Five running for City Council seat - The Jamaica Plain Gazette

Five running for City Council seat
By David Taber September 10, 2010

Part 1 of a 2-part series
Five candidates vying to replace former District 6 City Councilor John Tobin—representing most of Jamaica Plain and West Roxbury—will face off in a special election preliminary ballot Oct. 19.
They are: Chun-Fai Chan, Kosta Demos, James Hennigan, Matt O’Malley and Sean Ryan. Another potential candidate, JP resident Jonathan McCurdy, submitted signatures to get his name on the preliminary ballot, but did not make the cut, city election officials told the Gazette.

The top two vote-getters in the preliminary election will face off in a final election Nov. 16.

Chun-Fai Chan
A West Roxbury resident of 20 years and teacher in the Boston Public Schools for the last six years, Chun-Fai Chan, in an email statement sent to the Gazette, said he is seeking office because, “We need to have a continued democratic participatory government where a diverse range of voices is heard to ensure that all Boston residents are fairly represented. This participation is necessary to ensure that our tax dollars are transparent and well spent because we have only a finite amount of resources to meet the needs of all Boston residents.”

Those sentiments largely echoed Chan’s comments in a phone interview with the Gazette last week. “We need to have diversity,” among elected officials “to have different perspectives,” he said.

He would like to see nurses and construction workers running for office, he said.

Chan also said promoting volunteerism would be one of his main priorities if he were elected. “People are so cynical about government. Good, talented people don’t know how to engage themselves civically,” he said.

Increasing voluntary civic engagement will be increasingly important as the city continues to deal with “shrinking resources,” he said. “We need to make sure our government is working for us,” he said.

Chan said he has not been particularly engaged in community politics himself prior to deciding to run for office. “I have attended a few meetings here and there, but teaching has been my number-one priority,” he said.

If elected, Chan said he would focus on developing strategies to curb the high school drop-out rate in the city, including by proposing a plan that would allow people to donate their bottle deposits to buy books for youths. That proposal would likely require a change to state recycling rules.

He also said he would host monthly district meetings with seniors to discuss issues specific to that community.

Chan said he has a number of friends and supporters in JP, and that his idea for monthly meetings with seniors was, in part, inspired by conversations he has had with seniors here.