by Greg Nadeau in Announcements, Government Reform
Posted on September 4, 2008 at 8:58 pm
Last Modified on September 4, 2008 at 8:59 pm
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Committee Urges Residents to Submit Comments on City Charter Beginning September 1st through September 8th; Comments Accepted Via Email, Mail and Voicemail
SOMERVILLE – The City of Somerville’s Charter Advisory Committee has announced the initial public comment period for the City’s municipal charter beginning September 1st through September 8th. Residents are urged to submit comments on the existing charter and ways to modernize the city’s structure and governance. This will be the first in a series of comment periods and public meetings. Comments will be accepted via email, postal mail and voicemail and will be used to shape the committee’s recommendations to Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone and the Board of Aldermen.
“We are incredibly fortunate to have such intelligent, talented, forward thinking residents here in Somerville and their input is essential to the success of this process,” said Mayor Curtatone. “I applaud the committee for encouraging community input so early in this process and I look forward to the results of the comment period and upcoming public meetings.”
“At this stage of our review, we would be interested in hearing from the public on a range of issues. The charter covers all branches of municipal government, and how they should be elected and organized, as well as the functions of the major city departments. Over the next few months we will focus the public’s attention on more specific matters, for example, whether to rename the Board of Alderman as a City Council – but for now, any general thoughts on the structure of government or city departments are welcome,” said committee chair Howard E. Horton, Esq.
The Charter Advisory Committee was convened by Mayor Curtatone and will meet regularly over the next six months. The committee will solicit input from elected officials, City staff and Somerville residents and will present its recommendations to Mayor Curtatone. The Board of Aldermen will then vote on the recommendations. Following a favorable vote by the BOA the recommendations will be voted on by the state legislature and finally, by the residents of Somerville.
The committee consists of ten members including Somerville residents and representatives from academia, the business community, the BOA and the School committee.
Comments can be emailed to CharterAdvisoryCommittee@somervillema.gov ; mailed to Charter Advisory Committee, 93 Highland Avenue, Somerville, MA 02142; or left on the committee’s voicemail at 617-625-6600 x 2618. For more information on the committee, meeting notes and a meeting schedule visit .
The City’s existing charter and related ordinances can be found here: .
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Contact:
Tom Champion 617-625-6600, ext. 2620
Lesley Delaney Hawkins, 617-625-6600, ext. 2615
Stephanie Hirsch
SomerStat Director
City of Somerville
office phone: (617) 625-6600 ext. 2103
cell phone: (617) 512-4847
www.ci.somerville.ma.us
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Thanks, Gregg, here’s what I had to say:
Thanks for opening the electronic floor to community comments. I’ll be brief.
I think a Charter revision is long overdue in Somerville. It has become clear over the last few decades that the “strong mayor” form of government no longer makes a great deal of sense in our (or any other) city’s ability to function as efficiently as possible. The inevitable tendency towards politicization inhibits the kinds freedom of speech and discourse required to undertake the complex, long range, and resident supported planning functions required in today’s world. Lord Acton was, of course, right: “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
There is no perfect or final solution to this problem, each ‘fix’ has its own inherent limitations, but the present system, built as it is upon a cycle of candidate/mayor/candidate has not served the city particularly well in the thirty plus years that I have lived here. Some years ago, a long string of earlier corrupt administrations was only brought to a close by the external intervention of the Boston Globe investigative team and law enforcement agencies from outside the city. Since then, it has been up and down, but always determined more by chance than by intent – which is no way to run a government.
It is time to seriously consider a city manager form of government with the concomitant professionalization of much of the city’s operations. Reinforcing the present strong mayor system and extending the length of the mayoral term only compounds the problem. Department heads who serve at the beck and call of a mayor cannot truly carry out the business of the city when, at some level, they are dependant on the political well being of their direct superior. There are numerous examples of this locally and we have only to look across the street to see the inadequacies of this solution played out in neighboring Medford.
One only has to look at the rocky history of my two personal favorite city services, the library and the youth program, over the last three decades to find example after example of the failure of single party decision making. Both of these programs exist outside of the core operations of the city and are, perhaps, better and quicker indications of systemic failure because their fragility and perceived ‘non-essential’ characteristics make them particularly vulnerable. I want to stress the three decades aspect of this consideration and would even invite you to take any examination further back in history. This is not an indictment of any one particular mayor, the problems occur over and over again because they are symptomatic of the failure of a system rather than of the people involved.
Cynically, it could be argued that Somerville’s strong (almost unanimous!) Democratic base built upon a strong mayor form of government, has provided us with a certain amount of leverage at the federal, state, and county levels. To the extent that this has been a function of a strong mayor form of government, it has worked in our favor. However, changing demographics have altered the relative strengths of this and other “street car suburb” cities and there is less and less advantage to a system that perpetuates a strong, single party system. In my opinion, any advantages we have experienced in the past have been negatively balanced by the inability of our city to conduct business properly, gain respect, and engage in the kind of long range planning that is required if this and similar cities are going to survive in any meaningful way beyond the middle of the present century.
I am also adamantly opposed to any alterations in the present structure of the school committee. As a person who has worked closely with the schools for a number of years, I have participated in the on going efforts to create a school system worthy of the incredibly bright and ambitious students we are so lucky to have. This has not been an easy struggle, but our current successes are a direct function of an elected school committee that is responsible and responsive to the well intended efforts of the residents of Somerville. There is nothing to gain and much to lose by concentrating even more power in the hands of the city’s executive department particularly when our children’s education is at stake.
To sum up, we are currently experiencing the baleful effects of an eight year long concerted effort at the federal level to undercut or eliminate the system of checks and balances that seems to be necessary for the healthy functioning of a democracy. We do not need to repeat these mistakes locally. No mayor is perfect, no administration can ever have all the answers and, in today’s world, as evidenced in many other cities in the Commonwealth, the strong mayor system is no longer a reliable or desirable method of governance.
Thanks you for your attention,
Alex Pirie
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