With next year’s municipal election closing in, the Cambridge City Council inched closer Monday to reviewing the city’s charter, including the controversial question of government form – whether to stay with the city manager form of government, in which elected officials have relatively little power compared with the person they hire to run the city day to day.
The possibility of wrestling again over a city manager government was nearly taken off the to-do list, and instead remains a debate for the coming months.
Residents approved a ballot measure in 2021 establishing decennial reviews of the city’s charter, the first of which began in August 2022 – the city’s first charter review in 80 years.
The Charter Review Committee, which was tasked by the council with recommending changes, finished its work in February after 17 months that included two extensions. Its final report numbered more than 350 pages and covered everything from councillor term lengths to resident assemblies.
In February, after asking the city solicitor and Election Commission to review the report, the council sent it to the Government Operations, Rules & Claims Committee for further consideration. During the council’s special meeting Monday, the committee’s chair, councillor Paul Toner, proposed three policy orders resulting from the committee’s discussions.
In the first, the committee recommended that the council consider only those recommendations in the final report approved by a two-thirds vote of the Charter Review Committee. The reasoning, Toner said, was that according to the original ordinance establishing the review group, any of its final recommendations needed a two-thirds vote to be included in its report.
On one of the most important questions, though, the committee couldn’t reach a supermajority: It was split almost evenly on the issue of government type, with seven supporting an updated manager-council system and eight supporting a setup with a council and a mayor who is served by a chief administrative and finance officer.
Cambridge mayors are now elected by councillors from within their own ranks. A charter change could mean direct election of a mayor by voters.
“I believe the one and only recommendation from the Charter Review Committee that didn’t have a two-thirds vote was whether we should have a strong mayor versus a strong city manager,” Toner said. “And since there was no two-thirds vote to move away from our city manager form of government, I would hope that we would just move forward, not take that up, and focus on sticking with the city manager form of government.”
Councillor Patty Nolan remarked, “sticking with the city manager didn’t get a two-thirds vote either. It’s just it’s the default.”
Councillor Burhan Azeem proposed an amendment to the proposed order, suggesting that the council consider first the recommendations that got two-thirds votes, but not exclusively those recommendations, leaving open the possibility of further discussion of government type.
Toner said he saw the amendment as friendly. The amended order passed the council unanimously.
Disagreement among council
The second proposed policy order was much more controversial among councillors.
During the next step of the charter review process, the council will need to consider the suggestions of the Charter Review Committee and draft a final version of the new charter. Once it has that final charter, the council would send it to the state Legislature for approval. If the Legislature approves it, the charter could go to Cambridge residents for a vote.
In its second proposed order, the councillors tried in committee to establish ground rules for how the council will compose a final draft charter. The order, if passed, would have required that any change to that final draft would need to be approved by a two-thirds vote of the council.
“If we would send something up with just a 5-to-4, that kind of sends a weak signal to the Legislature that it’s not really a priority. At least that’s what I’m told when I talk to people in the Legislature,” Toner said.
Nolan added that, based on her research, “When [a proposed charter change] doesn’t have more than a simple majority on the council, it is unlikely to pass when it gets to the voters, and I think that’s something that is really important for us to keep in mind.”
Councillor Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler said he preferred approving changes with a simple majority, “just not wanting us to have a different standard for this that we have for other votes.”
After some debate, the order initially passed with five councillors in favor, two against, one voting “present” and Joan Pickett absent. At the end of the meeting, however, councillor Ayesha Wilson changed her vote to “No,” meaning the proposed order failed.
Next steps
The third proposed order outlined potential next steps in the charter review process. The order suggested that Mayor E. Denise Simmons establish either a special committee of the whole council or schedule a special council meeting to discuss the Charter Review Committee’s final report.
That order passed unanimously, without debate.
A stronger
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