Somerville’s proposed charter changes are headed to the state Legislature for approval to appear on the city’s November ballot, and so is a separate question about whether voters want mayors to serve four-year terms starting in 2028 instead of the current two years.
Not going to the Legislature, city councilors decided at a special meeting Monday, are such questions as whether the city gets a new chief administrative officer role; if the council should have more power over the budget, and if a proposed budget should be available to the public for longer before it is voted; if noncitizens and residents as young as 16 should be able to cast ballots in city elections; and whether Somerville should switch to a ranked-choice form of voting, which would avoid the need for primaries. Each were proposed as ballot questions like the length of mayoral terms, not for consideration as part of the charter.
All of these amendments proposed by councilor J.T. Scott failed with only two voters in favor – Scott and councilor Willie Burnley Jr. – though many of the votes in opposition were not because the ideas were unpopular. It was because they put all charter change at risk, officials said.
“We were advised that they would potentially result in the entire charter being rejected by Beacon Hill,” council vice president Lance Davis said. “That system stinks. It’s in my opinion ridiculous the degree to which municipalities are constrained.”
The special meeting came about because on April 29 the council was voting on a proposed charter to send to the Legislature and the mayoral-term question as well. “I was shocked,” Scott said, referring to the council getting that question from the office of mayor Katjana Ballantyne. He used what’s called a charter right to delay – for one meeting – the sending of Somerville’s packaged home rule petition to the Legislature.
With time growing short for the Legislature to consider Somerville’s request, as the bodies take a recess in July, a special meeting was called to deal just with the charter and Scott’s amendments. A Thursday council meeting can now proceed without them.
“As I was preparing them, I asked one simple question: Is the council willing to extend to itself the same respect that it grants the executive – the use of a referendum as a way to settle policy debates? Is that a privilege we only afford to the mayor?” Scott said Monday.
Yearslong process
Current work on updating the city’s governing document – largely untouched for a century – got underway in October 2020 with help from University of Massachusetts at Boston experts and a volunteer commission that was seated in March 2021. It produced a report in September 2022 that was worked by a Charter Review Special Committee led by Scott and reviewed by the council in biweekly meetings; those led to unanimous passage in May 2023.
After being sent to Ballantyne, the report sat for more than a year, Scott said. What was sent back to the council in September 2024 was different enough to need another six months of council work that wrapped up in March, again passing unanimously. Bowing to the reality of a strong-mayor system, the new version let go of several approaches to giving the council more power to balance that of the mayor.
Again, though, there was a sticking point from Ballantyne: term lengths.
Avoiding an impasse
Since there are other ways to put a question on a city ballot, Scott said using a “binding referendum to obtain a power that has been previously rejected is outrageous.”
But without the vote on four-year terms, the charter was at an impasse, councilors said.
“I know we wish it wasn’t true, but it is: We need to have agreement between both branches to get this passed. There is, in fact, like it or not, one issue that has been a sticking point between the two branches, which is the mayoral term,” Ben Ewen-Campen said.
Scott agreed: “The implicit threat,” he said, “is that without this ballot measure tacked on the end of the home rule petition, the mayor will once again sit on it and we can’t move forward.”
A Beacon Hill barrier
Council approval of Scott’s amendments could also be troublesome for the charter: “It still has to go the mayor’s desk for signature. I would guess that some of these would just be deal breakers for her,” councilor Matt McLaughlin said.
They would also be potentially confusing to legislators on Beacon Hill, who will be seeing charter-related home rule petitions from around Massachusetts and may not have any understanding of Somerville politics, McLaughlin said.
“If they get to the Somerville city charter and there are 10 ballot questions on it, if I was that state representative – not knowing any of the details behind this – I would say, ‘I’m not wasting my time on this, this clearly doesn’t look ready,’” he said.
“More like the 15th hour”
Scott’s first three amendments were raised, discussed and voted individually, with each drawing some words of general support but no votes in favor beyond his own and Burnley’s.
At that point Scott asked that the amendments that remained be handled together, speeding the process along “given the tenor of the discussion to this point” – and despite them all being individually “wildly popular measures that have broad support in the community.”
There was no reversal of support on the council for those proposals, councilor Jake Wilson said, but “I want them so much that I want to pursue them with the methods that actually seem likeliest to make those happen. So please, let’s get this charter sent to Beacon Hill already.”
“It’s not just the eleventh hour. It’s more like the 15th hour,” Wilson said. “Let’s get this done.”
Candidate sees the light
Along with Scott expressing gratitude to his colleagues for their consideration, and some expressing gratitude in return for the work he’d done on the charter, there was reflection about what lay ahead in the campaign season. Davis signaled he would campaign against four-year mayoral terms.
One factor in council approval of Ballantyne’s ballot initiative was that it had gained support since it first came to the council, Wilson said.
“It was a split vote – a 6-5 vote at the time – against the four-year term. I believe three of us who voted against putting the four-year mayoral term into the charter two years ago now support a four-year term,” said Wilson, who is now running for mayor against Ballantyne. (Burnley has also declared a run for the office.) “I am of half a mind to just put the four-year term in the charter and be done with all this. I think that if we had a vote on that, it would probably pass.”
A stronger
Please consider making a financial contribution to maintain, expand and improve Cambridge Day.
We are now a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and all donations are tax deductible.
Please consider a recurring contribution.