Ten of the eleven members of the Chelsea City Council were already there before the 2025 election. Deron Hines is the eleventh. Six months into the job he won the vote that decided the biggest question of the year.
Raised here, by the institutions here
Hines was born and raised in Chelsea. When he describes how he got here he names institutions rather than himself: coaches and mentors from Pop Warner, CYBL, Roca and the Boys and Girls Club, and neighbours who invested in local kids.
That list is worth reading closely. Roca in particular is a Chelsea-founded organization built around intensive work with young people at the highest risk of violence and incarceration, and it is one of the more studied intervention models in the state.
The day job
He is a social worker who has worked with families and communities on supporting young people and advocating for those who are underserved.
Social work is uncommon training for elected office and it shows in what he ran on. His campaign announcement set out three things: government transparency, youth mentorship and housing protections. “I’m running to be a fresh, community-first voice on the Council,” he said, “someone who listens, shows up, and works with the people, not just for them.”
The seat he took
Hines beat incumbent Melinda Vega Maldonado 206 votes to 147.
That is worth sitting with. Melinda Vega Maldonado is the daughter of Gladys Vega, who has led La Colaborativa since 2006 and is probably the most influential figure in Chelsea who has never held office. In a 2021 Boston Globe piece on the rise of Latina political power in the city, she was one of four women profiled, three of them related to or employed by Vega.
Four of the eight district races in 2025 drew no challenger at all. District 2 was one of only three district contests where voters had a choice, and the only seat anywhere on the council that changed hands. Total turnout in that race was 353 votes.
The 6-5 vote
The council spent the spring of 2026 on the city manager’s proposal to loosen inclusionary zoning. The original version would have raised the trigger for affordable units from developments of 10 to developments of 50, and halved the fee a developer can pay instead of building them.
Hines’s position from the start was that the city should improve the existing ordinance rather than replace it. That was narrower than either camp around him, and it is the one that won.
On 25 June an amendment in his name passed 6 to 5, over the objections of Todd Taylor, Manuel Teshe, Norieliz DeJesus, Calvin T. Brown and Leo Robinson. It replaced the flat 50-unit threshold with a sliding scale: nothing under 10 units, one affordable unit at 10, two at 15, four at 25, five at 45, and ten per cent above 50, with a payment in lieu of $275,000. The full ordinance then passed 11 to 0.
A first-year district councillor beat the council president, the vice president, the longest-serving member and the city manager’s own proposal by one vote, in his first six months.
What we could not establish
We could not confirm where he trained as a social worker, his current employer or his age. He is the newest member and the least documented, which is normal for a first-term councillor, and we will update this profile as the record fills in.
The numbers
Elected 4 November 2025, 206 to 147. His first term runs through 2027.
The rest of the council is in our guide to all eleven members.
Update, September 14, 2026: How this councillor has voted and what they have filed in 2026, part of our council record series.