Cambridge’s first big governmental overhaul in more than 80 years didn’t lead to big changes in its latest look by city councillors, a Monday special “meeting of the whole” that saw mainly tweaks to budget and staff approval processes. A vote on whether to drop the title of “mayor” in favor of “president of the City Council” failed, for instance.
The balance of power remains strongly with the city manager. The other charter changes discussed largely codify existing practices, such as councillors telling the city manager their budget priorities or their view of the work of the city manager’s staff.
The biggest approved change was to end the mayor’s automatic leadership of the School Committee. The move is not final, but a step toward bringing ideas to the full council and state Legislature before voters decide in November.
Whoever is elected mayor will still be on the School Committee, but will not be its chair unless voted so by the other six committee members. The change was approved 8-1, with only councillor Sumbul Siddiqui opposed.
“It’s sometimes problematic when you get someone coming from the council that’s never served on the School Committee,” said mayor E. Denise Simmons, one of several councillors who served on the committee before switching elected bodies. It’s also true, she said, that candidates for council “don’t run for School Committee when they are campaigning.”
Though councillors acknowledged it would be better to include the committee in a conversation that affected it, the debate went on. Five of nine councillors have experience in education policy, and four have been on the School Committee. One of those four, vice mayor Marc McGovern, said he “always found it frustrating that we would be working on something over a couple terms and then a new mayor would come in and say, ’Well, you know, I kind of want to go in a different direction.’”
The decision aligned with the members of a council-appointed charter review group, whose work over the past couple of years led to Monday’s dialogue. “Zero members of the Charter Review Committee voted that the mayor should chair the School Committee,” councillor Patty Nolan said. “No one who likely voted for you understood that that might end up happening.”
The change will require a rewrite of School Committee rules, a Law Department representative noted, but councillors believe that it won’t affect how the mayor is paid. The mayor gets two salaries for “two jobs,” Simmons said. “Because you’re a member of the School Committee, and not because you’re the chair.”
Electing mayors … or “presidents”
Councillors decided at a Feb. 13 meeting that the approach to naming a mayor, in which they elect from within their own ranks, won’t be addressed in the charter – but they will add a clause to their own rules giving them flexibility to come up with a replacement method. That could yet be by direct election by Cambridge voters.
“The solicitor and Elections Commission had concerns that rushing a new way of voting for mayor could lead to unintended consequences without time for further study,” said councillor Paul Toner, who has been leading some of the council’s charter work. “This will allow us to move forward with all the other proposed language changes … without having to reopen the charter again” before the next 10-year reassessment.
The Charter Review Committee made up of residents had been unanimous in suggesting that Cambridge’s “mayor” instead be called “president of the City Council,” as a way to signal the actual power that comes with the title: not much, especially with the loss of automatic School Committee leadership.
The name change was “more democratic, more accurate and far less confusing,” Nolan said. “This would be a great change in our charter. It would be something that provides much more transparency to people, so they’re not confusing how the city governs.”
Few shared Nolan’s belief. The idea failed with only four votes in favor – Nolan, Burhan Azeem, Sumbul Siddiqui and Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler – because of a front led by older-guard city politicians who believe the opposite: “It confuses people,” Simmons said. “I would guess that they would probably rather they have a mayor than a president.”
Toner voted against the title change, keeping the mayor “on the same level as city manager” even while acknowledging that “I’m the one that’s been making that point that it’s really just the chair of the council” – and even while voting to decrease the mayor’s power.
Budgets and approvals
A proposal heard in late January would have let councillors raise parts of the city’s annual budget by up to 10 percent, just as they can lower line items by that amount, but it lacked support and returned Monday in a changed form. In this version introduced by councillor Sobrinho-Wheeler, the council develops and submits budget priorities after discussion with city staff and the city manager responds. “The city manager does not have to include all those priorities. It doesn’t have to be a specific amount,” Sobrinho-Wheeler said. The new version was adopted unanimously – maybe because it was a leveling up of, as Finance Committee co-chair Nolan said, “in essence, a process that we have now.”
Also popular was a decision to approve all of the city manager’s appointments to multimember bodies, with all present councillors approving (Simmons left the meeting early). Groups such as the Central Square Advisory Committee are included, Sobrinho-Wheeler noted with a reminder of an unusually controversial November appointment. Not included: State-mandated appointments, such as the requirement that whoever is police commissioner must sit on the board of the License Commission.
Changes affecting the city solicitor
Much of the meeting was a debate about approval of a city manager’s choice for city solicitor – the city’s lawyer. Ultimately, a 7-2 vote gave the council 30-day veto power over an appointment (a veto would require a two-thirds vote of the council), with Simmons and councillor Cathie Zusy opposed. A proposed addition to the charter that the council “may provide comments to the city manager about the city solicitor’s performance” in regard to the council passed 5-3-1, with Azeem marking himself “present” but not voting. Those opposed were Simmons, Toner and Zusy.
The council’s frequently difficult relationship with the previous city solicitor, Nancy Glowa, led it to explore funding legal counsel to represent only the council, rather than face a conflict because that person also works for – and is hired and fired by – the city manager. When that effort was made in 2021, Glowa told councillors it would be a violation of the charter and insinuated it would land them in jail.
The approved items were written by current city solicitor Megan Bayer at the request of Sobrinho-Wheeler and Siddiqui. But it was under duress, said Owen O’Riordan, deputy city manager. “We would be in opposition” to the veto and “we are uncomfortable” with the review, O’Riordan said – despite Bayer having proposed the review herself (the councillors took pains to point out) to codify something that which already takes place informally.
“By enshrining this in the charter as a formal review of the city solicitor, you are giving it a lot more weight,” O’Riordan said, explaining the opposition of staff. “The existing system works well.”
For now, the votes will resolve council concerns that date back to at least the fall of 2017, when the Law Department would not respond to all council requests or call initiatives impossible, even as similar laws were enacted in neighboring communities.
Bayer said the charter changes concerning her office were unnecessary because if councillors felt the city manager’s choice of city solicitor was bad, there was already an action they could take: “The council’s remedy is to terminate the city manager.”
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Over a long period of time, the school committee has been a disaster. Just one example: how could it have hired Superintendent Greer after she was let go by Sharon Schools and was paid $ 750,000 after filing a complaint. Was there no one else competent to hold the position?
What our school system needs is to get back to basics. If the students don’t learn to read, write, and be able to do math at grade level, there is little hope for their future. Stop with the “nonsense”, stop coddling the students, and get them to learn the basics as happened when most of us on this site went to school.
Are all students who enter grade school in Cambridge, required to be vaccinated?