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At the first election forum for Allston Brighton’s two city council candidates on Monday night, incumbent Elizabeth A. “Liz” Breadon and her challenger, Pilar Ortiz, were meant to pitch their campaigns and help voters decide which candidate ultimately reflects their values.
But as the hourlong Zoom event unfolded, Breadon and Ortiz proved themselves more similar than different in their policy positions as they often took matching stances across the forum.
Both named affordability and confronting a hostile federal administration as their primary policy concerns, with Ortiz calling Boston “in the target of the Trump administration.”
Halfway through the forum, Breadon and Ortiz were asked to answer six rapid-fire questions about their support for proposals ranging from ranked choice voting to a real estate transfer fee, by holding up notecards reading “yes” or “no.”
The candidates answered the same for every question. They even showed the same ambivalence towards eliminating parking minimums, with each wiggling both cards in the air as the moderator pronounced “mixed feelings” toward the controversial proposal to end parking space requirements for residential developments — a policy that Allston’s neighbor, Cambridge, was the first in the state to adopt three years ago.
The forum was hosted by Allston Brighton Progressives and asked both candidates to share their stances on the hottest issues in the neighborhood, including the state of the Jackson Mann Community Center, federal cuts to transportation grants, and demand for income-restricted housing units.
Ortiz and Breadon were first asked how they would navigate the impacts of the Trump administration’s funding cuts to social services, which include the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program and a range of public and mental health services.
Breadon, a former physical therapist, mentioned specific policies like rent stabilization and establishing public grocery stores as possible policy measures to combat rising costs in the city.
“I know in New York they’re looking at publicly-funded grocery stores,” Breadon said, also referencing the recent closure of a nonprofit grocery chain across Boston called the Daily Table.
“We were hoping to ramp that up and make it more available across the city,” Breadon said.
While the Daily Table relied on a mix of philanthropy and government funding, the New York City proposal, recently advanced by mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, has proposed opening entirely government-backed grocery stores.
Ortiz pointed to the Payment in Lieu of Taxes program — which are voluntary payments asked of the city’s major tax-exempt institutions — as an important source of revenue for city-funded projects, like rebuilding the Jackson-Mann Community Center.
Both candidates pledged to ask local universities to pay a higher percentage of their PILOT commitments.
“Everyone’s feeling the pinch right now,” Breadon said in an interview directly following the forum, referencing cuts to federal grants. “What we can do is really work in partnership with our universities and our hospitals to see what they can maintain. Can they fulfill the previous needs and then gradually increase it year on year up until about 2030?”
Ortiz, who graduated from Boston College, said she would ensure that universities like her alma mater follow through on their PILOT payments. Boston College paid only 23% of its negotiated sum last year.
Ortiz also drew on her experience as chief of staff for the City of Boston’s legal department when discussing measures Boston could take to resist further “harmful federal policies.”
“We need to protect ourselves. We need to make sure that our laws are conforming to the Constitution. Really working with our legal teams to make sure that whatever we pass makes sense and will be defendable in court,” Ortiz said.
Caitlin Gillooly ’07, who moderated most of the forum on behalf of Allston Brighton Progressives, ended the night by asking both candidates their opinions on Allston’s “Rat City” moniker. The nickname adopted by some residents is meant to embrace the neighborhood’s reputation for rodents, and is memorialized with an annual Rat Walk.
Both candidates said they liked it.
“I think it’s a smart way of bringing the community together and highlighting for the rest of the city how bad it is here,” Ortiz said.
“As Pilar mentioned, it’s really a moniker that's working,” Breadon said. “The Rat City Arts Festival group are able to turn out, I think it was almost 100 people turned out on a rainy evening to go on a on a walk around to teach people about how to dispose of their trash.”
—Staff writer Angelina J. Parker can be reached at angelina.parker@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @angelinajparker.
—Staff writer Emily T. Schwartz can be reached at emily.schwartz@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @EmilySchwartz37.
