Elect Swanson!

Christine Swanson has done something very rare in politics; she has actually done what every local office seeker says they will do if elected. Ms. Swanson’s campaign materials refer to the need for better short and long term economic planning and point to her success in the private sector as evidence of her ability to get the job done. Christine Swanson, as a member of the School Committee and as the chair of the School Building Committee, already has the record to back up the rhetoric. Longmeadow will make a crucial investment in its future with the construction of the new Longmeadow High School because Christine Swanson saw the need to move forward with our town’s long term capital improvements and took the initiative to make it happen. Her precise and extremely well researched rebuttals to the critics of the high school project have been masterful in both their civility and comprehensiveness, and make her standout head and shoulders above her opponents for election to the Select Board on the question of competence and knowledge of the job.

While everyone in town, me included, was talking about setting priorities and planning ahead, Christine was doing it. For the past three years she has been pushing and prodding the town’s leaders to move forward with a systematic assessment of our capital needs and for coordinated planning between town boards. At the same time, she was showing us how it’s done. She wrote our statement of interest to the state and led the effort to obtain an unprecedented amount of state aid to our community, $44 million. Hard work, incredibly impressive transparency and community input, and determined leadership characterize the efforts of the SBC, chaired by Swanson.

Political leadership at the local level is very difficult. It is more often than not a mine field of entrenched notions of “how things are done,” turf battles, and personality squabbles. Christine’s ability to move Longmeadow forward is a case study in successful small town political leadership. Christine has earned my vote as well as my eternal gratitude for excellence in community leadership at a time when our town needed it most.