In his run for councilor at large, Ben Wheeler is calling for Somerville to take risks for change. “There is more progress that we can make there if we are willing to try new things and if we’re making sure that our proposals and the ideas are deeply rooted in the knowledge that our city already has,” Wheeler said.
Wheeler is one of 12 seeking the council’s four at-large positions. In addition to current councilors Kristen Strezo and Will Mbah, challengers Ari Iaccarino, Justin Klekota, Jack Perenick, Holly Simione, Scott Istvan, Jon Link, Christopher Ryan Spicer, Marianne Walles and Tuesday N. Thomas will be on the ballot in September’s preliminary elections.
His campaign is underscored by one refrain: “What’s stopping us?”
Wheeler grew up in Cambridge, moving to Somerville in 2018 after several years living out of state. “When I see friends that I grew up with unable to afford living in this area anymore, I do wonder what’s stopping us from building more housing in our city and more of it near transit,” he said.
Wheeler, who has volunteered with Somerville Yimby and the Somerville Community Land Trust, described housing affordability as his “biggest single issue.” Wheeler calls for construction of market-rate and affordable units. New units, especially higher ones, should be concentrated near transit.
On his website, he’s stated that he won’t take campaign contributions from for-profit developers, something that has roused debate in the race for Ward 7 councilor.
Wheeler says Somerville can learn from the approaches taken toward housing by other cities, including the neighboring Cambridge. Public response to rezoning in Cambridge has taught Wheeler that development changes need to be paced and well-communicated to residents.
He wants to ensure that new construction is designed to allow people to walk and gather. He also wants to implement free busing across Somerville.
Street safety is personal for Wheeler, who is a parent to two children. In 2019, his daughter, then 9, was hit by a car at the intersection of the Community Path and Cedar Street.
The collision was nonfatal, and Wheeler’s daughter “has been riding her bike ever since,” he said. But the experience highlighted a need for stop signs where roads intersect with the community path, Wheeler said.
Education is also important to Wheeler, whose children are in Somerville’s public school system. Wheeler calls for universal after-school programming, expanded prekindergarten and higher pay for teachers.
Wheeler’s education policy is also motivated by his experience as an educator. While living in Brooklyn in 2015 he founded Ada & Leo, which offers technology education courses to kids aged 6-12 after school, on weekends and in the summer. Today, he does educational software consulting under the brand name.
He then worked for two years for the New York Department of Education, where he designed computer science curricula.
“I and a lot of other people feel like there’s tremendous power in technology being used creatively, and technology’s role in education being much more like art class or music class, where there is some base grounding in concepts in order to enable creative play, but where the creation is the point, not the concepts,” Wheeler said.
Wheeler has also worked as a software engineer for education technology companies. Most recently, he worked as a founding engineer for Cograder, which uses artificial intelligence to help K-12 teachers grade essays, between 2023 and 2024. Before this he worked for five years as a senior software engineer and creative learning specialist for the Scratch Foundation. The foundation maintains Scratch, a free coding interface through which kids can create their own animations, games and digital stories.
Wheeler received a master’s degree in education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Learning Design, Innovation and Technology program in 2022.
He’s also lived and worked in the Republic of Georgia. In 2001, Wheeler completed an internship with the Georgian Ministry of Justice. After nonviolent protests alleging electoral fraud, corroborated widely by election observers, forced a presidential transition in 2003, Wheeler said contacts he made in Georgia invited him to support the new administration. From 2005-2006, Wheeler helped organize a series of international conferences.
This informed Wheeler’s perspective on government. “I think they did some really wonderful things in terms of providing reforms toward transparency, reducing the red tape around permitting for small businesses, for example, and really fighting against an entrenched corruption problem with their police, particularly their traffic police,” he said.
“At the same time, the new government had a very exclusive outlook on who should be in power … One of the most important things that I feel like I’ve seen over and over is you have to be ready to listen to all sorts of voices,” he continued.
To Wheeler, expanding Somerville’s City Alerts system with public digital signs is one way that the city can hear those voices.
Wheeler will be holding a campaign kickoff event from 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesday at Casey’s Tavern. The event will take place and include pizza, wings and a cash bar. Donations are suggested but not required.
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