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If you have not registered to vote, you have till August 23 to be registered for the September 12th election.  Please do not throw away your shot to be heard.

Register at "Rock the vote" via my site here!

Greetings from vacation

I had some lovely time away with my family, my sister's family and my parents.  

While there, I jotted down some thoughts on my campaign with assistance from my niece's magnetic sketchy thing.  

Communicating with constituents

As I have mentioned before, one of the areas I want to see improvements on is communication. How many times have you read in the paper that a community meeting is that very night?  You have no one to watch the kids, or you already committed to another event, and your voice will not be heard at that meeting.   You are left to hope that someone expresses similar thoughts to your own.  Sometimes you don't realize a meeting has happened till you read the meeting recap in the Ledger or Sun.  Meetings are usually posted but it's not always easy to know where to look for them.  

Sometimes, knowing when a meeting is being held in Quincy feels a bit like this.

If I'm elected, I plan on keeping a comprehensive calendar of all public meetings with a special emphasis on ward one relevant meetings.  This calendar will be in a static web address that you can bookmark and easily find.  For our citizens who have trouble with the internet, the calendar will be mailed out.  The calendar will also be posted in various public locations.  I want every citizen to have the opportunity to be informed and weigh in on these important issues.

As you can see from my social media accounts, blog, and website, I enjoy communicating over the web.   Every constituent who has emailed me, whether supportive or not,  has received an email back from me.   Online communication keeps us up to date and saves on resources like paper and postage.  

However, I won't just rely on the internet to keep in touch with you.  I would welcome handwritten letters, postcards, phone calls, videos, songs, skywriting or interpretive dance. But I'm also thinking of adding an old classic that I am reminded of every day at my job at MIT. Office Hours!

Each week, I will devote a two-hour block to meeting with constituents.   That's eight 15-minute blocks of time.  I will let you know where I'll be (restaurants, parks, etc.) and you can sign up for a 15-minute slot, or if it's slow you can just drop on by.   This face to face time will allow people a chance to vent, to give their opinion, to seek help, to share an idea.  As your city councilor, I want to be available because this whole thing is about helping you.

We will be a better city when everyone gets to participate.   So, if I'm elected, I hope you'll stop by and let me buy you a soda or iced tea and help me get these problems solved.

Quincy Needs Makerspaces

If you've been following my campaign, you'll know I mention this word "makerspace" often. Makerspace, also known as hackerspaces, fab labs, or digital fabrication laboratories, is the umbrella term for a type of facility that allows everyday people (read: non-engineers) to use computing and technology to design, invent, and create tangible projects, often with other makers .  Many of them come equipped with 3d Printers, cnc mills, sewing machines, laser cutters, and a myriad of hand tools.   They often provide materials for creating like cardboard, plywood, metal sheeting, molding and casting supplies.  Ideally, they are staffed by experienced maker volunteers in the lab that live to train and teach others about working in the makerspace or digital fabrication lab.  Take a tour of a fab lab here. (This video is several years old but it's still a good tour)

Why are these so important?  These labs are teaching people about new technology, electronics, 3d printing and modeling, computer programming/coding, carpentry, physics.   A makerspace is basically STE(A)M education made flesh.  The skills that you can learn in a makerspace are vital to people who plan to be alive in the coming decades.  And, perhaps most importantly, it is a bunch of fun!

Makerspaces not only reinforce STE(A)M concepts, they promote a collaborative and entrepreneurial spirit.  Neighbors are coming together to collaborate, teach each other, and combine forces to invent, launch startups, or simply create something their own.  Each makerspace reflects the culture and traditions of the community it's in.  I have seen this first hand for ten years as an administrator at MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms.  CBA has deployed dozens of labs around the world, and the spinoff, Fab Foundation, has deployed many of its own.   This movement has gone viral and it is estimated that over one thousand fab labs exist in the world now.   Unfortunately, this viral movement seems to be more poplular in other countries.  It is important that American communities do not fall behind.

The bar to entry to these makerspaces is not very high.  A community could theoretically get a very decent lab off the ground with 100k in tools and materials, assuming a suitable site was setup, staffed, and maintained.  I think it would be a wonderful community amenity if Quincy were to make a community makerspace.  However, that is not the only way to bring a makerspace to Quincy.  Private organizations and businesses are creating these spaces and running them as a small business.   With Makerspaces from Boston to Worcester,  makerspaces are not "Just for Cambridge".  An argument can be made that makerspaces will become as ubiquitous as public libraries in the coming decades.

Even if we waited and did nothing,  makerspaces will eventually come to us in Quincy.  The momentum is undeniable.   However, as Quincy prepares to welcome the expansion of the BIoTech corridor down from Cambridge, Boston, and into our community, wouldn't be nice if some of our citizens were able to gain the skills to gain employment in these incoming businesses?  Sure, some of our citizens have the higher education to apply here, but ordinary citizens can learn to code, solder, wire sensors, and assemble a prototype in these labs.  Let's not wait for the train to go by.

The users of makerspaces are not predominately one gender, or race, or age.  The desire to express, create and invent spans the gamut of demographic categories.   Makerspaces will enrich our community, reinforce education, provide creative and entreprenurial outlets, and promote collaboration among Quincy's residents.  Let's get some!

Here I am working in a makerspace here at MIT to build this year's Troop 6 Adult Pinewood Derby Car.  Enjoy!

The Quincy Sun Announcement

The Quincy Sun, a legendary paper in Quincy, announced my candidacy today.  It was thrilling for me.  This campaign has been real for me for a couple months, but today was special.  

The Quincy Sun, May 4, 2017

I hope you'll allow me to cheat with this blog post.  I'm working on a couple different topics for in-depth articles like you've seen with my sanctuary city post and mbta post, but I'm still collecting data and writing.  

Today, I'm going to make it easy for you to read the statement I submitted to Mr. Bosworth of The Quincy Sun.  If you are local, I encourage you to pick up a copy of the paper, It is organized and presented much better there.

It is my candidacy in a nutshell and I'm happy to share my thoughts as I presented them to the paper. 

My name is Joe Murphy and I am running to be Quincy’s Ward One City Councilor. My campaign is about enriching life in Quincy, encouraging innovation, reducing waste, and facilitating productive partnerships between the government and private enterprise.  My ideas would better the lives of the people of Ward One and Quincy as a whole.

Originally born in Philadelphia, I discovered the Boston area when I attended the Berklee College of Music.  After graduating, I moved out to Los Angeles to be a professional musician.  I worked as an orchestrator, arranger, and copyist on dozens of major motion pictures, albums, variety shows, and several seasons of American Idol. I was director of Quincy Jones' Score Library and was a union rep for the Los Angeles chapter of the American Federation of Musicians, Local 47. While in LA, I met my wife, Cheryl, a New England native.

Cheryl and I left LA in 2007 when she was accepted to a graduate program at Emerson College. With any community around Boston to choose from, we chose Quincy to be our home.  We rented apartments in Quincy Point while starting our family, and then purchased our own home in Houghs Neck in 2012.

Since coming to Quincy, I have worked at MIT and I am currently Assistant Director for Administration at MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms.  My responsibilities encompass all operational management, from budgeting and grant supervision to intellectual property and corporate sponsor relationships.

With my job at MIT, two energetic young daughters, and an old house that is constantly calling for attention, it would have been easy to sit on the sidelines a bit longer.  But I was inspired to get involved by some recent developments:

Quincy is in the midst of a huge revitalization.  We are seeing unprecedented investment by the city and by real estate developers. In the past several years we have seen our hospital shut down, the last remaining theater gone, and Quincy Center's MBTA parking garage sitting condemned and abandoned for five years.   We are building new schools because the population demands it, but what is being added to enrich our cultural fabric?  

If we are not careful, we could wake up to find a city completely stuffed with high-end apartments, some restaurants, no parking, and absolute gridlock.  Quincy needs to not just make room for housing, it needs to also attract businesses and organizations that enhance the life here.  I will meet with any real-estate developer to discuss their plans, but I will not be accepting contributions from developers in this campaign.  

Now that Quincy is revitalizing, the MBTA has deemed us worthy of some long-needed attention. They are spending $100s of millions to refurbish all four Quincy stations in parallel, with seemingly little regard for the impact on residents. If elected, I will work to check the MBTA and make sure that the T’s budgets and convenience are not prioritized over the needs of Quincy's residents.  

My vision for Quincy embraces innovation by fostering makerspaces, tool-shares, and science concerns so our citizens can fabricate locally while thinking entrepreneurially.  We need to improve our technological infrastructure and bring fiber internet options to Quincy. We can have faster internet at competitive pricing.  Then I want to facilitate partnerships with our city’s artists and use their talents to improve the quality of life with theater, art, music, and creativity.  These ideas can be revenue-neutral by partnerships with small business and organizations whenever possible rather than asking for taxpayer handouts.

To protect our environment, we should stop big-box retailers from obscenely throwing away unopened product that could be donated to local charities.  We need to expand the rain-barrel program, ban single-use plastic bags, and offer free lead tests to qualifying homeowners to make Quincy water the first lead-free supply in Massachusetts.

At this pivotal point in Quincy's development, we need fresh leadership with a view towards making Quincy a complete city.  It is a time of great investment, but it is not time to let real estate developers and the MBTA cash-in at the expense of Quincy's citizens.  

I look forward to meeting you all and hope we can work together to make Quincy's revitalization citizen-focused.  Please reach out to me with your thoughts at joe@votejoemurphy.com. For more about me and my vision for Quincy visit www.votejoemurphy.com and @votejoemurphy on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Campaign: Engage

Friends and soon-to-be friends, I am running to be the next Ward One City Councilor in Quincy. I am very excited to begin this adventure and make my case to my neighbors and all the citizens of Ward One.  I hope you will take a few minutes and check out my campaign site.  There you will see my vision for our city and some of the issues that matter most to me.    

I thought I'd start by telling you a bit about how we came to choose Quincy as our home 10 years ago.   Cheryl and I were living in the Los Angeles area, she was an aspiring actress and I was a musician. We came to Quincy when Cheryl started a graduate program at Emerson College. We had our pick of almost any location in and around Boston and we wanted a neighborhood that felt right for us.  We have never been wild about towns that were too pretentious, nor did we want a town without local character.  Quincy was our kind of place.  It has hardworking people, diversity, sports fans (that's more a Joe requirement), proximity to the Ocean, public transportation, and a close-knit neighborhood feel.  Quincy welcomed us and we have granted it the greatest honor we can by choosing it as the place to raise our kids and put down roots. 

Ten years later and Cheryl is a Drama teacher in the Boston Public School system and I am an administrator at MIT.  What I hope to bring to Quincy, as a city councilor, is the combination of our past and present.  As a self-employed musician and a union rep in the musician's union, I was able to advocate for musicians and enforce contracts and compliance between labor and employers. And for the past ten years I have worked with large bureaucracies to write grants, court corporate sponsorship, and stay within budget to achieve our goals at MIT.  The experience of my two careers are what will make me a successful public servant for this city.   With Quincy going through an historic revitalization, it is vital that we balance the profits of development with the quality of life for those living in Quincy already.  

Thanks for taking an interest in my new passion.  I hope you will follow the progress and cheer me on.  To wrap up this initial blog post, I'm posting a draft of my introductory letter to my constituents:

To the residents of Quincy's Ward One, 

Some of you have met me at various activities in Ward One like the Troop 6 Adult Pinewood Derby, setting up tables for Chowder fests, playground maintenance fun during Cleaner Greener Quincy, or various community meetings.  Some of us have met dropping off our kids at Atherton Hough, riding the Redline together, or back when i was a part-timer at Home Depot.  But, for the vast majority of you, this is your first introduction to me.

I am a newcomer to politics as this is my first campaign since 8th grade student council.  But I am not a newcomer to bringing people together to solve challenging and complicated problems.  As the Assistant Director for Administration at a research lab at MIT, I have years of experience managing budgets, procuring goods and services, setting project timelines, and meeting goals on a large scale.  Quincy needs these skills now as the revitalization of our community continues. Quincy is “built-out" and we have no room for raw expansion.  We cannot build on marshes and we cannot build in floodplains.  We have to plan carefully as we develop our cityscape.  I want to make sure that the needs of Quincy residents are balanced with the profits of business developers.  We must ensure that the resources we rely on to get to and from work everyday are not stripped away by an cash-strapped MBTA finally discovering it has service below JFK.  We have a parking crisis being exacerbated by the propagation of apartment complexes, condos, and multi-family housing.  While our city attracts new residents, we are not attracting enough small businesses to provide the variety of activities and services our citizens deserve.  We need skilled leadership to make sure we develop a fertile spirit of innovation to better serve the needs of our residents.

I’m running to be Quincy’s Ward One City Councilor.   I will bring innovation, creativity, and practical solutions as your representative and will fight to protect Ward One’s resources and its people.   Quincy’s Preliminary City Election is Tuesday September 12, and it will be my job this Spring and Summer to inspire you to come out and cast a vote for me. 

You can learn more about me and my vision for Quincy at “www.votejoemurphy.com” and you can reach me at joe@votejoemurphy.com.  You can also follow the campaign via Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.

I promise that as your City Councilor we will work together to shape Quincy's future. My office will always have an open door policy. I will be independent, transparent, accessible, responsive, and, most importantly, accountable to you. Your ideas and opinions will always be invited and considered. Where we disagree, I will work to build consensus with a collaborative approach that respects all interested parties. Working together, we can accomplish big things for our neighborhoods and for Quincy as a whole. I hope you will join me.

Sincerely,

Joe Murphy

www.votejoemurphy.com . joe@votejoemurphy.com