This month the Amherst Charter Commission’s process got more interesting. The commission’s endorsement of a 60-member town council, instead of the 13-member council envisioned in December, was front-page news for two weeks and triggered an editorial and several columns and letters in response.
On Monday, the commission returned to supporting a 13-member council.
Although the proposed larger council generated attention, it was a relatively minor tweak to a proposal for a complete overhaul of local government, with a directly elected mayor instead of the current Select Board and manager, and the 240-member Town Meeting replaced by a much smaller town council.
The more significant change is that the commission is looking at pros and cons of different structures rather than moving inexorably to a proposal that a majority of commissioners had in mind from the start. The votes held since December were all split, with different commissioners in the majority, reflecting the complex issues and lack of consensus.
It is encouraging to see new concepts being offered to bridge some of the differences, but all commission members need to remain open-minded if they wish to develop a proposal that really improves our government and doesn’t exacerbate existing divisions.
Unfortunately, there are just few months to complete the proposal and many essential questions remain unexplored. A big problem is that the commission, like the broader public, has concentrated excessively on the legislative branch, particularly its size, while many other critical areas of government are not being addressed.
Many conflicts in town over the past decade have revolved around schools and zoning, yet little of the commission’s work so far addresses either School Committee or Planning Board. Commission members have noted the need to consider these bodies, but have so far dedicated little time to considering how to make School Committee less prone to dysfunction and infighting, or how to improve both these boards’ responsiveness to public concerns.
Even where proposals have been developed, commissioners often seem guided by broad generalizations that are not fully thought through. For the executive branch, a commission majority supports a strong mayor who will be “accountable and removable.”
This is a simplistic, populist idea that is overly focused on voting bums out, rather than on building a system that avoids that need. In contrast, all the current Select Board members and a number of former and current Finance Committee members, individuals with a close understanding of how town hall works, support retaining a professional Town Manager.
Amherst is too large to be run effectively without professional management, and too small to count on the availability of qualified mayoral candidates able to put careers on hold to campaign for a position that they may not win or retain. So the commission has determined that the mayor will be supported with some “professional management component” the critical details of which (salary, job description, hiring and firing) are all yet to be determined.
This approach puts stability at risk. Not only will there be the challenge of finding qualified mayoral candidates, it will be equally difficult to find a capable administrator willing to serve “at the pleasure of the mayor.”
It’s hard enough to find skilled, experienced people willing to relocate here when there is potential for long-term tenure and opportunity to have an impact. How attractive will it be to serve in a town where any election could lead to big changes in one’s working environment or even the loss of one’s job?
Despite all the discussion, proposals for the legislative branch also lack coherence. “Accountability” and “representation” are the expressed justification for replacing Town Meeting with a town council, but there is little evidence that these goals are guiding decisions about term lengths, timing of elections, or precinct vs. at-large representation. The 13-member council would see just one member elected per precinct — hardly a way to represent multiple perspectives. Elections every two years would give voters only half as many opportunities for holding representatives accountable as under the current system.
The 60-member council was said to duplicate problems seen with Town Meeting: difficulty in knowing candidates and representatives and greater likelihood of noncompetitive elections. This concern has some merit if all 60 members are elected every two years, with six seats per precinct. Using staggered three-year terms, however, just two seats per precinct would open each year, increasing the chance of competitive races and providing more opportunities for residents to respond to council actions either as voters or as candidates.
The charter proposal is in flux, with some good ideas and many problematic ones on the table.
Amherst residents who care about our government should not miss the opportunity to learn more about what is being discussed (see amherstma.gov/2248/Charter-Commission) and above all, to let the commission know what is important to you.
Jim Oldham is a Town Meeting member from Precinct 5.
