The Cape Ann League of Women Voters brought the candidates for the special 5th Essex District State Representative election together to discuss their platforms and issues pertinent to Cape Ann.
The seat was held by Ann-Margaret Ferrante who died Nov. 27 at age 53 following a long battle with pancreatic cancer. Ferrante had served as Cape Ann’s state representative since 2009.
Five candidates are vying for the seat. On the ballot will be Republicans Ashley Sullivan of Gloucester and Christina Delisio of Manchester-by-the Sea, as well as Democrat Andrew “Dru” Tarr, who was Ferrante’s research and district director.
Not on the ballot but running write-in campaigns are Rockport Democrat Sarah Wilkinson and Essex resident Gilbert Frieden, who is without a political party affiliation.
One of the topics discussed during the forum, hosted by league member June Michaels, was the MBTA Communities Act, a housing law requiring municipalities that have public transit stations or that border a municipality with public transit to zone for additional housing.
Tarr said he favors the law because it could help provide more people with affordable housing in a location that allows them to utilize public transportation.
“I am in favor of having appropriate amounts of housing in places where it makes sense to have them,” he said. “There’s no point in having cluster developments in West Gloucester where someone would have to get in their car to get to the train station. They need to be where the transit is and where the economic activity is for that housing to make sense.”
Delisio, however, differed. She said she is largely not in favor of it because the state is not considering what the local infrastructure can handle. Such issues should be handled by individual communities, she said, not the state.
“The law of MBTA zoning I don’t think is the issue, it’s the regulations that put a one-size-fits-all onto communities,” she said. “I know there was conversation out there that communities got to decide where it went and what they did, but the number and the density didn’t change.”
Delisio also said she is not in favor of apartment-style housing and instead wants to promote home ownership through more townhouses and condominiums.
Sullivan echoed her, saying zoning is a local issue and the state did not handle the enforcement of the law well, but she is in favor of more affordable housing.
“I don’t like the way it sits but the community voted for it … so if that’s what they want that’s what we have to support,” Sullivan said. “I don’t think that forcing things on communities is the answer, I think zoning should be decided locally, but there should be protections in place.”
While Wilkinson said she supports the MBTA Communities Act and what it is trying to do, she agreed with the two Republicans that the issue the law aims to address is one for individual communities to tackle.
“I wish that (the state) had put funds into a consultant for each community and sent the consultant to each individual community to come up with a goal because it is not a one-size-fits-all answer,” Wilkinson said. “What’s proper for Gloucester is not proper for Manchester or Rockport but overall, we do need more housing.”
Frieden was supportive of the idea behind the act, saying more housing equates to more property taxes collected by the town, but given the coastal environment of Cape Ann, actually building more housing does not seem feasible.
“Yes we need to build more housing because we really do need the property taxes but we can’t build as many as we want us to build,” Frieden said. “I don’t want to clear-cut forests, I don’t want to build on marshes. Sea level rise is real, global warming is real, so we’re going to have a lot more problems if we have housing on a place that is going to be flooded in 40 years.”
The 5th Essex District special primary will be held Tuesday, March 3, and the election will be held Tuesday, March 31.
Staff Writer Bobby Grady may be contacted at 978-675-2714 or bgrady@gloucestertimes.com.