SEEKING PRECINCT 1 SEAT
Nick Bracy is seeking appointment to the Precinct 1 Council seat. The following is his letter of intent.
“Fellow citizens of Winthrop,
I write to you today to express my candidacy for the Precinct 1 Town Council seat. In the wake of the loss of Mr. McDuffee, there remains an open seat to represent our precinct, an open seat that will be impossible to fill in the way Mr. McDuffee did. My hope is to follow in his footsteps, to remain true to his legacy of being a fair and decent man, and to give voice to the people in Precinct 1 as Mr. McDuffee always did. Given the opportunity to fill his seat, I vow to do so with the same integrity and tenacity, an honor to the great work he did in his time on the Town Council.
My history with Winthrop is longstanding, started long before I married a Winthrop girl. I lived on Coral Ave. with my parents as a child, attending the Dalrymple School until fifth-grade before moving out of town for middle and high school. As fate would have it, I fell in love with a Winthrop girl, and it wasn’t long before we were back living by the ocean. In what I deem to be a result of the generations of family we have here, we spend every Friday night at Nana Brogna’s house, eating a home-cooked dinner and surrounded by endless cousins and aunts and grandparents, a Winthrop tradition at its finest. We are raising our three children here, our oldest currently attending the Fort Banks. We are firmly grounded in this seaside town,and are both dedicated to creating a sustainable and enjoyable community for our children, for generations to come.
Over the past several years, I have solidified my commitment to the community by getting involved in local politics. I’ve been a member of the Winthrop Licensing Board for the past three years, and greatly enjoy my work helping entrepreneurs in our town propel their ideas forward. I have been privileged to connect with many local business owners, seeing a broader view of the people who live and work in our community, and some of the reasons that Winthrop is such a wonderful place to live.
Winthrop is in a transitional period right now. There is continued growth on the horizon, and with that comes uncertainty. As we look ahead in Winthrop’s future, however, there is certainty in knowing that our community has the capacity and the resources to reflect positive growth in the years that lie ahead. The factors that we can control now, that are perhaps the most important, are responsible government and transparent communication. To quote Mr. Constantino from his letter in the Transcript a few weeks ago, “Growth management strategies should be better enacted in Winthrop so that development does not occur uncontrollably and diminish the resources that make this town a unique and desirable location.†With that notion, the Town Council and other vested stakeholders in the planning processes need to provide honest, open, and authentic communication with the members of the community, providing forums and office hours and other avenues for gathering input outside of the meetings.
Julia Wallerce wrote in last week’s Letters to the Editor about the idea of a collective visioning process for the town, the idea of pulling the entire community together to engage in “an inclusive public planning process†to help propel our community forward toward a common goal and a common understanding of what we want our community to reflect. Again, this process begs transparency and voice from the constituents in our community, and as the Precinct 1 Town Councilor, I want to ensure those in my neighborhood are heard. Through gathering honest input and relaying that to those responsible for leading our decision-making processes, I believe I can play an integral role in supporting what is hopefully an inclusive, cohesive planning process.
I am excited at the prospect of representing Precinct 1 on the Town Council, and vow to always give those in my neighborhood a voice in the process. I thank you in advance for your support, and if presented the opportunity to do so, I promise to honor Mr. McDuffee’s legacy and work on the Town Council. Thank you.
Nick Bracy