WATERTOWN’S ROUGH SEAS ELECTION OF 2025 NEEDS ALL HANDS ON DECK

 

We are in the midst of an anniversary that no one is celebrating.

It was the Halloween season of 1991.  

On October 28, a cold front moving off the U.S. East Coast begins interacting with a low-pressure system over the Atlantic. At the same time, the remnants of Hurricane Grace are moving northward.

On October 29, the three systems meet off the coast of Nova Scotia, forming a massive “bomb cyclone.” Winds reach hurricane force, and waves exceed 30–40 feet along the New England coast. The still-warm ocean water of the Halloween season provides the storm with high-octane fuel.

October 30 – 31, the storm remains nearly stationary in the North Atlantic, pounding the U.S. East Coast with coastal flooding, erosion, and powerful surf. This is when most of the $200 million of destruction occurs.

November 1 – 2, the storm system moves eastward into the North Atlantic and briefly redevelops into a tropical storm before dissipating, and after taking 13 lives. 

The National Weather Service had predicted a severe nor’easter. They did not predict its intensity.

Later, Bob Case, a senior meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Boston, dubbed the catastrophic event The Perfect Storm. Author Sebastian Junger made it the title of his best-selling book, and the 2000 movie, starring George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg, guaranteed that The Perfect Storm would become a metaphor for events that occur when conditions merge to become “perfectly” disastrous.

The picture above comes from the movie where a commercial fishing boat, out of Gloucester, the Andrea Gale, is believed to have come apart when it encountered waves that may have been 100 feet high, taking the lives of its six crew members.

 

Watertown’s most recent local election in 2023 was a real snoozer. Of the nine elected officials who most affect our everyday lives, only one member of the City Council, the Council President, had a challenger, and the Vegas odds-makers had made him an overwhelming favorite. Voters could afford to sit that one out. And lots of you did.

 Those were the good old days of the Halloween season of 2023. And they seem so very long ago.

WARNING!!!: Sitting out the election of 2025 could prove to be a costly mistake for you, your family, your friends and neighbors, and for the still somewhat townish City of Watertown.  

From the federal government and state government down to our city manager, we have heard that the economy in 2026 and beyond might be facing “economic headwinds.”

If you’ve been alarmed (or totally freaked out) about the steady rise in your grocery, utilities, and insurance bills, you are already getting smacked in the face by biting, drenching headwinds, and some of you are scared to death that it will get increasingly worse. You have a right to be.

Snoozing through this election is not a sensible option.

Your elected representatives on the City Council can’t lower your bills, but they can make damn sure that your tax dollars – paid directly by homeowners and indirectly by renters − are not squandered on pet projects and policies that do not benefit the greater community.

Of course, it takes a five-to-four vote on the Council to stop those pet projects and policies that do not benefit the greater community.

If a member of your family recently graduated from college or grad school, you probably already know that the job market is crashing and that the jobs they were pursuing may have suddenly vanished.

The job market crash can be chalked up to employers’ uncertainty about the tariffs, combined with the explosiveness of AI. Combined, they are the “perfect” double whammy.

Artificial intelligence is making traditional entry-level corporate jobs expendable. As I write this blog post, Amazon has just announced the elimination of 14,000 corporate jobs. The tech sector as a whole has begun shedding hundreds of thousands of corporate jobs, as those companies shift from expansion to cost-saving restructuring.

The tech sector is not alone. AI is already becoming a career-killer for many young adults who will have to pivot in the midst of an ever-reshaping economic landscape.

To complete this gloomy forecast, we need to add one more system of economic weather that threatens us locally.

The turbo-charged biotech industry that turned Watertown into a modern-day boom town, with a fat corporate tax base, has slowed to a crawl.

So, the property tax dollars that homeowners pay directly and renters pay indirectly have rarely been in more need of protection than they will be in the future, should we find our small community battered by 100-foot economic waves.

And that brings me back to the urgency of having at least a five-vote majority on the Council to increase the odds that projects and policies that benefit the greater community are advanced, while the more utopian projects and policies that do not put the greater community first are not advanced.

The utopians on the Council and in the community are a minority, but they are extremely vocal and extremely well organized, and they continue to win their seats on the Council. In recent years, they have had their share of five-vote wins, but they have been one vote away from running the table, only because you showed up in four consecutive elections.

You showed up and voted for practical, commonsense, community-centered candidates who took time away from their businesses and their families to serve the town in which they grew up.

You did it in 2017 and 2019 when you put Anthony Donato, a complete newcomer to local politics, on the Council with the highest vote total in both elections.

You did it in 2021 when you put John Airasian, a newcomer to elected office, on the Council in a dead heat for second place. And, in 2023, when all at-large incumbents ran unopposed and the community honored him by giving him the highest vote total.

As politicians and Councilors, they were both novices, but they both had deep roots in the community and both possessed a deep understanding of their community and its values.

So, if you voted for Anthony Donato twice and John Airasian twice, feel free to give yourself a round of applause. But please make it quick because Watertown’s future requires your immediate attention.

Tom Tracy is the single most qualified candidate to run for Councilor at-large in at least the last decade. If you are reading this blog, you don’t need me to recite his lengthy resume. And if you know him, you don’t need me to tell you about his commitment to this community or about his deep understanding of this community and its values.

Tom Tracy does not need this job. But this job, at this time and under these circumstances, absolutely needs him. And to make it happen, all we need is for every Anthony Donato voter, every John Airasian voter, every Emily Izzo voter, every Angie Kounelis voter, every Ken Woodland voter, and every other voter who puts the whole community first to show up and cast one single vote in the Councilor at-large category for Tom Tracy.

In other words, All Hands on Deck!

And please wear your life jacket.

 

Bruce Coltin, The Battle For Watertown