Is Burlington Getting Ready To Become A City?

BURLINGTON, MA -- A governmental review committee appointed by the Burlington Board of Selectmen is looking at the town's current form of government and considering changes. While the committee has only had two meetings so far, it set a tone in its first meeting on January 24 that suggested it may look to do away with Burlington's representative town meeting in favor of a city form of government.

The key speakers during that meeting were Russ and Suzanne Sanford of Winthrop, who discussed that city's change from representative town meeting to a city structure in 2006. More recently, Framingham made a similar change in 2017. The committee could also recommend changing from a town administrator to town manager form of government, or for making no changes to the town's overall structure.

Such changes usually involve a long process. Once the governmental review committee makes its recommendations to selectmen, selectmen would need to either get town meeting to approve a charter review or get 15% of registered voters to sign a petition for a charter review. That charter review would then go to a general vote in a municipal election.

Selectmen formed the governmental review committee to look for more efficient ways to run the town government, but the makeup of the committee does not seem to fully encopass all of the different departments and stakeholders in Burlington.

The board was originally set up to include three elected officials, a town meeting member, a ways and means committee member and four at-large member from the community. But iwth few people responding to the request for volunteers, three of the at-large members are also town meeting members.

The members of the committee filling spots for elected town officials are c Selectmen Michael Runyan and Robert Hogan and Assessor Paul Sheehan. Town Meeting Member Gary Gianino (Precinct 1) is filling the seat reserved for a town meeting member.. Roger Riggs, who also serves as a town meeting member (Precinct 3) is filling the seat reserved for a member of the Ways & Means Committee Member , The at-large community representatives include town meeting members Kelly Pappas (Precinct 5), and Steve Marchese (Precinct 3), as well as Sally Willard, Charles Murphy. The committee does not, for example, contain representatives from key town departments such as planning or the Burlington Public Schools.

At its most recent meeting on Monday, the committee voted to name Pappas chair and Riggs vice chair.

The committee, which was formally approved by selectmen on December 18, only has the power to make nonbinding recommendations to selectmen. It is scheduled to deliver a report to selectmen in June. The next meeting is scheduled for March 5; at its first meeting the committee said it would begin soliciting public input on changes to the town charter in April or May.

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Patch file photo by Dave Copeland.

Dave Copeland can be reached at dave.copeland@patch.com or by calling 617-433-7851. Follow him on Twitter (@CopeWrites) and Facebook (/copewrites).