Charter Review Committee Hears Public Feedback on Recommendations

FRAMINGHAM - The Framingham Charter Review Committee accepted public comments during their meeting at the Memorial Building on Thursday, May 23.

The committee has been working on their recommended revisions to Framingham’s Home Rule Charter for months. Those proposals have to be sent to the City Council for review by the end of June.

A full list of recommended changes as of mid-May can be found here. The group’s work so far has included a focus on providing more transparency behind the city’s legislative and financial processes, more opportunities for residents to comment on the annual operating budget, more efficiency for planning the capital budget each year, and more clarity on how to fill vacant positions within the municipal government. Most comments provided during Thursday’s public hearing echoed those efforts towards potential changes.

Outside of those propositions, Founder of Energize Framingham Aimee Powelka reiterated her support for the Charter Review Committee’s pitch to create a Chief Climate and Sustainability Officer in Framingham through the charter. That role would aim to focus on project planning and policy advocacy.

Powelka noted that Framingham would be joining other cities and towns in Massachusetts with similar positions within their governments.

“I think (the officer will) be a key player in strategic and long-range planning,” Powelka told the committee, “in helping the city to really assess the cost of action and inaction for particular clean energy and sustainability policies, and really to help engage the community to develop equitable policies.”

Vice Chair of the Charter Review Committee Susan Craighead told residents that suggestions related to the makeup of the City Council were taken seriously by the group during the review process; back in January, the committee voted to recommend that the City Council's composition of 11 members—two of which serve in an at-large role—remain as is. Craighead had been a part of the majority in that 5-4 vote, though those in favor of changing the makeup pointed to what they perceived as shortcomings in the current system’s effectiveness in representing the city as a whole.

“I don’t think that the issue has as much to do with how the representation is structured…the city needs to figure out how to engage people in the community better—and particularly, people on the south side, because if you look at the races that we’ve had, they weren’t contested,” Craighead said on Thursday.

Recommendations to the City Council have not yet been finalized by the Charter Review Committee, but Chair Adam Blumer explained that initial feedback from councilors has been “pretty supportive of the direction (the Charter Review Committee is) heading.”