Framingham Charter Review Committee Hits One Out of the Park

On Thursday, December 21, 2023, the following email popped into my inbox:

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"Framingham Charter Review Poll Question: What Size Should The City Council Be?

FRAMINGHAM - The Charter Review Committee is discussing whether the City of Framingham should consider tweaking the size/composition of its City Council.

The Charter Review Committee is seeking’s the public’s feedback, via a poll question.

Right now, our City Council has 11 Members. Nine of the members are elected by District. The last two members are elected City-wide and are called at-large members.

Please take this one-question poll that lists several other possible arrangements.

The poll closes on Monday, January 8, and the Committee will discuss this topic at the Thursday, January 11, 2024, meeting."

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This is a major step forward by the Charter Review Committee and deserves everyone’s close attention.

The size of the City Council is not particularly controversial, as the most common Council size statewide is 11 or 13, and Framingham is at 11. However, the composition is a critically important matter, and has affected Framingham greatly in its 6 years as a city.

The poll offers 4 options to choose from: A, B, C, D.

Option A: No change. The Council size would stay at 11.

Option B: Replace our 2 “at large councilors” with 3 “regional councilors”. In a setup like this one regional councilor might run from and represent districts 1-3, another could represent districts 4-6 and another districts 7-9. This would raise the council size to 12.

Option C: Follow the same process as option B to get to 12 councilors but keep one fully at-large member. This means there would be 9 district, 3 regional, and 1 at-large councilor. This would raise the council size to 13.

Option D: Take our existing structure and add 2 more “at-large councilors. This means there would be 9 district and 4 at-large councilors. This would raise the council size to 13.

Option B is a truly appealing option, as it would finally address the well-documented adverse effects of at-large elected officials in municipalities where there are clear and sizable divisions in the community, based on income, like Framingham.

The poster child for the adverse effects of at-large elections for City Council is Lowell, where back in 2017, residents challenged their biased system with a lawsuit. The following article comes from that time:

https://www.wgbh.org/news/politics/2017-06-13/lowell-residents-challenge-the-citys-voting-system

Quotes include:

“Several Latino and Asian-American residents filed the suit, arguing that an at-large – rather than a ward-based – election system keeps minority groups out of power. Right now, the entirely white City Council and School Committee make decisions for a city that's roughly half non-white.”

In the end, the Lowell residents won, and the at-large electoral system was replaced by one with a strong district-based approach.

In Framingham, we have gone a long way to retiring those same detrimental at-large elected positions, which are commonly occupied by residents drawn from the higher income locales of the community, as they have better access to the financial and organizational resources needed to execute successful citywide campaigns. But we still have at-large remnants.

For 6 years, our two at-large City Councilors have always resided north of Route 9. That has produced a systematic northside bias in the City Council. Without charter change, that will continue, as the two at-large City Councilors were recently re-elected, unchallenged, for 4 more years. The difficulties of at-large campaigns scared off any potential contenders.

That is simply bad for Framingham democracy.

If we want to make Framingham a much more equitable place to live, where all residents are properly represented by the City Council, real change has to be made to the City Charter, to retire at-large City Council positions.

It could be argued that Framingham is not Lowell, that things are not as extreme as they stand, and we are doing just fine with no change needed. However, we have major problems, which largely affect the low-income south side and have seen zero progress in the last 6 years, or gotten worse. Here are some:

1. Lack of pre-K access for low-income 4-year-olds, which especially hampers the educational success of children whose home language is not English. These children live mostly on the south side.

2. High water bills, which hit low-income homeowners hardest. Again, mostly on the south side.

3. Poor school bus service for the south side, which is due in large part to the city’s refusal to ensure school bus drivers are paid a sufficient wage. The city does not ‘see’ the south side.

4. Lack of property tax relief, where the Residential Exemption, which would help low-income homeowners the most, has been rejected by the City Council for 6 years, so most of the benefits of the current City Council property tax policy flow to homeowners with more expensive homes on the northside.

5. Lack of tree canopy, which makes the south side 10 degrees hotter than the north side in summer.

Back to the survey.

Option B replaces the problematic 2 at-large City Councilors, with 3 ‘regional’ City Councilors, elected from each of 3 District groups: 1-3, 4-6 and 7-9. That provides a much better representational model than the at-large approach.

It is much easier financially and network-wise to run a campaign covering 3 districts, rather than the whole city, as demanded by at-large campaigns, so more candidates will be able to compete, and, most importantly, the resulting 3 elected ‘regional City Councilors would be evenly spread across the city.

If Option B were to be adopted in the updated City Charter, the northside bias on the City Council would be retired permanently.

What a great solution!

I encourage everyone to fill out the survey at:

Please take this one-question poll

And select Option B.

The other options retain or even increase (!) at-large City Councilors. Very bad for Framingham.

Please share this article as widely as possible to help ensure as many people as possible provide their input to the Charter Review Committee.