The 76 incumbent Town Meeting members seeking reelection to new three-year terms this year find themselves in a far more competitive environment than Needham has seen in many years.
The incumbents will be joined on the ballots by 61 challengers seeking the eight seats in each of the town’s 10 precincts. The high-water mark is Precinct F, where there are 19 total candidates, with the 11 challengers outnumbering the eight incumbents.
When you add the four candidates seeking to fill three additional one-year terms for seats that have become vacant, the April 8 election will have 141 candidates for 83 open Town Meeting seats.
Just one year ago, the total Town Meeting field was 98, and the average for the past five elections is 87 — not including the decennial census year of 2022 when all 240 seats were contested and 246 residents were on the ballots.
Last week the Observer interviewed a small sample of the 66 first-time candidates for Town Meeting. Now, we turn our attention to a sample of the veterans, people who have served for more than three decades. While several of the new candidates interviewed cited the recent MBTA zoning controversy as motivation to run, the veterans generally described their original motivation to get involved as a natural outgrowth of their civic interest.
“Politics is a sport and part of life,” said Gil Cox, the longest-serving member of Town Meeting. He began serving in 1964. Like all of the veterans interviewed, Cox has served in multiple elected and volunteer positions. “At the time, I was chairman of the Republican Town Committee and I was president of the Needham Taxpayers Association, which doesn’t exist anymore.”
Cox was a Navy pilot who established a law office in town in the early 1960s. The office is now run by his son, but Cox, 92, still goes into work most days. Redistricting changed his precinct during his 60 years, and he recently moved, relocating from Precinct C to Precinct B.
Cox is confident an MBTA Communities housing plan will be adopted. “Needham will be in compliance,” he said. “It’s a well-run town, but you can never take it for granted. You have to keep working on it.”
One issue that has always divided Town Meeting is whether to push on well past midnight to finish its work or to adjourn and meet again.
“We always have one to two articles left at 11 o’clock but no one wants to argue at that time,” Cox said. “I’ve taken it upon myself to always make sure that there’s a motion to adjourn as quickly as possible after 11 o’clock.”
He said that shortly after 10 p.m., he begins to hear people shouting at him, “Come on, Gil. Make the motion.”
In 1974, Dan Matthews won a race for Town Meeting and, on the same ballot, lost a race for School Committee. He subsequently served long tenures on both the School Committee and the Select Board.
“I grew up in the Kennedy generation, and we looked to government as a way to make lives better for people,” Matthews said.
He’s had a varied career in the law, including work in solo practice and as Norfolk County director.
Matthews thought that one of the more challenging eras for Needham government came in the years after Proposition 21/2 was enacted in 1980 and towns were forced to make budget cuts and rein in spending. “It took time to rebuild the schools and modernize some of our departments,” he recalled.
One of the most important warrant items passed by Town Meeting during his tenure, according to Matthews, was the change to the town manager form of government.
Matthews said the tradition of Town Meeting and democratic government may be more important than ever. “National issues may seem a long way from Needham but all levels of government are interconnected,” he said. “You don’t take the process for granted. You try to be patient and you work with your neighbors and make good decisions.”
When Maureen McCaffrey was elected in 1978, other women at Town Meeting were hard to find. Before Powers Hall was rehabilitated, the meetings took place at the Newman School auditorium. According to McCafffrey, it was a space where “it was hard to see what was going on.”
“There were groups of people who sat in certain places and as you looked around you knew who the movers and shakers were. You knew you couldn’t sit with them,” she said. “As you became more experienced, you moved to better spots.”
McCaffrey got involved with the League of Women Voters, and has served in many volunteer positions with both the league and the town. Her career was also varied; it included running a real estate business in Needham.
“As a Town Meeting member, you got the big picture and knew what was going on,” she said.
Many members attend study sessions sponsored by the league in order to examine the warrant items prior to Town Meeting. McCaffrey has frequently served as a discussion leader.
She said the vote that green-lighted the construction of North Hill was one of the most memorable moments. “The moderator broke a deadlock and voted for it,” she said. “People were afraid of the traffic and lights shining into the town. It was wild.”
McCaffrey welcomes the competition in the race to represent Precinct G. “It’s fantastic that there are 13 people running. It’s good that people are getting involved.”
Cindy Chaston attended her first Town Meeting as a member of the Finance Committee in 1991. “One of my fellow Finance Committee members said, ‘You really ought to run for Town Meeting. If you have to be here, you might as well be able to vote,’” she said.
Chaston has served on the Permanent Public Building Committee and is currently also on the ballot as an incumbent Parks and Recreation commissioner.
“Of all the volunteer activities I do, I like TM best. I love the process. Because the vote often results in a very narrow margin, it’s the only place where my single vote makes a difference,” she said.
Chaston’s career has been in finance and accounting.
She can appreciate why townspeople were upset after learning about the neighborhood zoning plan originally passed by Town Meeting, but rejected the notion that it wasn’t fully thought out. In addition to attending HONE meetings and the league’s study sessions, she attended informational meetings in her own precinct, Precinct E.
“We’ve got to figure out our housing situation. If we don’t our area is in trouble. Our state is in trouble,” she said.
In addition to the zoning vote, which Chaston has followed closely, she is very interested in two warrant items that overlap with her responsibilities as a Parks and Recreation commissioner: Town Meeting will vote on major plans to improve Claxton Field and the playground at the Eliot School.
One of the most memorable votes Chaston took at Town Meeting proposed adding lights to some of the sports fields at DeFazio Field. When the issue was in front of Parks and Rec, representatives on that board had their driveways covered in tacks. “It was taken very seriously by the police,” Chaston said. “When we voted on that issue at Town Meeting, Dick Melick, the moderator at the time, locked down the auditorium. That was an unusual event for Needham.”
All of the veterans mentioned that they have known many people who were motivated by a single issue to run for Town Meeting, but their perspectives quickly broadened as they learned about the wide variety of issues facing Needham.
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