Once again the Amherst Charter Commission has changed course (“Commission removes mayor in charter plan,” May 12).
After a year during which a majority of members seemed fully committed to a charter with a strong elected mayor, the commission suddenly voted to focus instead on a council-manager form of government.
The change came in response to concerns, expressed by many, that Amherst needs the professional guidance of a manager and that asking a mayor and administrator to share the executive would be unworkable.
Those who opposed the strong-mayor model were right. As I wrote last month (“Offer opinions to Charter Commission,” April 28), Amherst is too large to be run effectively without professional management, and too small to count on the availability of qualified mayoral candidates.
Although I criticized the previous plan, I also agree with those who are calling attention to the weaknesses of the latest proposal. It too is poorly designed. As commission member Julia Rueschemeyer has argued, when the legislative role and the responsibility to oversee the executive are combined in a single council, there is no balance of power.
Additionally, the new plan would actually shift more power to the unelected manager and exacerbate existing imbalances in the executive branch, as Stephanie O’Keeffe described in last week’s Bulletin (“Mayor would add accountability in Amherst,” May 12).
Currently, the five-member Select Board struggles to implement policy and hold the manager accountable. Replacing the Select Board with a larger council, elected for shorter terms and carrying additional legislative responsibilities, will make oversight of the appointed manager even weaker and more diffuse.
The flawed proposals and changes of direction by the commission reflect a failure to start with a genuine effort to represent all the diverse interests in our sometimes divided town. Think of how the authors of our federal constitution carefully balanced powers – not just between branches of government but between those who distrust centralized authority and those who fear populist urges, between large states and small, and between federal and state power.
Rather than attempting to design a system that incorporates and balances often competing values — accessibility and accountability, representation and participation, efficiency and process, specialist expertise and collective wisdom — the commission majority seems committed to getting rid of Town Meeting at all costs, and is casting about for a new structure that will legitimize that decision. The results so far are confused and unbalanced.
A better way to get the balance right is to look at the present system and ask what isn’t working. Despite all the attention to Town Meeting, many of the biggest weaknesses are actually found in the executive.
One source of the imbalance of power between the manager and Select Board is due to the length of the manager’s contract relative to Select Board terms. This same issue arises for the schools in the relationship between the superintendent and the School Committee.
When appointed administrators’ mandates extend beyond the period of office of those elected to supervise them, accountability is hard to ensure. Limiting terms of appointments and requiring more frequent contract renewals would go a long way to righting this imbalance.
Another problem is that the Select Board spends too much time on minutiae — alcohol licenses, special parking waivers — and doesn’t have time to focus on policies.
An appropriate task for the Charter Commission would be to look at how the responsibilities of the Select Board can be adjusted to free it to provide leadership on policy issues of greatest concern to residents: housing affordability and the impact of rental housing on neighborhoods; the state of our roads and infrastructure; issues of public safety; taxes; and so on. We need a small body of elected officials charged with creating a space for public input, providing ongoing guidance to the manager, and preparing legislation.
For the legislative branch, it is time to deal with real problems and set aside the constant misstatements of fact. Commission Chairman Andy Churchill was quoted once again in last week’s Bulletin stating that Town Meeting meets only twice a year, ignoring the many times (most recently this winter) when Town Meeting has convened to address urgent issues and the fact that the existing charter allows Town Meeting to meet as often as needed.
The real challenge is how to preserve the ease of access and diversity of perspectives provided by the existing Town Meeting while increasing information to, and opportunity for input from, the wider public. The size of the legislature, the length of terms, and the ease with which items can be put on the warrant all deserve thought. A smaller body with shorter terms and a warrant requiring more citizen input would increase accountability significantly.
In contrast, shrinking the legislature drastically and expecting that single body to simultaneously represent the breadth of community perspectives and oversee an appointed executive is unwise and unworkable. The Charter Commission’s proposed council will be too large for one role, too small for the other, and inadequate for both.
Jim Oldham is a Town Meeting member from Precinct 5.
