Lisle Baker

Alderman R. Lisle Baker continues to help the citizens of Ward 7 in Newton, Massachusetts, as he has for almost three decades. He has been involved in local issues ranging from the small, such as getting a manhole cover adjusted so a constituent could sleep at night, to the large, such as helping to secure aldermanic funding for a new high school building. In addition, having served for six years as the President of the Board of Aldermen, Lisle Baker served as a member of the Zoning and Planning Committee, Programs and Services Committee, Real Property Reuse Committee, and the Special Committee on Long Range Planning. Aside from voting on municipal ordinances and a budget of over a third of a billion dollars, Lisle Baker has worked to solve traffic and parking problems. He has helped to obtain stop signs, crossing guards, and pedestrian warning signs to enable safe walking to nearby schools, and special football game day parking restrictions to help prevent gridlock on nearby streets. Responding to citizens concerned with the conservation of a local landmark, he worked with the Newton Historical Society to preserve the Revolutionary War-era Durant-Kenrick Homestead. He also helped to secure funding to restore Burr Park and Houghton Garden, among other Newton public open spaces. For example, Lisle Baker played an integral role in the preservation of the Newton Commonwealth Golf Course, devising the use of a betterment assessment on surrounding properties to help fund the City's acquisition of the 71-acre parcel as public open space. His work on the golf course earned him two awards from a Newton conservation group. Outside of his duties as Alderman, Lisle Baker has served as a professor of law at Suffolk University Law School for nearly 40 years. At Suffolk he has taught subjects such as property, mediation and law practice planning, and written on such subjects as cleaning up hazardous waste, settling zoning disputes, and enhancing downtown commercial areas. Lisle Baker has lived in Newton since he graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1968. Before coming to live in Massachusetts, Lisle Baker worked in Kentucky as a member of the Economic Opportunity Staff of the Governor of Kentucky, helping to secure federal antipoverty funding for distressed areas of the state, and served in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve.