The Case for Wide-Ranging Charter Change in Framingham

This is the first of a series of articles which take a close look at the consequences of switching Framingham from a town to a city in 2018. In almost 6 years, a great deal of evidence has accumulated to suggest that while the first version of the City Charter was a step in the right direction, numerous problems have emerged, some confirming reservations raised from the start, some highlighting a lack of definition in various charter requirements, and others reflecting unanticipated developments which demand fresh approaches.

The Charter Review Committee started its work on July 20, 2023, and is proceeding in an encouraging manner as it addresses its important task. It has a diverse group of capable members, has met 10 times as a full committee, and is currently focused on drawing as much input from the community as is possible. It has a Communications Subcommittee in full flight engaging the community through multiple meetings and through a survey. The City Charter may be found at:

https://framinghamma.gov/DocumentCenter/View/25763/Final-City-Charter-2017---Printed-Version?bidId=

and information about the Charter Review Committee may be found here:

https://framinghamma.gov/3768/Charter-Review-Committee

One of the key issues is to make sure that the community is well informed on the content of the City Charter and on the operations of the Charter Review Committee, so that feedback from the community has the most value. [Not all of the meeting minutes of the committee and its communications subcommittee are posted, and it would be helpful for that to be remedied.]

My intention is to provide extensive, detailed input to the community and the Charter Review Committee in a form which is not well suited to either the meeting or survey input format. That input will provide detailed coverage of problems, large and small, and will include observations, anecdotes, reports, budgets, visual data elements such as charts and videos, and will draw on available public data sources, such as the Municipal Databank (https://www.mass.gov/info-details/municipal-finance-trend-dashboard) and the Department of Elementary & Secondary Education (https://profiles.doe.mass.edu/general/general.aspx?topNavID=1&leftNavId=100&orgcode=01000000&orgtypecode=5).

My objective is to look at specific outcomes, resulting from the operation of the charter, based on my 4 years of experience serving on the Framingham School Committee from 2018-2021. That included 4 years as Chair of the Finance & Operations Subcommittee and was supplemented by 2 subsequent years of systematic observations of both school side and cityside operations.

Although educational aspects will be thoroughly covered, it turns out that multiple public education problems in the city have been caused by cityside financial and infrastructure problems, which have an unmistakable charter origin. Those problems are also strongly connected to the representation model adopted by the charter which wisely distributed power for the School Committee evenly across the 9 city districts but retained a northside bias for the City Council with two At Large Councilor positions.

It is well known that at large municipal elected positions are very often occupied by residents drawn from the higher income locales of any community, as they have better access to the financial and organizational resources needed to execute successful citywide campaigns. Framingham has proven to be no exception to that rule.

The School Committee has benefited from that lack of bias, and it seems that the City Council would as well.

Further major factors discussed will be the rapid demographic change the city is undergoing, the impact of the pandemic and the associated inflow of state and federal aid, and the unusually large amount of power the City Council was given in the initial city charter.

Another theme will be the seeming inability of the City Council to act as a fully functional legislative body, and its proclivity to interfere with operations of both the city administration and the school district.

Here are some of the topics which will be discussed in future articles, organized into several categories. Most of these have quite obvious charter connections, but the remainder have surprising, subtle charter connections as well.

General

1. The charter glitch on the very first day Framingham became a city.

2. The impact that not having neighborhood schools has on the development of capable candidates for electoral office.

3. The value of neighborhood area councils in the development of capable candidates for local electoral office.

4. The apparent failure of the Strategic Initiatives and Financial Oversight Committee.

5. The lack of response of the city to structural financial problems uncovered by Moody's Investor Service.

6. The poor state of the city website as a communication tool to ensure residents are well informed.

7. The disadvantages of allowing residents to occupy two elected offices at once.

8. The frequency of charter review efforts.

9. Lowering the resident voting age to 16, as Somerville is attempting to do.

10. The role and power of the Traffic Commission.

11. The silence of the city charter on the existential threat of climate change.

School Committee

1. The improper role the City Council plays in filling School Committee vacancies.

2. The lack of control the School Committee has in fully managing its transportation for students.

3. The lack of control the School Committee has in ensuring that state Chapter 70 education funding flows fully to the schools and is not diverted through financial tricks to fixing city infrastructure projects.

4. The lack of support from the Mayor and the City Council for maintaining a sound year-to-year reserve fund to protect students with the highest special needs, who need to be placed out of district.

5. The lack of control the School Committee has in ensuring that school building maintenance is properly funded.

City Council (Legislative Branch)

1. The charter-endowed power of the City Council to block all future charter changes.

2. The negative effects of At Large City Council positions.

3. The lack of City Council goals.

4. The failure of the City Council annual budget review process, where a majority of Councilors are excluded from most of the process. The submission of the Mayor’s budget to the City Council is required by the charter to be immediately referred to the City Council Finance Subcommittee, which creates the exclusion problem.

5. The disconnection of the City Council budget review process from any strategic planning.

6. The inability of the City Council to understand the population dynamics of the school district.

7. The failure of the City Council to deploy a subcommittee to oversee the billions of dollars of city infrastructure.

8. The inability of the City Council to use its charter-endowed power to require regular reporting on the state of city infrastructure.

9. The inability of many City Council Subcommittee members to have even a casual two-person conversation about any of their subcommittee topics outside of regular meetings due to the 3-member composition of many subcommittees.

10. The financial difficulties created by the overwhelming City Council budget priority of taxing below typical inflation increases.

11. The City Council undermining the Mayor by partially funding key administration positions.

12. The unstated but nonetheless real objective of the City Council Finance Subcommittee to divert increased state Chapter 70 education funds away from the school district to fund property tax breaks.

13. The unstated but nonetheless real objective of the City Council Finance Subcommittee to destroy the school district reserve fund which protects our most vulnerable special needs students.

Mayor’s Office (Executive Branch)

1. The systemic violations of the City Charter by the Major in every annual budget submission.

2. The absence of an effective strategic plan driving the annual budget process.

3. The lack of charter requirements on the quality of the annual budget submission. The City Council should have written an ordinance on the matter, as provided by the charter, but seems quite content with the current abysmal quality of the submission.

4. The unusual reporting structure, whereby the City Charter insists that information technology reports to the Chief Financial Officer rather than the Mayor.

5. The ability of the Mayor to blunt the intended impact of increased state Chapter 70 education funding on low income, special needs, and non-English speaking students, by decreasing local funding for education.