Two Newton City Councilors and a new member of the School Committee have announced they are not running for re-election in November. Ten-year veteran Ward 2 Councilor Emily Norton, Ward 6 Councilor Brenda Noel, and first-term Ward 6 School Committee member Paul Levy will leave office and focus on their private-sector jobs in 2024. Emily Norton is Executive Director of the Charles River Watershed Association; Brenda Noel is Executive Director of Pathways to Possible; and Paul Levy is a business consultant.
Councilor Norton announced her planned departure at a Newton South High School Civics Day event and at the Newtonville Area Council meeting on March 23. In her March newsletter, she told her constituents:
“I was first elected to the ‘Board of Aldermen’ in 2013. It has truly been an honor to be your representative in local government, and to be able to respond when you needed help from the City in some way. I am proud of my accomplishments for Newton. But as I noted in a 2016 newsletter, I never planned to be a lifer, and now it’s time to turn over the reins to someone new. I have a wonderful day job as Executive Director of the Charles River Watershed Association. I am looking forward to being able to spend more time focusing on my job, which entails, among other things, helping the 35 cities and towns of the Charles River watershed update their approach to water management in order to not only improve water quality in the Charles River, but also protect people and property from the weather extremes of climate change that we know are coming, especially flooding and extreme heat. [And,] between that and my three sons ages 15, 17 and 20, I will still be busy. Thank you so much for trusting me with your vote over these last 5 elections – the highest vote getter in each election among all ward councilors since 2015. I am very, very grateful.”
Thus far, only David Micley, who ran for an at-large Ward 2 City Council seat in 2021 and lost to Tarik Lucas and Bryan Barash, has filed with the Office of Campaign and Political Finance as a candidate for the Ward 2 Councilor seat. Now that Councilor Norton has publicly announced that she is will not run for re-election, Mr. Micley said he will announce his candidacy for the Ward seat “in a few days.” Born and raised in Newton, Mr. Micley “wants to get to know what’s on people’s minds and represent them.” He is committed to “constituent services.” Among the issues he is interested in are zoning and “by right” development, increasing opportunities for commercial development, and expanding relationships with the Greater Boston business community. Mr. Micley, his wife, and three young children currently live in his grandmother’s house, five blocks from his own boyhood home. He served on Brookline’s Town Meeting and works in a crypto currency start-up.
Brenda Noel, also a Ward Councilor, representing Ward 6, elected in 2017, sent an email to constituents and colleagues explaining that as a mother of twin daughters and having a full-time job, “it is time for me to make a change.” When she ran, she said, she promised “to build on our shared vision, ensuring Newton was a community that was reflective of our values, accessible, and inclusive.” Committed to working on zoning redesign, Councilor Noel believes that is the way to achieve “[T]rue inclusiveness, “which she believes “still eludes the Newton community, and will until we make further progress on our housing and zoning policy, our budget priorities regarding education and community policing, and the urgent needs around climate change.”
Paul Levy, elected to the Newton School Committee in November 2022, is leaving to return to full-time business consulting in strategic negotiations, which takes him across the country and the globe. When he ran in 2021, the pandemic curtailed his work and related travel commitments. In the last few months, he has seen a resurgence of longtime and new clients, and although he has attended School Committee meetings via Zoom, he says “participating on-line is not very satisfying.” In addition, travel has limited his contact with constituents, which has been “marvelous and humbling.” He underscored the access he has had to world experts in education and medicine whose children were Newton students. Among the accomplishments in his brief tenure, he is particularly proud of vetting and voting for the in-coming Newton School Superintendent Anna Nolin. He is looking forward to working on the upcoming union contract, which will replace the current one ending in September.
Correction: This article originally stated that David Micley ran for an at-large Ward 2 City Council seat in 2021 and lost to Tarik Lucas and Susan Albright. In fact, he Tarik Lucas and Bryan Barash. We have corrected the error.
