John Hilliard

About Me

I'm John Hilliard. I live in Precinct 11 with my wife and our 4-month-old son, and I'm running for reelection to Town Meeting. I was first elected three years ago and I'm running again to serve for another three years.

I want Brookline to keep being the kind of place we chose to raise a kid in: good schools, walkable streets, real neighborhoods, and a town government that actually works.

By day I'm a tech lead at a software company, where I spend most of my time on reliability and performance. It's a job that rewards reading the details, testing assumptions, and being honest about what's actually broken versus what just feels broken. I'd like to keep bringing the same habits to Town Meeting.

Outside of Town Meeting, I also serve as secretary of the Brookline Police Commissioner's Advisory Committee (PCAC), which meets monthly and advises the Select Board and the department on policing policy. It's one of the reasons I take the sanctuary and surveillance articles on this year's warrant seriously.

Brookline has a structural budget deficit and a housing shortage that's pricing people out. We need Town Meeting Members who are engaged, who read the articles, and who share the vision for Brookline that groups like Brookline for Everyone, Progressive Brookline, and Yes for Brookline are working toward: a denser, more affordable, more welcoming town. I'm running to help build that town, not block it.

My voting record

If you'd like to see a complete listing of every vote I've cast during my first term, you can look here. It's assembled from the official Town Meeting vote spreadsheets published by the town:

• November 2025 Special Town Meeting (Nights 1 and 2)
• May 2025 Annual Town Meeting (Nights 1-4)
• November 2024 Special Town Meeting (Nights 1-3)
• May 2024 Annual Town Meeting (Nights 1-3)
• November 2023 Special Town Meeting (Nights 1-3)
• May 2023 Annual Town Meeting (Nights 1-6)

My Positions

There's a lot on the 2026 Annual Town Meeting warrant (and the Special Town Meeting warrant). Below are the issues I think matter most, and where I stand on each. If I've missed something you care about, email me and I'll tell you what I think.

The override

I support the override. It has to pass. Brookline's facing a roughly $16 million structural deficit heading into FY2027. Our costs (health insurance, special education, wages) go up faster than our revenue can. Without the override, we're looking at more than 200 positions cut across the schools over three years, bigger class sizes, and real damage to the programs that made people move here in the first place.

I don't like that Brookline has now passed overrides in 1994, 2008, 2015, 2018, 2023, and now 2026. Proposition 2.5 caps revenue growth at a rate that hasn't tracked actual costs in decades, so every few years we have to hold a town-wide vote just to fund the services we already have. I support Article 22's call for state-level Prop 2.5 reform. The long-term fix is changing the rule that forces the overrides in the first place.

Housing and development

Build more housing. A lot more. Brookline has a housing shortage, and the solution is more housing. Market rate, affordable, big buildings, small buildings, ADUs, infill, all of it. The shortage benefits existing owners and hurts everyone else, including the people who teach in our schools, work in our stores, and fix our houses. I'd rather run town policy for the latter group. And all that new building would be great for union workers in Brookline too.

Route 9 / Meridian Chestnut Hill. I support the Chestnut Hill Commercial Overlay District at the proposed density, 14 stories included. 266 housing units on a 5-acre site that's currently a mostly vacant office park is exactly the kind of project Brookline should be saying yes to. The $5.5 million a year in net tax revenue is a bonus, and it's not a small one given that 84% of our tax levy currently comes from residential properties. I'd rather pass this now than watch it come back as an all-residential 40B that cuts the town out of the negotiation entirely.

26 Pleasant Street. Yes. A 7-story apartment building on a surface parking lot one block from Beacon Street is the easiest call on the warrant. The lot currently produces about $29,000 a year in taxes and zero housing. The project produces 103 homes and roughly $600,000 a year.

ADUs. Comply with the state Affordable Homes Act, and then go further. The state sets a floor, not a ceiling. If someone wants to build a legal accessory unit on their property, the town shouldn't be inventing reasons to stop them.

Planning and building at the same time. I'm genuinely in favor of the comprehensive plan. We should do the planning, we should listen to the committees, we should take input from residents. But "we need a plan first" can't become a reason to stop approving housing while the plan takes another two years to finish. We can do both.

Schools

Fund the schools. I'm a parent of a 4-month-old, and the schools are a big part of why my wife and I are raising our kid here. Pass the override, protect teaching positions, and restore financial discipline in how the district manages its budget after last year's audit. I'm going to stay high-level on specific line items because I don't think it's honest to pretend I know the right class-size target for a school I don't yet have a kid in. The direction is to invest.

Civil liberties, immigrants, and policing oversight

Four articles on this year's warrant touch civil liberties and policing directly. I support all four. The oversight work I do on PCAC is a big part of why I take them seriously.

Sanctuary protections (Articles 17 and 25). Yes to both. Brookline has been a sanctuary community in practice since 2017, when the department adopted General Order 43. A Select Board proclamation is a good signal but it's not a bylaw. Article 17 makes the protections binding. Article 25 addresses the information-sharing programs (BRIC, UASI, 287(g)) that can quietly turn a local arrest into a federal immigration case. Immigrants in Brookline deserve to know that the town's protections are real and durable, not something that depends on who happens to be on the Select Board this year.

Surveillance regulation (Articles 18 and 19). Yes to both. I learned a lot listening to the community's point of view on Flock Safety last fall, and the signal was very clear. A private company wanted to install AI license plate readers on private property in Brookline, feeding into a network that has, in documented cases, shared data with ICE. The town currently has no authority to say no to that, and these articles close that gap. Article 19 also requires public hearings and Select Board approval before the town itself acquires surveillance technology, which is the right default.

Washington Street and Complete Streets

Build the protected bike lanes. The Washington Street redesign is a $29 million project that depends on state and federal funding, and that funding is tied to the design meeting Complete Streets standards. Scaling it down means losing the grant money entirely. 64 parking spaces is not worth forfeiting tens of millions of dollars in transportation investment for a street that's genuinely dangerous to bike on today.

Climate

Stay the course on net-zero by 2040. Brookline was the first municipality east of the Rockies to pass a fossil fuel infrastructure ban, and that activism helped push the state itself to create the opt-in specialized stretch energy code. The town's climate goals are ambitious and I support them. The HVAC electrification and solar projects in Article 8 are the boring, expensive, necessary work of actually meeting those goals.

I also think it's a mistake to treat climate policy as its own isolated bucket on the warrant. Density is climate policy. Transit is climate policy. The cheapest way to cut emissions in a 150-year-old town isn't a new gadget, it's letting more people live near where they already work, shop, and go to school. Every yes vote on housing near transit is also a yes vote on the 2040 target.

Stipends for elected officials

Yes on Article 23. Select Board members get $3,500 a year for a job that demands 20+ hours a week. School Committee members, who oversee roughly 60% of the town budget, get nothing. Paying elected officials a reasonable stipend is how you get a broader range of candidates running. The resolution is non-binding, but it's a values vote I'm happy to take.

Proposition 2.5 reform

Yes on Article 22. Nearly three out of four Massachusetts municipalities are at 95-99% of their levy limits. Brookline isn't alone in this, and the rule needs to be modernized at the state level. A non-binding resolution isn't a fix, but it's how the state hears from its towns.

Endorsements

I've been endorsed by four groups this cycle:

• Brookline for Everyone (B4E), whose endorsed candidates "understand the need for Brookline to allow more housing units; support proposals to increase low-income housing; and recognize the connections between housing, economic development, climate change, racial justice, and transportation."
• Progressive Brookline, the local chapter focused on racial, social, and economic justice at the town level.
• Brookline PAX, the town's oldest progressive organization, founded in 1962.
• Brookline for Responsible Government, which focuses on fiscal sustainability and good governance.

I've also publicly endorsed Yes for Brookline, the coalition supporting the May 5 operating override. And I completed Biking Brookline's candidate questionnaire; they don't formally endorse candidates, but the responses are public if you want to see where I stand on transportation and street safety.

How to Vote

If you live in Precinct 11, I'd appreciate your vote. Precinct 11 votes at the Driscoll School, 725 Washington Street.

Key dates from the Town Clerk's election information page:

Contact

Questions, comments, or want to talk? Get in touch.

• Email: [email protected]
• Text or call: 607-592-1189
• Twitter: @JHBrookline