for the open Board of Selectmen (BOS) seat left vacant by the resignation of Leo Blair.
The candidates are Marie Sobalvarro, of St. Johns Lane, a four-year member of Harvard’s Finance Committee, and William Johnson, of Warren Avenue, chairman of the newly created Economic Development Analysis Team (EDAT). They were the only candidates who stood for nomination at the caucus.
Board of Selectmen candidate Marie Sobalvarro signs her nomination papers at the town caucus on Sept. 21. (Photos by Lisa Aciukewicz)
Candidate Bill Johnson speaks with Town Clerk Janet Vallente at the town caucus.
One of the two nominees will be chosen by voters on Dec. 8, the same day as the Massachusetts State Primary, the statewide election to choose Republican and Democratic candidates to replace U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy. The winner of the BOS election will serve the remaining 17 months of Blair’s three-year term, which ends in 2011.
Deb Thomson will chair Sobalvarro’s campaign and Bruce Leicher will chair Johnson’s effort.
While the two candidates may agree on many issues because of their work on town financial committees, in separate phone interviews with the Press this week they voiced somewhat different priorities.
The town faces a severe and immediate fiscal crisis, said Sobalvarro, which will only get worse next year as state aid dwindles and Massachusetts wrestles with its own fiscal crisis. “I know there are people who say we just have a revenue problem,” she said, “but if you’re looking at it from a short-term horizon, say 18 months, we’re looking at a large [town] deficit. Right now I say we have a cost problem because immediate revenue-gaining measures aren’t going to happen in the next year.”
“I think [cost] is one piece of the problem that we can do quickly,” said Johnson, who noted that the Fiscal Impact Analysis Team, which he chaired, had recommended a number of structural changes. “The problem,” Johnson said, “is that even with those changes, it’s not a strategic solution, but a short-term tactical solution. If you step back, we are actually fairly cost efficient. But we stand out, starkly, compared to the other 351 towns in Massachusetts, as having a much, much, much lower contribution from commercial enterprises than anyone else.”
Approximately 50 people turned out for the town caucus on Sept. 21 at Town Hall.
Sobalvarro and Johnson agreed that voters should have a chance to decide whether to impose an optional meals tax on Harvard’s restaurants, as now allowed by state law. (The issue was recently discussed by the Finance Committee, which took no action, and now is in the hands of the selectmen.) “I favor putting [the question] out there” [at a town meeting], Sobalvarro said. “Why not take this as a small step forward, as a small tool” to decrease the tax burden on residents? “There would be some small burden on our residents,” said Johnson, “but all of it would return to the town, and we would also get the benefit of people who were visiting.”
Both candidates agreed that the selectmen need to implement the town’s master plans and that voters want someone who, Johnson said, will reach across “various polarized groups in town” and “just get things done.” Neither candidate expressed concern about the demands of the selectman’s job, the reason Blair gave for his resignation.
Johnson has lived in Harvard for more than 12 years. He and his wife have two grown children, both of whom attended Sudbury schools. Solbalvarro and her husband have lived in Harvard for five years and have two children who attend Harvard Elementary School.
Sobalvarro is a graduate of Wellesley College and Boston University, and has worked as a business consultant at both Arthur Anderson Consulting and Deloitte Consulting. Johnson spent the bulk of his career at Digital Equipment Corporation and retired as a vice president at Intel Corporation.
