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To the editor:
After many years serving on the Marblehead Select Board, I am stepping down. As I reflect on my time in that seat, one thing I know for certain is that this town has been fortunate to have Erin Noonan serving alongside me. I am writing to ask Marblehead voters to return her to the Select Board.
Erin loves this town. I do not mean that in a passing way. I mean, she has given real time, real energy and real thought to what it means to govern Marblehead well. And Marblehead is not easy to govern. We are a community with a fierce sense of identity, a complicated coastline, aging infrastructure, genuine housing pressures and residents who care deeply and are not shy about saying so. That is a good thing. But it demands elected officials who show up prepared, listen carefully and stay steady when the decisions get hard. That is Erin.
Together, we worked on things I am genuinely proud of. There are the obvious yearly responsibilities, such as the warrant, financial oversight and broad policy-making. We have spent years analyzing budgets, identifying savings and efficiencies and developing a meaningful, comprehensive override plan to address our fiscal crisis and share it with our citizens.
Yet, the smaller, often overlooked changes proved very valuable upon reflection. After years of effort, we formalized financial policies and procedures into official board policy so future boards would have a stronger foundation to work from. We advocated for upgraded information technology and communication systems, increased efficiency and established the first-ever Select Board email addresses, which sounds small, but meant that any resident in Marblehead finally had a direct line to their elected representatives. We fought hard for hybrid meeting access and equipment because we both believed that a working parent, a senior or anyone who could not get to Abbot Hall on a weeknight still deserved a seat at the table. Erin led work on Marblehead's Housing Production Plan, which matters deeply as we try to keep this a town where people can afford to live and stay. She also championed the local rooms and meals tax as a growth opportunity for new revenue in Marblehead. Many of these things, now commonplace, resulted from months and years of hard work and advocacy.
Erin served as chair of the Select Board for two years. I watched her run meetings with patience and purpose, build consensus among strong personalities and move initiatives forward that could have easily stalled. That is harder than it looks. It requires strong leadership to get things done where strong opinions are the norm. She understands how Marblehead's government actually works: the relationships, the history and the nuances that take years to learn and develop. That institutional knowledge matters enormously when the town faces difficult decisions, and it cannot be replicated overnight.
She is also an attorney, and that matters more than people might realize. Local government is full of moments where the legal details are the difference between a good decision and a costly mistake. Erin reads the fine print. She asks the right questions. She has helped keep Marblehead on the right side of complicated regulatory and municipal issues more than once.
But more than any of that, Erin listens. She listens to people who have been here for generations and to people who just moved in. Her commitment to the people of Marblehead is not performative; it shows up in the work.
I am proud of what we accomplished over my time on the board, and I leave knowing Marblehead is in good hands with Erin. Please vote to re-elect Erin Noonan to the Marblehead Select Board.
Alexa Singer
Pleasant Street
