The next candidate on the ballot is John Stefanini. To get a first impression of this candidate, I looked at his website and watched two video interviews. The first interview is Framingham Now:

the second video is with Metrowest Daily News (Click this

link to Metrowest Daily News Facebook page if the embed below does not work.)

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FMetroWestDailyNews%2Fvideos%2F1787579711269449%2F&show_text=1&width=560

My first impression from these videos is that John Stefanini performs the role of “competent politician” quite well. Since I have not been in Framingham very long I am sorry to say I don’t have a good sense of how competent he has actually been! Experience-wise, he is the polar opposite of the last candidate I discussed (JP Horrigan). Stefanini has experience as a selectman and a state representative, and has been involved in the community after his public service ended and he was working in the private sector. Maybe this is cynical, but to me his experienced politician schtick is a bit of a double-edged sword. He certainly conveys a deep knowledge about the town, neighborhoods, local businesses, tax rates, etc., but it’s wrapped up and delivered in this competence performance that we see from experienced politicians who are trying to appeal to a certain (imo outdated) model of what a representative looks like.

As for policies, there is a bit more meat here than with the previous candidate, but not a ton of detail. He mentions taxes being high relative to other places. I don’t own a house so I don’t know too much about this. My guess is that Framingham has lower land values and lower income residents than some of our neighboring towns and tries to make up revenue with higher rates? I would love to learn more about this.

He also makes some points about parking in downtown, and seems to think that difficulty parking downtown is holding back our local businesses. It is hard for me to restrain my response because of how annoying this idea is to me. Downtown Framingham is covered in parking. We don’t need more parking, we need less parking and more people. That means both more housing and better ways for people to access downtown besides driving. That will create the demand for local businesses. We have the Natick Mall and Shopper’s World five minutes away, with oceans of free parking and all the shopping you could possibly handle. If people want to park and shop all day they will go there. Downtown is a neighborhood first, and it should be a destination neighborhood, but it will never be a destination if it doesn’t even serve its own residents. This strikes me as an old guys idea of what downtowns look like, as opposed to a forward looking view of what they should be, and it’s one of the tradeoffs of electing a guy with “experience.” It’s hard for me to imagine voting for someone who looks at the sea of empty parking spaces in downtown Framingham where housing, shops, and parks could be, and says, “We need more of this.”

The moderator of Framingham Now brings up the issue of Framingham’s diverse community and immigrant populations and their fears in the current national political climate. Generally, Stefanini seems to be on the right side of this issue, commending the moderator (State Representative Jack Patrick Lewis) for his efforts with making immigrants feel more secure. My impression was that Stefanini says the right things and would not disappoint too much but didn’t seem like he would lead on this issue.