Boston City Councillor candidates joined current city and state legislators at the Youth Voter Forum Tuesday in the run up to the Nov. 5 city council general elections.
Jennifer Nassour and Kenzie Bok, the two remaining candidates for District 8’s council seat, answered questions on a variety of topics, such as housing, liquor licenses and minorities being accepted to major universities.
While the city council election is a nonpartisan race, Nassour previously served as chair of the Massachusetts GOP and Bok is a known Democrat, according to the Boston Globe. Nassour said her previous involvement with the Republican Party should not affect how voters think of her.
“I went into this with the belief in a system that … if it’s a nonpartisan position, then our potholes and our crosswalks and our rat issues don’t care what party your with,” Nassour said in an interview. “It’s not anything other than what the issues are in the districts.”
After September’s preliminary elections, Bok emerged as the race’s frontrunner with over 50 percent of the vote. Nassour came second, winning 18 percent of voters.
The forum was hosted by various Northeastern University political organizations and community groups at the Fenway Community Center. The audience was primarily composed of college students from various Boston area universities, and both District 8 candidates said they wanted to incentivize students to stay in the city after graduation.
“We want to see you in the city of Boston,” Nausser said during the forum. “We need to make [Boston] a great home for you to have opportunities.”
Bok said in an interview that it is important for students to get involved in local elections.
“So many of the issues of the city at large are issues that students also confront,” Bok said. “As much as the president matters, your city councillor matters [to help with these issues].”
Bok said one of her primary areas of concern was Boston’s affordable housing crisis and that students seeking off-campus housing were also affected by rising rent prices.
“Housing [prices] are locking in at that middle income level,” Bok said. “For families, building more moderately priced housing would increase the supply in a way that it would bring some of the pricing for campus housing for students down.”
Naussour said that, if elected, she would push to increase public safety throughout the city, particularly around BU’s medical campus. General safety concerns at BU have increased as the section of Massachusetts Avenue near BUMC has seen an increase in drug users in recent years. In response, the city has recently proposed installing 40 security cameras around the area.
“I went to a state university, it was a really large campus and there are lots of places that are dark,” Nassour said. “I am a big proponent of installing new security cameras.”
Safety concerns have risen recently after the area surrounding BUMC saw a fatal stabbing in September.
Both candidates were also asked about the opioid crisis facing Boston.
Bok and members of the Boston Public Health Commission encouraged attendees during the event to attend free training sessions hosted by the BPHC on how to use Narcan, which can reverse opioid overdoses.
Drawing on her personal experience of having lost her brother to an overdose, Nausser emphasized during the forum the importance of seeking addiction treatment early. She said the city needed to provide more support for the families of victims to prevent their children from following the same path to addiction.
Multiple students felt the candidates could have done a better job of addressing climate change, including Alexander Bellavia, a sophomore at Northeastern, who said he wants the city to encourage more residents to take public transportation in an effort to reduce carbon production.
“I’d like to see more of how we’re going to get people out using buses and trains,” Bellavia said, “City Councillor At-Large Michelle Wu wants to make the T free and tax funded and that’s huge.”
Bok said during the event that she supported Wu’s push to eliminate MBTA fares.
Benjamin Smith, a sophomore at Northeastern and a member of Northeastern’s College Republicans, said he thinks Nassour did a good job answering questions at the event.
“I think Nassour did well,” Smith said. “On her website she explicitly [talked about] her involvement with the opioid crisis and how she’s trying to fix it. I think overall she’s a pretty good candidate and I think she’s going to represent the district pretty well.”
