Tanairi Garcia was fourteen when she helped create Chelsea’s first community garden. She is now the councillor for District 4.
A note on her name
Her name is Tanairi. The Chelsea Record rendered it “Taniari” in its coverage of the January 2026 inauguration, and a broadcast transcript of election night rendered it differently again. Her own professional profile and the civic record both give Tanairi, and that is what we use.
Organizer, then owner
Garcia is a community activist and a small business owner. She owns Aloe Natural Coffee Shop in the city.
Small business ownership is rarer on the council than the city’s economy would suggest, and it puts her on the receiving end of the licensing, permitting and parking decisions the council makes. She studied at the Inter American University of Puerto Rico.
During the pandemic she worked on food sustainability, housing equity, and quality education, three problems that hit Chelsea harder than almost anywhere else in Massachusetts. Chelsea had among the highest COVID infection rates in the state, and its food and rent assistance networks were carrying a load far beyond their design.
The community garden she helped build as a teenager and the food sustainability work she did as an adult are the same thread, roughly twenty years apart.
The one real district contest
District 4 was one of only three district seats that drew a challenger in 2025, and the only one where an incumbent faced an opponent and held the seat by a comfortable margin. Garcia defeated Marnie MacAlpine 177 to 137.
She had faced MacAlpine before. The two of them were the top finishers in the District 4 preliminary election in October 2023.
What we could not confirm
We could not verify when she was first elected, her committee assignments for 2026, or what she studied at Inter American University. The city’s council page publishes contact details only, with no biographies or committee rosters.
The numbers
Re-elected November 4, 2025, 177 to 137. Her term runs through 2027.
Sourcing: this profile draws on the Chelsea Record’s reporting, the councillor’s own published biography and professional profile where one exists, and the City Council’s posted meeting agendas. The city’s official council page lists each member’s seat and contact details but publishes no biographies and no committee assignments, so those could not be verified there. Anything we could not confirm is marked as unconfirmed rather than guessed at. Photograph: City of Chelsea. Corrections are welcome and will be published.