Carol Spack
CAROL SPACK
Why are you running?
I am running because I believe in public service and see a need to improve how our city government sees, hears and listens to the residents of District 2. I will bring this practical philosophy to the City Council. Since Framingham became a City in 2018, I have watched the gulf between City Hall and residents grow, and have heard in District 2 a rising (or sinking) feeling among residents that they are not represented, that their goals and ideas for our community are ignored. District 2 residents don’t generally know the name of their City Councilor. I held three terms on the Planning Board from 2003 to 2012. And 13 years later Framingham residents who I have never met still come up to me to say “I watched the Planning Board meetings. You were the only one who made sense.” Framingham residents remember good government service and my respect for residents. That is my measure of success. I will advocate for and represent you as a member of City government that must improve our daily lives. I watch what people do, and not what they say. I am running to serve the public.
Please tell us about your qualifications and experience.
I bring to the City Council educational and professional qualifications to serve District 2 and to strengthen the City Council’s legislative know how: Harvard University, B.A. 1976 with honors; M.I.T., Master of City Planning, 1981, master’s thesis on rent control law in Boston and Brookline; Northeastern University School of Law, 1984, admitted to Massachusetts Bar 1985, early large law firm practice in Boston, my own law practice from 1989 in art law, grass roots nonprofit organizations, real estate (zoning, land use, transactions, conservation) and small business matters. I love teaching and did so for six years at the M.I.T. Real Estate Center master’s program; with children in community art centers; and informally in community based neighborhood and environmental projects. I love studio art: I have bronze sculptures in Cushing Memorial Park. Art, music, dance and culture are assets that Framingham must support.
My current full time work is with antique and contemporary American maps. This work offers a look back through history and forward to the present. American maps from the 18th to the 21st c. show we are still tangling with the same issues. I am running to bring a historic and forward looking perspective to the City Council about growth, decline, immigration, transportation, health, the environment, housing, taxes and money in politics.
I bring substantial Framingham municipal experience in land use, planning and zoning: namely, three 3-year terms on the Framingham Planning Board, one year as chair during which the Board finalized the ten-year Framingham Master Plan. I bring approximately 14,000 hours of experience reviewing Framingham land use, development, traffic and environmental impacts, related municipal finance and development best practices. I can immediately step up to represent District 2 on the City Council. If the City Council also becomes the development permit granting authority, my Planning Board, quasi-judicial permit and decision drafting experience come with me to the City Council. Decisions need clarity, teeth and enforcement.
What are the top 3 issues you want to work on in the next City Council term?
Issue One: transparency in city governance - making available to the public as a rule before City Council hearings all agenda back up materials so the public can follow the why, the how and the reported (and unreported) impacts of proposed City Council legislation and decisions. Citizen input is part of our constitutional Due Process guarantee. Input deserves respect and review.
Issue Two: The empty position of Planning Board Director must be filled so that the Planning Board is advised by independent, professional planning staff. Ideally, we should restructure and group in one department City Hall planning functions. Development functions should be separate. Framingham is an outlier for not having a fully staffed, multi-disciplinary Planning Department: urban design, housing - market, public, nonprofit - architecture, ecological site planning, land use, zoning, conservation, and reforesting. A Planning Department is vital to the Planning Board. It is also an asset to City Hall and works with the municipal departments so that land use and municipal planning inform all decisions: infrastructure, road design, speed limits, wetlands protection, facilities design and siting etc. The Planning Board Director advises the Planning Board about development applications making sure they are complete and ready for Planning Board review. That staff identifies development impacts at the concept stage and during hearings on submitted plans. The Planning Board Director recommends to the Planning Board and the applicant alternative approaches to a developer’s scheme. Not all expertise is available in house: I will advocate for new, well respected architecture, landscape architecture, environmental and planning consultants based on their work in other communities. It is time to improve how and from whom City Hall gets advice.
Issue Three: Educate the public and ourselves about the state mandated MBTA Communities Act, a developer’s “big beautiful bill” to rezone for “big beautiful buildings.” This Act is a displacement Act. It is not affordable housing - Framingham’s own zoning requires more affordable homes per project. The Act only zones for sky high rents. The Act displaces residents from existing affordable homes. The Act displaces local family and other small businesses and cause their financial ruin.
The Planning Board and City Council must learn about successful private and public nonprofit housing finance and development options. Other communities provide examples.
Small business owners in the Pinefield Shopping Center tell me their rents have doubled since November, 2024 when the new owners - who also own the Dunkin Donuts - bought the property for a multi million dollar premium. The Pinefield Plaza is dilapidated outside and inside - it is an eyesore. The crumbling parking lot and abused landscaping sadly mock the approved site plan. District 2 and the entire Pinefield neighborhood are devalued by this ongoing disinvestment. The new owner must know there is a substantial upside to his investment.
I have heard rumors of private discussions between the Pinefield property owners and the City about moving Nicholas Road and big development plans. Fact or rumor, I don’t yet know. No City Council advice exists. But I can say the MBTA Communities Act put the Pinefield Shopping Center “in play”. And the public is kept in the dark. Not on my watch if elected by D2.
Traffic congestion is a major issue for many neighborhood residents. What if anything can be done about it?
I am running because I see a deterioration of core quality of life features in District 2 long ignored by City Hall: 1) in my Pinefield neighborhood the residential roads were resurfaced recently by the DPW with a sticky, uneven and coarse material - already showing wear -not comparable to real paving in other Framingham neighborhoods. This shabby work is to the detriment of residents who walk, children on bicycles and the aesthetics of our neighborhood; 2) the D2 street hierarchy of main and residential roads is abused, and in our many neighborhoods we daily experience heavy, cut-through traffic between arterial streets and residential roads due to for profit GPS programs that send Rte.9 and Rte. 20 traffic through our neighborhoods - and yes, we can object to this monetizing of the public roads; 3) our main streets, also residential - Water, Central, Brook, Linda, Old Conn Path, Elm and Concord are dangerous 50 m.p.h. speedways. Water Street is even posted at a 40 m.p.h. Since 2018, at rush hour, traffic gridlock greets us as we attempt to leave or return to our homes. May the 2024 District 1 pedestrian death from a speeding car on Edgell Road be a tragic memorial to the last such death in Framingham.
I shall work on the City Council to hire professional traffic consultants with proven, solutions to traffic, good road design and pedestrian safety: traffic calming, lower speed limits, wider sidewalks and limiting access of GPS cowboys speeding from highway to highway on our neighborhood roads. The health, welfare and safety of Framingham is the City Council’s job.
If the Pinefield shopping center is rezoned and redeveloped, what if any role do you envision taking in that process as our District 2 City Councilor?
I will work for the prompt posting of a request for proposals by an urban design consultant, with architects, landscape architects, and urban design professionals skilled in adaptive reuse of buildings and large paved sites to advise on the Pinefield Plaza site and its relationship to McGrath Square. We are the clients: local property owners, business owners and District 2 residents. District 2 has an unappreciated asset: Saxonville has two, complementary village business centers: the mid-century (1957) modern Pinefield Shopping Center and the 19th c. Saxonville Mills. In 1957, Campanelli’s architects (who I have interviewed) planned and built Pinefield and Pinefield Shopping Center as a mid-century modern (1950’s) planned community, influenced by architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The neighborhood was designed with its own shopping center as an integral community asset and convenience. That site and purpose deserve serious reinvestment today. The Campanelli mid-century modern houses are in demand nationwide. For all ages and stages of life they provide open plan homes, large windows, efficient heating and cooling and a half acre of land. Reinvestment in the retail Pinefield Shopping center and reopening of the McAuliffe branch building for public use will bring alive a dormant civic and commercial neighborhood in the heart of Saxonville. As District 2 City Councilor, I want to bring this potential to fruition.
And now that other half, McGrath Square. The successful international chefs and small Saxonville Mills businesses have no place in McGrath Square to expand. And no client parking. Turn right onto Water Street to the Pinefield Shopping Center. On that short walk I see - not a multi-acre field of broken pavement and chaotic traffic islands - but a new 2-level parking deck/patio designed with Sudbury River views for cafe, restaurant and quiet use. The Sudbury River is Saxonville’s primary ignored asset. I imagine a water view, mid-century modern design of indoor/outdoor dining and retail, a new civic greenspace ” Common” for a farmer’s market and local performances. I see Pinefield’s first child friendly play space. Saxonville can have a “Square” and a “Common”. Let’s also plan for the existing pet grooming business that requires indoor and outdoor canine client space. No losers here. I see adaptive reuse for generations.
A lot of area residents were unhappy with the way the MBTA Communities Act zoning compliance process played out. Any thoughts on that?
The MBTA Communities Act was introduced in 2021 by Gov.Charlie Baker, enacted that year by the Legislature as a state rezoning, high density mandate with no implementing regulations. In 2022, Massachusetts cities and towns with an MBTA train line and station began multi-year, complex planning and citizen outreach work to educate and develop a compliance plan. Framingham City Council began its review in October, 2024 and told the public our compliance plan filing deadline was December 31, 2024. The City Council, and District 2 specifically did no education or outreach. City residents had no education about the Act and its numerous fiscal, school, traffic, environmental and aesthetic impacts. I am aware of no professional consulting firms or outside counsel being hired by the City Council to advise the Planning Board, City Council or provide citywide education about land use impacts from this mandate to rezone for 20 “units” per acre, even in District 2 where residential zoning is 1, or 2 or 4 dwelling “units” per acre. The Mayor and City Council told us the Act’s rezoning unit quota for Framingham required massive, high rise, densely packed apartment buildings not just within the mandated 1/2 mile of our single MBTA station, but citywide. The District 2 councilor bought in to this threat. Please prepare for “Round Two” on this topic on the City Council.
Round Two is now. The Nov. 4 election is its prelude. And I stand opposed to MBTA rezoning efforts in D2 and to any repeat of what we saw at the 2024 City Council hearings. I also oppose a related workaround, aired recently on the City Council: to remove the Planning Board permit granting authority and place it with the City Council. This worries me.
Why does the current District 2 councilor support a crippled and powerless Planning Board? The City Council has not earned our confidence. The City Council now views rezoning citywide for high density apartments as a zero sum game with “Winners” and “Losers”. I reject that value system in government and in life. The MBTA Act requires one overlay zone located a 1/2 mile of our MBTA station. Beware City Council efforts to revise our Act compliance plan.
Imagine 13 years from now what a member of the public will say to a former 2024 City Councilor about those hearings. It won’t be: “I always enjoyed watching you on the City Council, you were the only one who made sense.”
Notes:
For your reading about the MBTA Communities Act here are the citations and links to the City of Milton’s legal challenge to the MBTA Act, the Court’s 2025 Decision and the new, April, 2025 implementing regulations of the Act.
On January 8, 2025, the Court decided that the Act was enforceable. However, the Court held the Act’s touted guidelines were not enforceable. The Court required the legislature to enact implementing regulations to correct that defect. Permanent regulations were published April 11, 2025. Here is the regulation cite. 760 CMR 72 - 760 CMR 72.00 - Official.pdf
McGrath Square continues to be a dangerous pedestrian environment, with people dashing across 3 lanes of traffic from the city parking lot to Saxonville Mills; and the new CVS in Nobscot is an unwelcoming streetscape if you’re on foot. Does the City Council have a role in making Saxonville and Nobscot more friendly to pedestrians and bicyclists?
There is no pedestrian concept being brought forward by the City for McGrath Square. There is no pedestrian concept being brought forward by the City for the Pinefield Shopping Center or anywhere else in Framingham. [please read above] Not for Nobscot, not for the High School and not for the Stapleton School. Nowhere in Framingham. I understand this need for citywide urban design and planning, pedestrian concepts, community based zoning. I do not see or hear that analytic approach anywhere on the current City Council.
It is time for new representation in City Hall and on the City Council. It is time to address planning topics. District 2 is grinding to a halt on its roads and pedestrian life is miserable. There are no District 2 civic sanctuaries. That is also why I am running for District 2 City Council.
The current City Hall concept plan to demolish 1629 Concord Street and jerry-rig a dangerous, bizarre speed link from Central to Danforth Street creates new dangers and problems in McGrath Square. Head’s Up! The new City concept plan catapults these traffic flows and pedestrian dangers up Danforth Street and onto those Saxonville residential side streets. Instead, I recommend filling in some of the “missing teeth” in McGrath square to restore Saxonville’s purpose-built historic center and add affordable housing.
The current streets into McGrath square (Central, Concord, Water, Elm and Danforth) purposely don’t cut through: they were offset in the 19th century to calm traffic then. McGrath Square is a rectangular cousin to the traffic rotary. Traffic calming is also now needed before it reaches a bottleneck. And the Concord Street traffic light can be moved south of Danforth. Other new traffic calming measures are needed on Central, Concord, Water, Elm and Danforth. Any real urban designer and traffic engineer knows that.
This bizarre, dangerous concept plan is just not acceptable.This plan is full of losers. Who might be the gainer?
The properties in McGrath Square nonetheless do require parking. Parking is physically available at the edges of McGrath Square, and that includes the Pinefield Shopping Center and Watson Place. New parking on Watson Place should be approved to support the decades of outstanding management of the Saxonville Mills by two generations of the same family. I fully support the Saxonville Mills owner’s request for more on site parking. There is a City owned, abandoned pump station and empty fire house. Such new parking has nothing to do with 1639 Concord Street. Watson Place changes do require public City Council vetting and public hearings. Supporting the ongoing operation and investment in the Saxonville Mills is a “Yes.”
The Pinefield Shopping Center should now invest and be adapted to accept businesses in McGrath Square that need more square footage and more parking. Please read my answer above about a vision and reinvestment equally in the Pinefield Plaza, McAuliffe Library building and revealing the beauty of the Sudbury River along Water Street. This Saxonville destination is hiding in plain sight.
A key opportunity to use the old McAuliffe branch library to enhance the neighborhood (as was called for in a city planning document) was squandered when that building was turned into DPW overflow offices. Should our City Councilor advocate for more city services for adults in this area of Framingham, given that city government offices, the Callahan Center, adult education (Keefe Tech), the police station, and the planned community center are all south of Rte 9? Or are those close enough for people to access?
I am running for the District 2 City Council seat because we have experienced a decades long pattern of disrespect by Framingham Town and City government. District 2 residents, of all ages and stages, children to seniors are shortchanged. Prime example: the Saxonville branch library was removed and that public building was not retained for neighborhood use - it is used for City storage - rather than for a neighborhood “city hall”, or civic meeting space. Prime example: no public park has ever been built in the Pinefield neighborhood. No indoor swimming pool has been built. Prime example: approximately 20% of District 2 residents are over 60 and no dedicated bus shelters, benches or pedestrian amenities have been built. No programming for residents over 60 are offered in District 2. Prime example: Public sidewalks, roads, original parks look their age. Saxonville Beach has no areas to sit in the shade, no lake uplands restoration or even a plan. Existing D2 parks have no upgrades, new plantings or planting plans. Ecologically, there are no naturalized landscapes. Grass lawns could be planted with low clover or other hardy and less thirsty ground cover. There are no new oaks or other native shade trees planted on public land. This is an outlier for how other cities and towns are planting for now and the future. Public D2 investment means investment in such qualities of civic life.
How would you keep in touch with voters to inform them what you’ve been doing?
I have two modest proposals for staying in touch with District 2 voters and residents. First, a newsletter posted to my councilor web site on a monthly basis. Second, a proposal to the City Council that will take some discussion, agreement and logistical planning. I would like to see City Council hearings held at least three (3) times per year in a neighborhood venue. That means six meetings “on the circuit” over the course of the District City Councilor term. Over four years this meeting circuit brings all City Councilors closer to citywide voters and residents. Framingham is a big town geographically. We have every reason to give serious consideration to moving hearings closer to constituents.
There are public schools in each District with meeting rooms and assembly halls. This would also be a good civics lesson opportunity and a curriculum builder to have a regular visit by the City Councilors to schools. A City Council hearing should also be scheduled for the Callahan Center. Residents over 60 are active citizens and voters.
What else would you like to tell Framingham voters?
You may see my four bronze sculptures “Nature’s Four Seasons” at Cushing Memorial Park, at the antique drinking water fountain. [The four large bronze tiles are set into the ground. The bronze tiles sorely need conservation work to restore the patina.]
How can voters find out more about you:
Carol J. Spack for Framingham City Council, District 2 Seat
carol25@earthlink.net
(508)820-9100
Sign up for the District 2 email-list.