Council-manager government form can live up to democratic ideals, including representation
This letter was addressed originally to the Charter Review Committee by the city manager.
The Charter Review Committee has been meeting since August last year to discuss potential changes to municipal government in Cambridge. Recently, the committee has shifted toward eliminating the city manager position in favor of an elected mayor as the chief executive. A final vote is likely on Tuesday at the second-to-last meeting of the committee before sending a final report to the City Council by Dec. 31.
I started in the role of city manager at the same time the Charter Review Committee began meeting. I am the first city manager in 40 years to be hired from outside the city and the first person of color to serve in this role.
Trust in institutions is at an all-time low across the country, and one of the reasons I was excited about this job was the opportunity to strengthen our democracy, create a more inclusive local government and find a path toward more transparency and accountability.
While I recognize that as the city manager, I’m not an impartial third party, I wanted to share my perspective from the past year as the committee is preparing to make major decisions.
First, a lot is going well in the current form of government! Cambridge has done more than any neighboring community on affordable housing, including tripling funding for the Affordable Housing Trust over the past decade, raising the inclusionary requirement to 20 percent, eliminating parking minimums and passing two affordable-housing overlays. We have established the most aggressive climate goals for building emissions in the state. We host more adult emergency shelter beds for the unhoused relative to population than any community. And we have the strongest municipal financials in the commonwealth.
Further, our community is really engaged. Voters recently elected one of the most diverse and representative city councils in our history in a competitive election with 24 candidates knocking on tens of thousands of doors. In our 2023 representative resident survey, 90 percent of residents rated Cambridge as an excellent or good place to live; 89 percent would recommend living in Cambridge to someone who asks; and 45 percent of residents had watched a City Council meeting. Additionally, 40 percent of people said they had contacted a city councillor in the past year, which put us No. 2 out of 300 cities and towns across the country! There are challenges that we need to solve, but voices are being heard in public discussions, people are involved in local politics and things are getting done.
While an elected mayor as the chief executive is the most well-known practice of local democracy, I have come to appreciate how our current form puts a nine-person city council at the center of our city government. This is less direct – there isn’t just one person who makes executive decisions – but it is more inclusive. I’m excited about shared goal-setting in January with the new council, a process that makes less sense with a directly elected mayor. Instead, on each major decision, nine councillors have a voice and a vote, and so do all their constituents. In 2023, I prepared for and attended almost 40 council meetings with public comment on every issue confronting Cambridge. Meanwhile, strong mayors rarely attend council meetings. While I recognize the emotional resonance and simplicity of winner-take-all, concentrating political power isn’t necessarily more inclusive, representative or transparent.
Finally, one of my goals has been to build greater accountability into this form of government. I have worked hard to develop a strong and collaborative relationship with the council and to follow their direction. We have established a rigorous and transparent city manager performance review process, and I recently submitted a 2023 review of goals and performance to the council. If the executive branch is where power concentrates, there is a reasonable case for professional appointment and close oversight. With no poison pills in my contract, an empowered City Council can act more quickly if there is mismanagement or misconduct. Regular elections are seldom as responsive – while a city manager would have been placed on leave immediately then fired, elected officials such as George Santos and Robert Menendez have continued to serve for months or years in positions of power and privilege.
It will be up to the Charter Review Committee, the incoming City Council and ultimately the voters of Cambridge to make these important decisions. But perhaps my view is that this is not a debate between more or less democracy, but rather what kind of democracy we want as a community.
Proportional ranked-choice voting is more complex and harder to understand but offers unique benefits over more traditional choose-one voting. Similarly, there are benefits to the council-manager form of government, and I believe it can live up to our best democratic ideals: representation, inclusivity, transparency and accountability.
I will always love this amazing community and I will be committed to making our path forward the best that it can be, whichever journey we ultimately choose.
Yi-An Huang
The writer is city manager of Cambridge.
Thank you for this thoughtful piece. Sadly, the whole Charter Review process has been poorly run. Each week the wind blows in a different direction – zigzagging between and around issues. Some members have attacked others – and the public. Some members have missed key meetings and votes. There has been almost no real consensus. Polemics is the word of the day. Professional views are dismissed for identity politics. Missing is any real discussion of the city’s history around financial and other issues and how this might factor into the whole. At present the committee is rushing to finish a report without even the full votes in place on key issues – much less a discussion of the impacts of proposed changes individually or when combined with others.
appreciate the Managers thoughful letter. I appreciate the work of the CR committee however the public is completely disconnected. I think its become a bit of a closed jury and more about building internal consensus the public engagement. I was very disappointed the committee met election night. There has been some very constructive opinion sharing but not enough focus on historical perspectives or external POV. I generally agree with the Managers perspective. What not broke and in fact working pretty well should not be tinkered with. A winner take all election is not something you can ever go back from. It will be far more divisive than what we have become reliant on. Plan E is sometimes slow and not always exciting but all voices are heard and the general welfare of the public is more often the main objective. At any given time the “ right CM or right strong Mayor would seem like the right structure but over time the strong appointed city manager has worked. Minority point of views are protected by PR and skilled committed councillors can work cohesively with a well guided Manager to set and execute on Priorities. There is a history of that ,as well as fiscal stability ,that anchors our cities ability to provide for all residents especially the most vulnerable.
I too support the city manager. This city is incredibly well run. Why we need to tinker with that is beyond me, and I think we will all be worse for it if we change.
Governing and managing are not the same.
The job of an elected official is to govern.
The skills required to be a successful elected official have very little overlap with the ability to be a successful manager. A strong mayor might be challenged when weighing the needs of the City at-large with the particular interests of their most vocal constituents. Attention to those who reliably vote may take precedence over those who may not. Whether consciously or not, actions will be taken with the next election in mind.
The job of an administrator is to manage.
Management is a professional skill that is often taken for granted. Project management, human resources, budgeting and fiscal oversight are skills developed only through the actual experience of successfully managing large numbers of people and complex systems.
Plan E enables the City to seek a skilled, experienced manager, who is then (hopefully) disengaged from electoral politics. It provides continuity that does not fluctuate based on the electoral calendar.
Under Plan E, power is not consolidated with one person.
The Charter Review Committee has identified some of the weaknesses in Plan E. Instead of making a wholesale change to the system and hoping that the outcome changes as well, why not take the time, with more community input, to strengthen our form of government and ensure more accountability and transparency throughout? Why not codify the rigorous methodology that the current City Manager is using to evaluate his work (and that of the rest of City staff) and ensure that future city managers are held similarly accountable to the directives of the representative City Council? We are fortunate that sound management and accountability are inherent to the current administration. Let’s build upon this progress to ensure that our form of government supports, well into the future, the kind of community we seek.
This letter is appreciated but it’s not necessary. I’m sorry you felt compelled to write it. I was a bit embarrassed for our City when we launched off into this wobbly charter review process in the wake of hiring a new manager. How could we ensure we’d get anyone qualified while at the same time rewriting the job description? Luckily our city has some qualified candidates to choose from. A few committee members have made the claim that the manager system is rooted in systemic racism or that Cambridge citizens seemingly have less access to democracy under plan E. The plan E form of government was actually designed to combat corruption which was the reason we adopted it originally in cambridge. Further, the whole point is to create a transparent and responsive government. Which we largely have in Cambridge. I am not the biggest advocate for the current manager but I will say that he has been responsive and transparent. I cannot speak to the motivations of those on the committee pushing for a strong mayor so far the arguments have been thin and predictable with little to no specific insight to how Cambridge is run. To my mind this is our Brexit moment. Will we tear up a system that works and provides democracy to all or will we throw it away because some angry people didn’t get Louie to agree to put into broadband?