Candidate for Ward 1 City Councilor: Manjula Karamcheti
By Ellen Putnam
Photo From Manjula Karamcheti
Manjula Karamcheti is running for a third term as Ward 1’s city councilor because, she said, “I want to make sure the residents of Ward 1 are represented and their voices are heard.”
Karamcheti has Master’s degrees in Education and in Community Social Psychology. She has worked in school counseling and administration, including in the Lexington and Malden Public Schools, and she currently serves as the Barr Foundation’s Program Officer for Education.
“A lot of my work has been guided by the goal of equity and access for students and families,” Karamcheti said. “This has led me to do a lot of advocacy work, and a lot of coalition-building. I’ve really championed, in my professional life, a city-school-community approach to leadership. I’m used to thinking about things not only at a kid and family level but also at a system level through a counseling and social work lens. And I think I’m a little unique in bringing that to the City Council table.”
Karamcheti was active in Melrose leadership before she joined the City Council: she served as the PTO president at the Melrose Veterans Memorial Middle School, and co-founded the Racial Justice Community Coalition, which recently merged with Friends of Melrose METCO. “Through that work,” Karamcheti explained, “I was tapped to facilitate a lot of community conversations around race, equity, and inclusion - and through all of that, I got connected to what was happening in the city.”
“I also bring a real listener’s perspective to the role - a real curiosity,” Karamcheti went on. “I look at how parties with different opinions and different perspectives can come together, and I have experience in how to facilitate those conversations, to make sure that even when we don’t agree, we can still have constructive and healthy conversations. We can talk about issues but still treat each other with respect and kindness.”
Karamcheti’s background contributes to her commitment to serving the residents of her ward, and of the entire city.
“I do this because I really care about kids and families in Melrose,” she said, “I really care about aging adults in Melrose, and I really care about veterans in Melrose. I always want to make sure that equity and access are at the forefront, and everyone is represented at the table, including people whose voices haven’t been historically represented. I’m happy to talk about DEI and I’m not going to stop, even though there might be folks who are trying to not have that happen anymore.”
Karamcheti described how her personal ethos of service to others comes from her parents, who immigrated from India “with nothing,” she said. “Service above self is deeply ingrained in my family, and that’s why I put in the time and make the effort to do what I do. I’ve been blessed with opportunity, and I want to make sure that others have that same access - and I do whatever I can to set up systems of support to make that happen.”
Karamcheti sees Ward 1’s situation as unique in the city, due to the high concentration of residential development projects that are under consideration or under construction in the Melrose Highlands neighborhood, especially in the Franklin Street-Tremont Street corridor.
“I want to continue to serve to make sure the residents of Ward 1 are represented and their voices are heard,” Karamcheti said. “I listen to the neighbors. I’ve been to all of the Planning Board and the Zoning Board of Appeals meetings and I try to reach out to the members on a regular basis to discuss people’s concerns. I’ve been doing this for a few cycles now, and I can hopefully add some knowledge and experience to these discussions.”
“I think that paying attention to development and trying to be as planned and purposeful as possible is really important,” she went on. “We have to be very strategic about it, and communication is key - making sure that everyone in the neighborhood knows what’s going on and what’s coming up, and they know how to speak up.”
“Some of the best development work has happened when neighbors and developers meet early and often to discuss plans,” Karamcheti continued. “I think this is really important, especially as there is such an influx of interest in development in Melrose. We want it to be smart growth. There are so many things that we love about Melrose the way it is, and I want to believe we can do both: we can increase housing and keep Melrose the friendly community it is, where people know each other, where we still have green space and parks.”
“Safe streets are huge,” she added. “Pedestrian safety and bike safety are so important. The speeding on Franklin Street just makes me crazy. Traffic enforcement has to happen, and traffic calming has to happen. Franklin Street has already had fatalities. And I will continue to advocate for safe streets in Ward 1.”
Photo From Manjula Karamcheti
While Karamcheti is focused on issues that are specific to Ward 1, she also thinks about the city as a whole.
“Our community has so many strengths,” she said. “We’re a community that cares about people, that really believes in service. The number of people who give up their time to support the city and the schools has always inspired me.”
“I may be biased,” Karamcheti added, “but I think our youth are some of our greatest strengths, and it’s so important to invest in them. And I want to promote youth voice - kids have a lot to offer, and I want to provide more opportunities for kids to be involved in decision-making.”
“Our finances are our biggest challenge,” she went on. “And so much of that is related to the fact that we’re 91% residential - we just don’t have the commercial base to bring in lots of money. The 2.5% increase each year that we’re allowed under Proposition 2½ isn’t enough to keep up with inflation and how much things cost - they’re continuing to get more and more expensive, and we just can’t keep up.”
“We need to pay cost-of-living increases for our employees,” Karamcheti continued. “We’re already one of the lowest-paying districts in Massachusetts, and it’s hard to recruit good people and have them stay. We have been so lucky that so many good people have chosen to stay with us anyway, given how much we pay, but that’s not a strategy we can count on forever. We’ve already lost a lot of good people because they have to pay for their housing and food - they learn here, they become excellent here, and then they get better offers in other places. When I was working in Lexington, we hired so many people from Melrose, and they were outstanding.”
“As a councilor,” she went on, “I try to be proactive about making sure my constituents have information about what is going on in terms of the budget. I go to every budget meeting, and I ask questions of every department head, to make sure that what we’re spending money on makes sense for our vision, mission, and goals, and for the people in the community, through an equity and access lens.”
Karamcheti sees the Melrose Public Schools, in particular, as a place where more investment is needed. “My kids just graduated from the Melrose Public Schools,” she explained, “and they were served really well. I want other kids to have that same opportunity - and I know that there were students who weren’t served well. We need to do better for all the kids in our school system.”
“Being an educator,” she went on, “I’ve had the opportunity to observe excellence in school systems, and I want Melrose to be excellent - but we need resources to be able to do that. We need to invest in our youth, because ideally, they’re going to come back to our community and then serve as well.”
Karamcheti, along with all of her colleagues on the City Council, is fully supportive of the override questions that will be on the ballot.
“I’m all in,” she said, “I will be voting ‘Yes’ on all three questions.”
“The override itself is essential,” Karamcheti emphasized. “Having just been through the budget process, I firmly believe that there is no fat in the budget. There just isn’t.”
“I really worry,” she went on, “I lose sleep about what will happen if it doesn’t pass. Our educators are tapped, our city employees are tapped. Our veterans deserve great services, our kids deserve great schools, our elderly deserve great services, trash pickup matters - it all matters, but we all have to be willing to pay for it.”
“We can only save ourselves,” Karamcheti said. “We have to invest in ourselves - that’s what it comes down to. If we care about education, we have to pay for it. We have to pay for city services. We’ve been able to do a lot with a little for a long time, but those days are over.”
“I do think very deeply about who might be impacted by this because they’re on a fixed income,” she added, “It’s also our responsibility to make sure people are taken care of - to make sure that they can stay in their homes and have access to food. I’m committed to that all the time, but especially now - we need to make sure we don’t forget about those who this might be hard for.”
Photo From Manjula Karamcheti
In the long term, Karamcheti said, “I would love to see us look more seriously at: How do we build up our commercial base? How do we recruit more businesses into the city?”
Karamcheti talked about Memorial Hall, which was a flashpoint in this year’s budget discussion. “I felt very strongly that we needed to keep Memorial Hall in the budget. I can see why my colleagues thought it made sense - we had so little to cut, and this seemed like a place to do it. But the space is used by so many members of the city and schools. It’s too central to our city and our community and also a historical monument to our veterans.”
“And,” she added, “we have a grant this year to study the possibilities of what Memorial Hall could become. That is exactly one of the things we need to be doing to figure out how Melrose can sustain its own financial future. How can we get Memorial Hall to bring in more money? And can we use other buildings that we have in that way, too? How can we proactively develop our property to entice more businesses?”
“We have a lot of developers coming in,” she continued, “and the more partnerships we can build with developers, the better. There are some really great models for collaboration out there - we can look into them and see how we can build on them.”
Outside of the city’s financial challenges, Karamcheti reflected, “the other challenge we have is that opposing sides sometimes struggle to come together and have conversations and work through difficult issues collaboratively. I see so much name-calling, people who hide behind social media and aren’t willing to come together, and I don’t think that helps us move forward as a city and protect what really matters to us. I do feel that there are bright spots where there’s more collaboration and reaching out across the aisle, and I hope we can build on that.”
“Communication across the board is also essential,” she added, “making sure people are aware of programs and services, and know how to connect with the city when issues happen. It’s been improving recently, and I’m excited to see that continue.”
“The other really important thread to me,” she went on, “is Melrose living up to being ‘one community open to all.’ I want to see us continue to be a welcoming place, and maintain our commitment to being LGBTQ+ friendly, welcoming to all races, to all languages, to immigrant populations. I want us to be a beacon for everyone else.”
Karamcheti described her approach to legislating: “I do a lot of reading. I do a lot of outreach. I ask a lot of questions. I try to do a lot of listening - I always try to find someone with the opposite opinion, in case I’m missing something, then I try to assess, and evaluate what makes sense. Whatever decision I come to, I try to match it up with my principles, my morals, my values. Then, ultimately, I have to make a decision and stick to it, and I own it if it doesn’t work out.”
“I generally go in pretty sure of what I’m going to do,” Karamcheti added, “when it comes to most of the issues, I’m pretty clear on what the right thing to do is - what makes sense for the city, for Ward 1, for kids and families. But I go in with an ear toward listening to questions my colleagues ask, and sometimes I hear things that are really interesting, things I hadn’t thought about in that way.”
Outside of her role on the council, Karamcheti loves to read, take classes at the YMCA, and enjoy the outdoors. “Any chance I have, I’m out in nature,” she said. She also describes herself as “a huge foodie,” and she loves spending time with her family’s 10-year-old rescue dog, Sweet Caroline (named after the family’s love of Fenway Park).