Brookline Select Board Candidate Profile 2021: Bernard Greene

BROOKLINE, MA— Bernard Greene, 71, who has been on the Select Board since 2015, is running to keep his seat on the Brookline Select Board in the May town election.

Greene is one of five candidates vying for two open seats on the board. Town Meeting Member Donelle O'Neal and Miriam Aschkenasy, Select Board member Nancy Heller and Zoe Lynn are also running.

Green and his wife Ellen Pinderhughes have lived in town for years, where they raised their two children. Their daughter Olivia is a lawyer in New York City, and their son Marshall is student at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

Before Greene was elected to the Select Board he was elected to Town Meeting in 2006 member for precinct 7, he served on the town's financial board, the Advisory Committee in 2013, and joined the Administration and Finance and the Public Safety subcommittees.

He has his bachelors degree in economics from Swarthmore College and his law degree from Boston College Law school. He practiced law for 40 years primarily as a financial transactions attorney. He spent 12 years in public finance in Ohio 12 years as investment counsel, in the Attorney General’s Office, for the Tennessee State Treasurer and five years in the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office,in the public charities division; and 11 years in public finance as legal counsel to the Massachusetts Clean Water Trust.

Patch reached out to all the candidates and presented the same list of questions for each, here's how Greene responded:

Why are you seeking elective office?

I am seeking re-election to the Select Board so that I can continue to provide Brookline with thoughtful and experienced and empathetic leadership that can take us through this difficult time to a strong and progressive future that is fiscally sustainable.

Under my leadership as Chair of the Select Board we have effectively confronted multiple critical issues facing the Town. We mobilized against the COVID pandemic in ways that kept Brookline among the safest communities in the Commonwealth, we found creative ways to provide additional support to suffering families and seniors even when the pandemic shutdown hit our budget hard, and my policing reforms committee recommended level-headed ways to respond to the policing crisis that was on every communities’ agenda by making sound improvements to our already progressive police department.

At the same time, we were able to keep our focus on the Town’s ongoing needs to support our schools, to promote smart growth, to take steps locally to address the global climate crisis, and to keep racial and social justice high on our agenda.

The single most pressing issue facing our (board, district, etc.) is _______, and this is what I intend to do about it.

Our most pressing issue is the COVID crisis. Our challenge is to be responsive to the pain and suffering that COVID has inflicted on too many of our residents and to make sure that we come out of the crisis strong enough economically to meet future challenges in public education, infrastructure, housing, local business recovery, and providing a strong social safety net to meet the needs of vulnerable seniors and families both for those who need long term support or those who may need temporary support as a result of sudden economic disruptions.

I intend to continue to provide the experienced and empathetic and thoughtful leadership that will provide prudent financial management that will maintain our triple-A bond rating and give us the resources to address the Town’s ongoing needs and any new needs that may arise. I further intend to continue to do all of that in a way that can be sustained far into the future.

What are the critical differences between you and the other candidates seeking this post?

Except for me and Nancy Heller, none of the Select Board candidates have the deep experience in Town government that we need today.

To be an effective member of the Town’s governing body, more than just talk and more than mere asserted capability in one or two discrete areas is required. We are in economically perilous times for municipalities, and we need leaders who are competent in multiple areas of municipal governance from finance, to land use, to human services, to open-space, to public safety, to licensing, to zoning, to public health, and the prevailing environmental ethos of the Town. None of the other candidates are ready for the complexity of today’s Town government.

If you are a challenger, in what way has the current board or officeholder failed the community (or district or constituency)

N/A

How do you think local officials performed in responding to the coronavirus? What if anything would you have done differently?

The response of the Select Board was on target. We gave full support to the Department of Public Health and Human Services whose director, Dr. Jett, early in the pandemic and before the CDC acted, advocated wearing masks and taking other precautions and mobilized staff in the Health Department and school nurses and others to do contact tracing. He immediately responded to outbreaks in local nursing homes. All the while he held steady against attacks from community members who challenged his expertise.

As a result of the Select Board’s support of and guidance to Town staff, Brookline has among the lowest infection rates in the state. The Select Board also mobilized Town resources for the Safety Net fund and the Food Pantry to aid vulnerable seniors and families in our community, including those newly vulnerable as a result of the virus, and mobilized Town staff to help local businesses survive through the COVID lockdown. Brookline will be stronger coming out of the crisis because of the robust response of the Select Board at the start.

Describe the other issues that define your campaign platform.

My campaign platform includes several interrelated issues that are critical to Brookline’s future. They include (i) the environment where we focus on local actions while not forgetting that the climate crisis is a global crisis, (ii) transportation issues where we have to juggle the needs of different modes of transportation in a historical infrastructure that is not always accommodating, (iii) new funding sources for needs for which the budget cannot provide all the resources required, such as the Community Preservation Act that will be voted at the May 4 election, (iv) the many aspects of the Town’s diversity and inclusion goals, such as Town diversity hiring, which has been successful in Town departments, up to and including department heads, (v) maintaining and accelerating the 21st century programming of our schools, (vi) expanding the availability of affordable housing for families and seniors, while also finding ways to attract to Brookline middle class families, with an emphasis on Black families who have historically been excluded from suburban housing opportunities, and (vii) keeping the needs of senior citizens at the center of our efforts. A central plank of my platform is support for seniors. It includes (i) expanding programing and facilities at the Senior Center, (ii) finding money for senior programs from Town sources or outside sources, (iii) keeping the Council on Aging an effective and independent department of Town government, and (iv) never forgetting to include the needs and concerns of seniors when planning programs for vulnerable populations, considering infrastructure projects, or proposing changes to public safety or other aspects of Town government.

The unifying principle of my campaign that makes our platform issues achievable is experienced leadership at the head of Town government. This enables us to tackle important issues not as isolated slogans but as a complete body of tasks that can be accomplished and that will be sustainable far into the future.

What accomplishments in your past would you cite as evidence you can handle this job?

The accomplishment that stands out is my success in rising from election to Brookline Town Meeting in 2006 to appointment to the Advisory Committee to election and reelection as the first African American member of the Select Board and selection by the Board as chair in 2019 and 2020.

As a Town Meeting Member, I was called upon to participate in critical committees and decision making for the Town. They include advisory committees for the selection of the Town Administrator, the Police Chief, the Fire Chief, and Town Counsel and the Selectmen’s Diversity, Equal Employment Opportunity, and Affirmative Action Committee for which I was the primary drafter of the spring of 2014 warrant article that established the Diversity, Inclusion, and Community Relations Department and Commission.

As a Select Board member and as Chair I have taken on many difficult tasks, the most recent being establishing the Task Force on Reimagining Policing and the Policing Reforms Committee, the latter chaired by me.

The best advice ever shared with me was:

A guidance counselor at Ben Franklin High School in Philadelphia, Mr. Taylor, said to me, as I was readying to leave my wonderful inner city high school and go off on a new adventure as a student at Swarthmore College: “This above all: to thine own self be true.”

I had no clue what he was talking about or that it was so relevant at that point in my life.

In college I was introduced to the German philosopher Immanuel Kant and his essay, “What is Enlightenment.” For Kant the motto of the Enlightenment was: “Dare to know,” or have the courage to use your own understanding, instead of being immature and enslaved to the “truths” of various authorities.

Those two pieces of advice from my youth are relevant today in my political activities in Brookline and are the basis for my self-conception as a Thoughtful Progressive.

What else would you like voters to know about yourself and your positions?

Politically, I am a progressive, but I am not sectarian or ideological. I look for thoughtful solutions to real problems. And I seek out all relevant facts and all perspectives and avoid trendy answers to complex problems. I have labeled that approach being a “thoughtful progressive.” People across the political spectrum respect that approach and have encouraged and supported my campaign even when they acknowledge that on many important issues they may not agree with my conclusions. That is a major accomplishment in the current political environment.

Campaign website
BernardGreene.com

Other candidates:

• Miriam Aschkenasy
• Nancy Heller
• Zoe Lynn