WALTHAM, MA — For the past several years, each time an election rolled around in Waltham, Christina Montgomery and her neighbors talked about how sad it was that so many of the councilors ran unopposed. "Someone should run," she remembers saying. Her neighbors agreed with her that when city officials ran unopposed it wasn't good for the community in general.

"You could see the effect that had on the accountability and accessibly of the councilors. If you don't have to worry about being reelected, you don't have to be really responsive to the voters," she said. "Someone should really, run."

Why not you? Her neighbors asked the attorney with public policy and mediation experience who seemed to be a perfect fit, she says, for the role of city councilor. She brushed those comments aside until recently. She's been watching the schools issue. She reached out to the council and wasn't thrilled with the response. So and she and her husband and 10-year-old went to a City Council meeting to see how the donuts were made.

"I was not happy with how it went. It seemed like a lot of the councilors were not listening to the input that I know a lot of my neighbors were giving them. So that week I thought maybe I should run," she said. So she put her hat in to run against two others for the Ward 5 seat. Residents will go to the polls Tuesday, Sept. 19 to winnow the number of candidates from three to two. And she's hoping to be one of the two left on the Nov. 7, when the smoke clears.

(( Sign up for the Waltham Patch Newsletter)) "My running for this office is not about me. It's not about ego it's not something I've never aspired to, it's really something that I've come to out of frustration. Someone needs to step up. I have the background for it, I have the temperament for it. And I love this city. I'd like to give back to the city that we've come to call home," she told Patch recently. Though Montgomery is the only candidate of the three running for Ward 5 Councilor who did not grow up in Waltham like opponents Joey LaCava (who owns the Pub on Main) or Sally Cullura (who owns the Tea House), she said the past dozen years she's lived in Waltham she's been paying attention to the issues.

Where to put the high school, and increasing number of students in Waltham Schools in general, tops the list of issues she sees as a priority for the city. Development, and the traffic that comes with that and then what to do about the prevalence of rats in town round out the top three issues as she sees them after chatting with neighbors. When it comes to the high school...

Montgomery says it's important to support the work that has already been done when it comes to figuring out where to place a new high school. That said, she said, Stigmatine still looks pretty good.

"I understand that the Stigmatine is controversial right now. My hope is that we could come back to to the table. Somewhere something has broken down. I'd like to try to use some of my negotiation and mediation skills. Some of the other new candidates have those types of skills, too. That place seems to be the best spot," she said.

As for what to do about Fernald "The first thing we need to do is restore the wetlands on the property. Once that piece gets done we can look at the rest," she said.