NORTHBOROUGH – Northborough is gearing up for its 2021 municipal elections on May 11. As voters get set to head to the polls, the Community Advocate has zeroed in on contested races for prominent bodies like Board of Selectmen, Planning Board, and School Committee.
The Community Advocate reached out to candidates who filed paperwork to appear on their town’s ballot and asked them to submit a personal statement as well as answers to three specific questions.
See those biographies and read extended questions and answers from Northborough Board of Selectmen Candidate Julianne Hirsh here…
See complete statements from other candidates…
PERSONAL BIO
My name is Julianne Hirsh and I have been a resident of Northborough for almost twenty years. My family and I moved here from Pittsburgh but I am a Massachusetts native, having lived my childhood years in western Massachusetts. I worked as a nurse after graduating from college and after raising two children I worked as an educational assistant in the Worcester Public School system.
Some hobbies of mine are gardening, reading and walking with my friends, family and or dog. I’m asking for your vote and if re-elected will continue to work hard as we plan for the future.
QUESTIONS
What do you see as the most important issue(s) facing Northborough today?
The most important issue in Northborough today is how we will face the challenges that were highlighted during the pandemic. How and where we work and go to school dramatically changed in 2020. If more of our lives are situated online, we need to make sure that every citizen has reliable broadband. If people are spending less time in their cars commuting to work, will they be enjoying their neighborhoods and town more? Will we need more sidewalks, meeting places and restaurants? We need to anticipate these changes and create our own positive vision of the town in order to best support our residents. I believe that is our charge as elected officials.
What will you bring to the Board of Selectmen if (re-)elected?
If I am re-elected I will continue my efforts to bring as many people together as possible when making decisions. For the last three years, I have worked to improve communication and to get information out to the public. We have a master plan and I am very excited to see it come to fruition. It’s been a great pleasure to work with the unbelievably talented residents of Northborough and I hope to continue to do that.
Is there anything else you want voters to know about you as a candidate?
One other thing I would like people to know about me is that I support clean energy efforts and would like to see the town move in a major way toward doing our part in curbing climate change. I am not an environmental scientist but I know that there are some highly educated and informed people in town and surrounding towns who are doing excellent work in this area. We need to work together on this as a region and state, and I would like to help in any way that I can.
I realize that no one could have fully predicted the pandemic that befell us and how it would change our lives so intensely, but we have learned a lot about our creative potential. Drawing on these lessons, I hope that we can move forward in an informed and deliberate way .
Please consider voting for Julianne Hirsh.
