They Are Watching Waltham City Council: Here's Why

WALTHAM, MA —Statistically speaking most resolutions go by the wayside after the first couple weeks of the new year. That running streak? Hot while it lasted. That goal of reading a book a week? Just kidding. But What if your new year’s resolution was to be more aware of what’s going on in the community?

For two Waltham residents that is the resolution that has stuck two months into the new year.
And they say they plan to keep it up here on out. To top that, now a number of Waltham residents are joining them as they fill the seats at the Waltham City Council meetings Monday night just to watch what happens at City Hall.

“For me and a lot of people, we’re looking more closely at local politics and the role it plays in our everyday lives, and the immediate impact it can have if we’re paying attention and when we’re not,” said Waltham resident and co-organizer of the informal Waltham City Council watch group Kelly Damm.

The move comes at a time when local news outlets, who have traditionally sent reporters to watch and report back from public meetings like this, have been downsized or pulled thin because of increasing demands on reporters time meaning fewer reporters can go consistently.

The beginning

It started as a simple pledge between Damm and Alex Green to go Watch City Council to help educate themselves about what was happening around the city and then the duo realized if more people felt welcome to go check out the meetings, more people might actually go in person. And that simple act of being there in person, not just watching the live broadcast from home, or tuning in weeks later when the broadcast aired, could have a powerful impact on the community from multiple angles, they said.

Not only would local officials feel more keenly that the city was paying attention to the decisions they made, but residents might better understand how and what to let their officials know their own preferences.

Civic engagement and teamwork isn’t exactly new to these two: Green teaches high school history, works at Harvard used to own a bookstore on Moody Street known for community involvement and is a journalist and Kelly Damm recently ran for a seat in City Council and canvassed the neighborhood in the process. So it might be natural that they are encouraging fellow residents along the way.

The two set up a Facebook invite and let folks know they’re welcome to join the two of them as they sit in on a City Council meeting to participate en mass.

“Although we can watch some of the meetings from behind the screens: especially committee meetings, and you can find some of the minutes online, it takes a while to catch up,” she said. Minutes are often not posted regularly and the playback for the council meetings aren’t posted right away.

“If you want real time information and to be able to act on it, you have to be there, take notes and see what’s happening,” she said. “The idea is to have it grow and for more people to be interested in understanding the process.”

She said they want to equip people with the tools so that when there is an issue that they want changed they feel like they have a good foundation with which to approach local leaders. Damm put together a sheet explaining some of the terms folks will hear and how the meetings work and the two help lead the conversation for anyone interested in debriefing about what happened afterward across the street at a restaurant or bar.

Success

The first time the group showed up to the meeting some 25 people showed up, and Green said he didn’t know about a quarter of those who sat and watched what was happening. He considered it a success as they went across the street to debrief over drinks.

Afterward, a number of councilors said they thought it was great and that they should keep coming, he told Patch. Someone else mentioned the group could “better yet” watch it at home and didn’t have to come in person. While that sentiment might have been meant to be helpful, Green said the idea that residents don’t have to be present for decision making meetings didn’t sit well with him.

“We need to fundamentally change the idea that [staying home is] ‘better yet’,” he said.

Both Damm and Green say they saw how scary it can be for anyone who is not used to going to such formal meetings at City Hall or used to dealing with elected officials to put oneself in those settings.

“Yet those are the settings that result in the decisions that affect so many of our lives
It’s one thing to sit around and say ‘I’m dis-satisfied with what the elected leaders do.’ And another to say why not meet them?,” said Green.

About the issues, not the affiliation

Still, they both stress the City Council Watch Meetup is not meant to be about party affiliation.

They want it to be more about the issues.

“I hope and want to find myself seated next to someone who is conservative and have a discussion about what the issues after the meeting,” said Green.

That was crucial to him and to the end result of this “New Years’ resolution.”

“The civic bonds of our community are pretty weak and frayed, I’d like to see that people are having much harder convos than they have had with each other: More civil conversations. If we have that [after a year of these watch meetings] I’d really feel we’ve gotten somewhere,” he told Patch.

The group is resisting a name: the weekly peace vigil doesn’t have a name,said Green, it was just vaguely known as “the peace vigil.” And that seems about right.

“What’s the synonym for saying we’re the general public and we’re just citizens and what’s a way to say we matter. That exists. We’re the public watching. Just a community of people,” he said.

Waltham’s watching.

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Photo by Jenna Fisher/Patch