By Adam Swift
City Council-at-Large Candidate Frank Baker met with the Community Alliance of Mission Hill (CAMH) at its recent June meeting.
The former District 3 Councilor spoke about his previous experience on the council, his reasoning for attempting to gain one of the four at-large seats on the council this fall, and his focus on workforce development and recovery issues.
“I was a councilor when the bridge closed, I was a councilor when the tents went up on Mass Ave. and have been dealing with that issue my whole life,” said Baker. “I think my reputation was as someone who knew city services, who knew city departments. Before I spent my 12 years on the council, I spent 25 years in city departments, mostly in the print department.”
Baker said a number of his relationships in City Hall stretch back to when he first started working for the city at the age of 18 as a custodian.
He said he sees the difference between a district city councilor and an at-large seat as being able to focus more on bigger picture issues as an at-large councilor. Baker noted that even as an at-large councilor, though, he will continue to focus on constituent services.
One of those larger issues Baker said he is passionate about is job training, particularly for people transitioning from jail or prison into the community.
“Wrapping into that, I would like to focus on recovery, also,” said Baker. “Recovery encompasses all the things that are happening in our city right now. If you talk to 10 people about what is the issue in the city, none of them are going to say housing. Housing, we are at a logjam here, there are a whole lot of things I think we can do, and I have some ideas … (such as) more college-owned housing, whether that is dorms to get more people out of apartments.”
Baker said he was involved in some public fights while he was on the council, but said he believes he can help the council work together for the good of the city.
“Just because we think differently and we may be on different sides of different issues doesn’t mean that the person on the other side is a bad person,” said Baker. “Anybody that puts their name on a ballot, they care about their issues, they care about their city, so you have to respect that.”
Baker said he lives by the Golden Rule, although he joked that it may not have always seemed like that when he was fighting everybody when he was on the council.
“I have a family where I was the 12th of 13, so I have been on dysfunctional 13 member bodies before,” he said. “I think it is all in the conversation, and that is what I am looking forward to doing. I left compromised, not to get into it, but I left when I was sick, tired and I had some issues and I had to leave.
“But I left job training unfinished, I left housing initiatives unfinished, I left people that I was helping unfinished,” Baker continued. “So I am going to go back with a larger voice, a more calm voice. I feel good about where we are; I know it seems like we’re not, but I feel like we are heading towards a brighter future.”
In addition to Baker, the CAMH also heard briefly from T. Michael Thomas, the founder of the People’s Academy, who said he was at the meeting to support Baker.
“The People’s Academy is an inner city trade apprenticeship program where we teach individuals a skillset in the building trades,” said Thomas. “Our slogan is trades, not triggers. If you put the guns down, you pick up a trade, that you can take care of your family, your community, and the economy.”
Thomas said Baker supports the program because believes that if you give a person a chance, he can pull himself up by his bootstraps.
“When we look around the country since Covid, we see that the trades are very important and the trades are one of the keys to the middle class,” said Thomas.
In other business, the CAMH also reviewed the recent city council hearing assessing the efficacy of the City Municipal Code’s University Accountability Ordinance.
CAMH President Martin Beinborn noted that the only community members at the hearing were from Mission Hill.
Beinborn said that one of the conclusions from the hearing was that the two-decade-old ordinance, aimed at increasing accountability from universities and students when it comes to student housing, continues to make sense. However, he said the execution is poor, including flawed data collection and the need for better enforcement from inspectional services and other city departments.
In addition, he stated that student densities in Mission Hill have exceeded a viable tipping point and is not compatible with a viable neighborhood.