Six Mistakes in the Last Framingham City Council Meeting

The last City Council meeting on January 30, 2024, was quite remarkable. It is rare to see such a convergence of errors in just one meeting. The summary of errors is:

1. A second removal of the Massachusetts Municipal Association (MMA) agenda item, which triggers concern that a discussion of that item is going on with City Councilors behind closed doors, in violation of the Open Meeting Law (OML), especially as there was a reference to a ‘group’ discussion outside of the Council Meetings.
2. The Mayor’s update is read from a document, which is therefore a public record, but the city is pretending it does not exist, in violation of the state public records law.
3. A recent student altercation at the high school drew premature inflammatory comments from the City Council Chair and Councilor Cannon, publicly undermining the Superintendent in a manner reminiscent of the undermining of the city Chief Financial Officer, shortly before she resigned. The lack of respect for the Superintendent was palpable.
4. The Superintendent has now been ‘commanded’ to appear at the next City Council meeting, before he and the School Committee have addressed the issue, as they have done in the past with good results. That is a highly improper overreach of the City Council, and a procedural mistake.
5. The King/Cannon/Stefanini plan to reorganize the school district administration re-emerged, with Councilor comments suggesting that the FY25 city budget process will be used as a lever to force this on the school district, in violation of state law.
6. There was a chaotic discussion of the City Council’s Facebook page which revealed that the Public Information Officer (PIO), who belongs to the executive branch of government, is interfering with posts to that page, which belongs to the legislative branch of government. Furthermore, the PIO got the First Amendment implications for the page wrong, and her meddling has clearly upset 4 of the 5 female City Councilors. To make matters worse, Councilor Mike Cannon was dismissive of Councilor Christine Long’s concerns, and talked over Councilor Tracey Bryant when she had the floor. The Chair needs to exert better control over City Council meetings, and the City Council should act to exclude the PIO from its Facebook page management process, and adopt a policy to control what is posted there.
7. This item is more staff torture than an error. The City Council kept Matt Torti, Director of the Buildings & Grounds Department in the school district, waiting for over 3 hours for his docket item, which was disposed of in 2 minutes. There has to be a better way.

Here is a brief commentary with some videos:

1. The issue of Framingham joining the MMA is a no-brainer. I checked with the President of the MMA, and indeed 349 out of 351 municipalities in Massachusetts belong to the MMA. Membership would bring enormous benefits to Framingham. This matter was discussed comprehensively in a prior post: https://framinghamobserver.substack.com/p/framingham-mayor-collides-three-times, and its seems so tortuous to have such an obvious decision delayed because of the inexplicable opposition from Councilors King and Cannon. The City Council should just get on with it and vote to approve joining 9-2. Especially, there should be no more discussion of this topic by City Councilors out of the public view.
2. A public records request was directed to the Mayor’s Office for a copy of the Mayor’s updates but came back with a response that no such documents existed. That is now being appealed to the state, complete with a video which shows the Mayor reading his update from the update document. That can be seen at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHSCKmguchs. The role of the Public Information Officer in blocking access to a bona fide public record has to raise eyebrows.
3. From time to time, the school district has to deal with student misbehavior and such events at the high school have in the past drawn media coverage. If you Google: ‘Framingham High School fight’ you will find a number of incidents over the past 20 years, which have always been dealt with successfully by the school district. It is the clear province of the Superintendent and the School Committee, and they will discuss this at their meeting on February 7, 2023. Nothing is gained by Councilor grandstanding on these issues, undermining the Superintendent, the authority of the School Committee, and the process in place to deal with these matters. See the Councilor Cannon inflaming the issue here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxpREGpgFBA.
4. The City Council should cancel Bob Tremblay’s appearance on February 6, 2023, let the School Committee do its job on February 7, 2023, and then if the City Council still needs an update after that is done, request that Bob Tremblay, his staff, and the School Committee join them for a discussion. That would be a productive way to manage affairs of this nature.
5. The King/Cannon/Stefanini plan to reorganize the school district administration continues to be one of the worst ideas floated by this troika. The matter was amply discussed in a prior article: https://framinghamobserver.substack.com/p/framingham-city-council-aims-to-reorganize. It is now clear that the zombie rises again and the FY25 budget, which promises to be very difficult, will be employed as leverage by the King/Cannon duo to 'achieve' unsupported ‘efficiencies’ by combining city and school side departments which manage facilities and capital projects.
6. The City Council discussion of its Facebook page was quite alarming. The City Council Facebook page should concern itself with promoting City Council meetings, public hearings and so on. It should also be under the sole control of the City Council. Promoting individual City Councilors’ information should not be done, as it simply duplicates information already on the city website, and opens up the possibility for the page to be used to promote incumbent City Councilors in a manner which could be unlawful in an election cycle. Further, the First Amendment prevents removal of comments from the public, but comments can be hidden by Facebook if they violate Facebook standards. Posts made by the City Council administrator can be edited in any way by her. They can also be removed, provided that will not lead to public comments being deleted. Here is the PIO getting the deletion/editing part completely wrong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oA0jgJH42c8. Here, also, is the uncomfortable way Councilor Mike Cannon interacts with Councilor Tracey Bryant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D6rQc_ktg0. The Chair should have intervened.