In Brief
* At its October 20 meeting, the City Council will take up Order 2026-103 from Councilor Leombruno. It refers to the Rules, Ordinance and Ethics Subcommittee, a change to Chapter 9 of the City Code that would remove all six current members of the Council On Aging (COA) on December 31, 2026. The COA would then become a nine-member board with one member from each district. Under that rule, two of the current members couldn't be reappointed even if they applied again.
* The move is the last step in a year-long weakening of the COA. The Mayor let the board shrink from 11 members to 6 by leaving vacancies unfilled, and in May he fired Director of Aging Services Randy Aylsworth. It comes just two weeks after a UMass Boston report, which Aylsworth and the COA organized, conveyed to the City Council that 65% of Framingham's 20,000 seniors don't know who to call for help, many can't afford home repairs, and caregivers are stretched thin.
* The current members of the COA opposed the Mayor's merger of senior and library services, and this looks like payback.
* No other city board has been forced to adopt a new district residency rule, and no board has ever had its entire membership removed this way.
* There is also money involved. The COA oversees $256,000 a year in state aid plus a reserve built up to carry out the UMass recommendations, and Councilor King has a record of draining reserve funds. That makes a raid on senior services money in the FY28 budget a real risk. The Council should reject the change.
It seems that October is the month for attacks on major institutions in Framingham.
We have already seen the assault by Councilors King and Cannon on Keefe Tech Regional Technical High School:
Framingham City Councilors King & Cannon Renew Their Attack On Keefe Regional Technical High School (October 15, 2026)
and now the Mayor and Councilors Leombruno, Cannon and King are piling on to an effort to disable the Council On Aging (COA), which is the critically important board overseeing senior services in the city.
The agenda for the upcoming City Council meeting on October 20, 2026, lays out the plan, which terminates all currently serving COA members on December 31, 2026, and imposes a new district restriction for COA appointments, where the COA will have 9 members, just one from each district. No district could have more than one COA member.
The details may be found in the agenda item:
"ORDER 2026-103 Upon request of Councilor Leombruno, a referral to the Rules, Ordinance and Ethics Subcommittee consideration of proposed amendments to Chapter 9 of the City Code relating to creation of a district-wide membership on the Council on Aging.
Order 2026-103 General Law - Part I, Title VII, Chapter 40, Section 8B.pdf
Order 2026-103 Proposed City Code Chapter 9 amendments.docx"
Thus all 6 currently serving COA members would be fired at year end, and the new district restriction would prevent 2 of them from serving again, if the 6 reapplied to serve.
This is the final stage of the Mayor's dismantling of the COA, as it follows his weakening of the board over the last year by not filling 5 vacancies which occurred when 4 COA members' terms expired and one resigned.
He whittled a board of 11 members down to 6 by inaction on vacancies, including ignoring applications submitted in good faith, and now he plans to remove all the remaining knowledgeable and competent members in this next move, which is dependent on City Council approval.
No other board in the city has ever had its board eviscerated like this.
Just to emphasize the scale of the loss, 4 members already gone from the first round of Mayoral pressure are:
and this next round will cut (with their term expiry dates shown in parentheses):
Note that if the City Council makes no changes to the COA, given the term expiry dates, at least the COA would have 6 members, and a quorum till June 2027, despite any inaction on member appointments by the Mayor.
[Note: There are only 10 members on the above list, and the COA had 11 members. One Sisitsky loyalist resigned for reasons other than Mayor's pressure.]
The major 'crime' of the 6 currently serving COA members was their pushback against the Mayor's merger of senior and library services. See their letter which was sent to the Mayor and City Council, but was suppressed, and never discussed by the City Council during its discussion prior to approval of the merger.
Anyone in the city would recognize the dedication and competence of these 10 well regarded members of the community, who would have assured that senior services was managed well, and expanded to meet the obvious and growing needs of the Framingham senior population.
Yet the Mayor and his inner circle of City Councilor allies don't see their essential value.
All this on top of the Mayor weakening senior services in the city by firing its director, Randy Aylsworth, back on May 16, ostensibly due to budget cuts, but with a distinct flavor of political payback. See:
New Evidence Suggests the Firing of Framingham's Senior Services Director Was Unjustified Political Payback (July 21, 2026)
Imagine any prospective volunteer for service on the COA watching all of this.
Surely, this would give them pause.
Plus, if the Mayor manages to fire all the current COA members, there is no guarantee that he will appoint anyone, or the process will get so dragged out that the COA won't reach a quorum by the FY28 budget discussion period, and will fail to protect seniors from budget cuts.
Any way you look at this, a change to the COA member appointment rules creates a nightmare.
The Worst Possible Timing
Further, this attack on senior services management and board oversight comes at the worst possible moment for the 20,000 seniors living in Framingham.
Just a short time ago, on October 6, 2026, a UMass Boston report detailing the myriad problems facing seniors in Framingham, was presented to the City Council.
Among other things it showed that 65% of older residents don't know who to call for help, many can't afford home repairs, and caregivers are stretched thin.
This presentation and report together demand an action plan for expanding and reinforcing senior services in the city, and increased budget support in the FY28 budget cycle.
The whole UMass Boston effort was engineered over the past year by Randy Aylsworth, the axed Director of Aging Services, and the Council On Aging.
Yet, this core group of people, who would have ensured that the UMass Boston report did not end up on a shelf gathering dust, may all be gone.
A Bad Precedent
Further, if these new changes go through, no other board in the city would have had such a district residency restriction imposed on it after having at large appointments. Board members serve at large for good reason, as that allows the city to fill each position from the entire city pool of residents, maximizing the talent and experience on a board.
Why change that?
If the district requirement is so important, it should be applied to all boards, not just the Council On Aging.
Here are some questions:
And here are the big questions:
The City Council Players
The principal City Councilor advocates for these changes are George King, Mike Cannon and Janet Leombruno.
George King was the force behind the senior/library service merger, which included the firing of Randy Aylsworth, Director of Aging Services.
Mike Cannon and Janet Leombruno turned up at the last Council On Aging meeting on October 13, 2026, as advocates for the new district requirement, but 'forgot' to mention that all the members would be terminated on December 31, 2026.
For the last 3 years, Janet Leombruno has served as Chair of the City Council Appointments Subcommittee, which should have monitored the accumulating member vacancies on the Council On Aging, and taken action to have vacancies filled, by pressuring the Mayor.
Yet now she is the one formally calling for these changes, which will make the situation a whole lot worse.
George King also has a special financial interest in the money that the Council On Aging controls, which includes state aid of $256,000/year. This money was accumulated for a budget cycle or two by the departed director, Randy Aylsworth, with a plan to use it to help implement the recommendations from the UMass Boston study. George has an eye on that built up reserve, plus the annual $256,000 funding from the state.
In the FY28 budget process, it is almost a certainty that George will try to move funds from senior services to other purposes. He would do this by simply lowering the city contribution to the senior services budget and then filling the gap with the state funding. It's a trick he used on Chapter 70 funding for the school system, where he cut local funding of the schools and filled the gap with rising Chapter 70 funds.
George could always claim that all the Chapter 70 funding went to the schools, and here he would claim that all the state funding went to seniors.
But watch for the 'switcharoo', where the local city taxpayer funded portion of the senior services budget is cut.
More generally, George is a fiscal hawk and has a history of depleting reserve funds and eliminating even smaller funding amounts for worthwhile items. Here are some examples:
Given the dire predictions coming from the CFO on the FY28 budget, and George King's 100% focus on the tax levy, it's a very safe bet that a plundering of Council On Aging funds will occur in the FY28 budget cycle.
The current members of the Council On Aging, would never agree to that, so finance has to be a significant factor in any attempt to disable the board, or replace it with a new compliant set of members.
What Next?
It will be very interesting to see how many City Councilors see through the 'fair' representation arguments put forth by Leombruno and Cannon, and how many see the change for what it is, in the City Council meeting on October 20, 2026.
King is worth watching, along with Ottaviani, as the Mayor and his Councilor allies try to achieve their goal of sidelining the Council On Aging, by first referring the changes to the Rules, Ordinances & Ethics Subcommittee, and then ultimately getting a majority of the City Council to go along.
The hope is that this push by the Mayor and his allies will be stopped dead in its tracks.
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