A decision to put four-year mayoral terms before voters was good progress by city councilors on Somerville’s stalled charter review process – until it wasn’t. Tuesday’s special meeting of the council was blown up immediately after approval by J.T. Scott, one of the votes in opposition.
Update on May 2, 2025: A special City Council meeting has been called for 7 p.m. Monday on the topic of advancing charter changes to the Legislature, council president Judy Pineda Neufeld said.
Through the use of a legislative maneuver called the “charter right,” which delays a topic to the next regular meeting, charter reform may not be taken up again until the council meeting of May 8, when Scott promises “a lot” of new amendments that may complicate an already long process and put a needed approval on Beacon Hill in question.
“It just gets dicier and dicier” to get a charter reform home rule petition to the Legislature before it goes into recess in July, council president Judy Pineda Neufeld said in a call after the Tuesday meeting. “The timeline is tight and just got tighter.”
The council may try to schedule a special meeting ahead of May 8, Neufeld said.
Otherwise, she hoped something gets passed then – a meeting for which she will be away but might have to call into from overseas – because “there’s been years and years of hard work and many people and many voices at the table, and it would be a real shame if we couldn’t come to agreement,” Neufeld said.
During the meeting, councilor Willie Burnley Jr. had reminded the body that “we’ve gotten emails from residents who have said it is ridiculous that we have not actually sent forward our charter because of this,” and the emails have come from people on both sides of the issue.
Changes after a century
The charter is the local constitution for city government and dictates procedures for elections and vacancies and is the guide to the management of government, what taxes are charged, bonds are issued and such things as the powers of police and fire departments. Somerville’s has not had a major update in a century, Neufeld said.
The revision process dates back to 2008 and has not occurred without tension between the mayor and council. A charter review committee was convened in 2021 by former mayor Joseph Curtatone to review and make recommendations based on feedback from the community and stakeholders.
Cities such as Somerville cannot change the charter without approval by the state, and there was concern among councilors Tuesday about sending two separate items to the Legislature – one the wish by mayor Katjana Ballantyne to see mayoral terms doubled starting in 2028, and the other being all other charter changes. There was a risk the Legislature might approve the mayor’s home rule petition for November’s ballot and not the charter, councilor Matt McLaughlin said.
“This is the big one, the one that’s been holding things up for multiple years at this point – the four-year-term discussion,” McLaughlin said, noting there’d been a previous vote on four-year mayoral terms two years ago that failed 6-5, with one councilor absent.
City attorney also debated
The councilors assembled Tuesday had just bypassed a call from Ballantyne to give three-year terms to the city solicitor, up from two, as councilors try to assert power over an appointee that is meant to serve them as equals with the mayor and other staff.
City attorneys are required to be submitted to the council for reappointment at the end of their term, “but we don’t actually follow the charter that we have right now,” council vice president Lance Davis said.
Ballantyne’s other call, for the council to have an oversight role for the solicitor, was to raise the bar to reject reappointment: to a two-thirds majority, or eight votes, up from a simple majority. Councilors agreed to that 10-1 – with Scott calling it “just one more concession in a very long line of concessions that this council has been dragged to over the extensive length of this process.”
Then came debate on the length of mayoral terms. Before the vote was taken, Scott signaled what would follow: “If this motion passes, then I promise you I have amendments to place the substantive issues of balance of power – which consumed this body for six months and more – on the ballot,” Scott warned fellow councilors.
Final warning
As the vote was called, Scott interjected one last time: “I implore you to not let this be the thing that drives a wedge on this entire charter process.”
When the vote was finally taken to have questions on the November ballot for both a set of changes to the charter and length of mayoral terms, it got a 7-4 win. That was good news for city officials who feared the chance to get approval was growing short.
The votes in favor were Neufeld, McLaughlin, Jake Wilson, Ben Ewen-Campen, Naima Sait, Kirsten Strezo and Jesse Clingan. The votes against were Scott, Davis, Burnley and Will Mbah.
Immediately after the result was announced, though, Scott spoke again to announce he was following through on the threat and would file several amendments to see if the voters also wanted to grant the council “broader budgetary authority” and asked time to prepare them. Scott invoked his charter right to ensure it happened.
In neighboring Cambridge, the charter right is used frequently; in Somerville, it is deemed a rare “nuclear option,” said politics watcher Chris Dwan. The use of it Tuesday was “the second time I’ve seen that done in eight years,” he said in a thread on the social meda app Bluesky.
Attempt to send petition
McLaughlin tried to squeeze in a motion to send the home rule petition to the State House and “be done with this,” he said by phone after the meeting. He didn’t get in fast enough.
“Councilor Scott twice made a threat to introduce amendments, and when the time came he didn’t have amendments prepared,” McLaughlin said. “We all came prepared with our amendments and were ready to vote, and I thought tonight would be the final night. Unfortunately, he used a procedural motion to delay this when time is a very sensitive factor.”
“I was very frustrated with the level of obstruction at the absolute end of a meeting,” McLaughlin said.
A message was left Tuesday with Scott seeking comment, but there was no immediate reply. It isn’t known how many amendments he has to propose.
Administrators on Wednesday after publication had response suggesting less concern over timing than the councilors had. “Charter review began in Somerville in 2008, but thanks to the thoughtful work of the community-based Charter Review Committee and collaboration between the council and administration, we are nearly ready to finally deliver on this goal,” said Nikki Spencer, chief of staff to Ballantyne. “After 17-plus years of stops and starts and strong progress more recently to jointly finalize the updates, if the council needs another week or two to review, they should have that time.”
This post was updated April 30, 2025, to correct the attribution of a quote and add a comment from Somerville administration.
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