Hello neighbors,

I was recruited to run for office in 2017 by tenant rights advocates as a first-time candidate for office and long-time business owner in Union Square. I was a true political outsider, unseating a 15 year incumbent who had spent 14 years in office without a challenger. At the time I said that elected office is a temporary service, not a career.

Today I follow through on that. I am announcing my resignation as Somerville’s Ward 2 Councilor to take effect on December 31, 2026. This may come as a surprise, and I’d like to take a moment to explain this choice – and why I’ll be asking one of you to step forward and fill this role.

A special election will be held in late January or early February of 2027 to fill the vacancy left by my friend and colleague, Ben Ewen-Campen, as he moves from his seat on the City Council to the state legislature as our Rep replacing Erika Uyterhoeven. The city will need to hold a special election for that vacancy, and I will be moving on from my role as your City Councilor at that time as well. By announcing my irrevocable intent to resign at the end of 2026, it allows the city to schedule one special election for both seats and minimize the time that either ward is without a representative on the Council.

There is no shortage of work to be done, and I was an activist before I was an insider. It is time for me to step back from legislation and prepare for my next phase of public service.

I’ve always strived to be the kind of representative I want to have. That meant staying true to my principles, leading with my heart, listening to my neighbors, giving everyone a fair shake, and doing what I can to show up for any neighbor in need. That’s why I’ve held open office hours every week, why I answer my phone at all hours of the night: so that people always know that there’s someone here to help.

And really, all we want is a government that is trying to help us. A government that works for us and takes care of our neighbors. A government where you can call someone and speak to a person to get help – a role I’ve been happy to fill for nine years. It has been incredibly rewarding to be able to help so many of my neighbors with problems and questions big and small throughout these years.

My time in office has been very productive. I’m proud of the big changes to city policy that we’ve been able to put in place (like the expanded Condo Conversion Ordinance protections, Office of Housing Stability assistance, and Wage Theft Ordinance), and even more proud of the advocacy that has resulted in new bike lanes, pedestrian infrastructure, and parks throughout Ward 2. My focus on Affordability, Transparency, and Accountability has never wavered. We were able to make progress on making city processes more accessible, increasing housing production through zoning reform, pushing real estate money out of our politics and returning power to the people though Neighborhood Councils and the Community Land Trust, centering development without displacement, and increasing commercial development to provide local jobs and tax revenue which has seen the city’s budget increase over 50% since taking office. Sharp budget oversight and checking the near-unlimited power of our mayors has also been a focal point of my time in office, and I’m proud to say that our city is in a better place now than it was nine years ago.

At the same time, it hasn’t all been wins. Despite that incredible growth in city revenues, as a city we continue to underinvest in our residents and public services while overspending on consultants, contractors, policing, and middle management. We haven’t built out enough planning capacity to put municipal priorities ahead of responding to developer proposals. Though some recent progress has been made, we still haven’t built the in-house capacity to maintain our own utility infrastructure.

The tendency of our local government seems to be spending more money on describing problems and not nearly enough on solving them. And it’s not for a lack of legislation; I can point to a list of laws the City Council has ordained in the past nine years which remain unenforced to this day. Our Vacant Properties Ordinance (passed May 2019) provides the city with a tool to encourage proper building maintenance, reduce vacant storefronts, and return vacant apartments to the rental market – yet the law itself has never been funded and enforced. Our Short Term Rentals Ordinance (also passed May 2019) would encourage vacant units to be opened to rental housing instead of turning into AirBNB listings, but has never received the funding to proactively enforce the law and free up housing stock for long-term residential use.

The job of a legislator is more than just passing laws and providing oversight for civic functions. Part of the Councilor role is to communicate with constituents and make plain the ways in which our system is failing us so that we can demand improvement together. Over time, I’ve found that maintaining vigilance on city processes, hawkishly reviewing our spending from the Finance Committee, pushing policy change from within and plowing forward on legislation left increasingly little time for the outside organizing and advocacy that built power and led to such massive momentum and change in 2018 and 2019.

The fact is that there are things I wanted to accomplish when taking on this role which we have not been able to make a reality (like a rental property registry, alternative emergency response, social housing) and problems Somerville still faces that I have been working on outside of my role on the City Council in the meantime (such as food insecurity, OST resources for youth, anti-ICE/community defense, community-led development benefits). Those needs still exist. In order for me to most effectively and sustainably pursue those priorities – as well as maintain a healthy work/life balance – I need to step aside and invite someone else to fill this Council role. It is time to change my relation to institutional power once again, as I did back in 2017, in order to push those initiatives forward from a different perspective.

Responsibility sharing is part of capacity building in community organizing, as well as being crucial for individual sustainability. To put it in football terms: nobody plays every snap.

So I invite you, my neighbors, to look inside yourself and ask if this is your time to step forward. The role of Councilor is to be a translator of our neighbors’ values into policy both by legislation and fiscal oversight, as well to be a facilitator of neighborhood conversations and to serve as direct assistance for people who need help navigating government functions. I mean it sincerely when I say that YOU can do this job as long as you care deeply for your community and are ready to work hard to serve it.

There is no training program for this job and no degree that prepares you for it, but I am willing to help you learn the technical skills required if you ever feel lost – and I have confidence that in Ward 2 of all places it’s incredibly likely that you share the values that I hold so dear. Otherwise you wouldn’t have supported me so overwhelmingly for the past five elections, sending me back time and again to be your voice in City Hall.

I look forward to speaking with many of you in the coming months as we all consider the path forward for our Ward. I’m happy to answer any questions you have and continue serving in this role for the next several months as the city prepares a special election to fill this seat and the seat in Ward 3.

It has truly been an honor to serve you, and I look forward to continuing our work together. I’m not going anywhere, and there’s work to be done. Thank you for your support, your neighborliness, and your trust. I’m so proud to be here in community with you, and I’m excited for what’s ahead – for all of us.

-JTS