Michael Kelley, candidate for City Council District 2

This is the first in a series of profiles of the candidates for city council and mayor.

Since his childhood in public housing in Revere with a father who worked two jobs and a mother who motivated her family to dream big, work hard to fulfill those dreams and to serve the community, Michael Kelley has been driven to live up to his parents' examples. As a young adult, he owned and operated an ice cream store founded with his mother and siblings in Revere, and later worked as an aide to Mayor Menino in the Office of Neighborhood Services (ONS). Now Kelley is hoping to succeed Bill Linehan as District 2 city councilor.

"I've been around a long time, but this is my first time as a candidate. This is all new to me," Michael Kelley said of his of his first campaign for elected office over coffee at the South End Buttery on Shawmut Avenue. Kelley is making the rounds to meet the voters in South Boston, Bay Village and the South End, where he lived for 25 years. His approach is intensely personal: he attends community meetings and social events, shaking hands, introducing himself and listening to people's hopes and priorities.

He admits that he doesn't have a laundry list of policy proposals in mind, but is sifting through his own experience as a city resident and public servant as well as the input he is gathering from constituents to inform his priorities as a councilor.

"I have an idea of the issues I want to work on and what I want to happen, but specific policy proposals will take time. What I am doing now Is sitting down with people about all these different issues and saying 'How do you think we should do this?'" Kelley explained. In revealing himself to residents, he talks a lot about his foundation in life: his family. "I talk about my parents a lot. We are a close-knit family and that's a big part of who I am."

Having lost his father in February 2016, one day after moving into the Bay Village house that he purchased with husband, Ricardo Rodriguez, Kelley is still coping with the loss and often breaks the ice with humor before delving into the now bittersweet topic of his family. "I can't talk about who I am without it, but if I start right out with it...it takes me a while to get ready," he said.

While a hefty chunk of District 2 is in South Boston and two of his four opponents, Ed Flynn and Corey Dinopoulos as well as incumbent Bill Linehan are deeply rooted in Southie, Kelley brings a South End sensibility to the race, giving more of a voice for a neighborhood that is split into three separate city council districts, none of them represented by South End residents.

Well before his March 30 campaign kick-off party, which packed the Villa Victoria Center for the Arts on W. Newton Street, Kelley began making the South End social rounds, meeting residents at the Get Tapped benefit for the Peters Park Art Wall, the Castle Square Tenants Organization's Chinese New Year and Black History Month celebration, calling bingo at the Art Connection's April 29 Art Bingo fundraiser and the addressing the May meeting of the Blackstone/Franklin Square Neighborhood Association (B/FSNA) to name a few.

Kelley's love and loyalty for the South End stems from the acceptance he found here. Having moved into the neighborhood with two roommates in 1991, he sometimes struggled to scrape together his $230 share of the rent, a consequence of poor money management and unsteady shift work.

Kelley reflected happily on his 2005 wedding in Hayes Park to Rodriguez, his partner of 21 years. Becoming frustrated with trying to plan a traditional wedding, the pair decided to have an impromptu ceremony in Hayes Park and called everyone to let them know. "Whoever could make it was there," he said. The couple and their guests marched through the streets from their apartment to the park, unsure of how they would be received by bystanders. "Walking down the street, everyone whooped and hollered and cheered for us, even some people who were a little rough-looking. It was so wonderful," he reminisced.

An anecdote from his mother's business experience influenced both Kelley's commitment to fairness and his approach to dealing with people to accomplish a goal. He recalled his mother sometimes letting her husband speak for her in situations involving her ice cream shop because male bankers and other professionals would not deal directly with a woman.

"That was a lesson for me in how wrong it is to treat people differently. It's a concept I don't even understand. If I had the opportunity, stuff like that would never happen," Kelley said. Yet he saw in the experience a strategy for prevailing in situations with difficult adversaries. "My mother is a strong woman. In determining when to fight and how to fight, my mother sometimes spoke through my father to get things done."

One area in which Kelley follows in the footsteps of former boss, Mayor Menino: a strong focus on constituent services. "I think that as a city councilor, you have to be committed to and enjoy the nuts and bolts of constituent services. You have to want to make sure the lights are on, the streets are paved;

you need to be available so that people know they can rely on you as their first line of defense in getting things done. I am a constituent services and quality-of-life person. I love that stuff." Among his achievements as ONS South End Liaison, Kelley organized a committee that raised funds and sponsored Movies on the Diamond, a summer movie series for children and teens in the baseball field at Peters Park. Although the series came under the B-Smart city initiative, it began with private funds and donations that the committee raised.

In planning community and business development, Kelley favors community master planning that includes all of the stakeholders: community members, local businesses, local and elected officials and developers working together to plan development projects. Asked about an idea suggested in a recent Ellis South End Neighborhood Association women's gathering to require that new developments with retail space include affordable retail spaces for local businesses, Kelley said, "I think there could be some legal issues to mandating [small-business space allocations] unless you have some city or state investment or it's on government owned land. However, I think it is something that is absolutely possible if people come together on priorities and what we value and [act] as a unified force when developments come."

"When you talk about development, I believe that one of the most important things is to have a community master plan with lots of stakeholders: the community, businesses, local and elected officials come together," he added.

Kelley also expressed concern for the number of people being squeezed out of the South End by housing prices. "I think if we make it a priority, we can improve and build upon the number of affordable units we are building. It's going to take a lot of work and pulling people together and doing things we have never done before; creating partnerships, looking at best practices," he said. "I don't have all the answers, but I think we are a really smart city with smart people and institutions and we can do this."