Opinion: Potholes, The Charter, and a Board of Appointments

Did potholes get your attention?  Good.  Please let me have it for a few more minutes.  While I am not going to talk about the condition of our roads directly, I am really going to talk about all the issues that Amherst residents care about – sometimes passionately-, because all of the decisions that lead to road conditions, zoning, housing, schools, density and infill, social justice, and budget, as well as the many other issues that residents respond to in writing and at meetings, all emanate from the faulty town charter which voters accepted in 2018. And while the faults are many (as they are in those cities and towns that have chosen to concentrate power into a few hands), there is a “meta-fault” which generates all the others – a lack of checks and balances among the institutions of governance.  In Amherst that means a lack of checks and balances among the Town Council, the Town Manager, the Planning and Zoning Boards, the Finance Committee, the School Committees, the Library Trustees, and the various committees appointed by the Town Manager and the Town Council.

We are currently in the period that our faulty charter allows once every ten years (starting in years ending in “4”) to amend the charter – not by the voters but by the sitting Town Council upon the recommendations of a Charter Review Committee appointed by the President of the Council. That Committee has been sitting and deliberating for quite a while and its deliberations have been dutifully and accurately reported by Anita Sarro in the Indy.  But residents have been deliberating in public for even longer and a host of recommendations for improving the Charter – including a major study by the League of Women Voters (see also here) have been part of the public record available to everyone. But the Charter Review Committee has shown no interest in considering these recommendations. And has been tardy in coming up with its own.

I see neither villains nor malfeasance here. I do see people who crafted a charter to concentrate power under the guidance of consultants who specialized in that.  Perhaps it is unreasonable to expect people in positions of power to relinquish their power or to acquiesce in its diminution. I don’t expect that. Many important recommendations to improve the charter have been made by the public already, but there is no evidence that the Charter Review Committee is interested in considering them.  And any recommendations it may make must be accepted by the Town Council before amendments take effect.  I have no great hopes for this current process to yield any significant improvements in our faulty governance.

That is why I think it is necessary to bypass this process. Necessary and possible. I propose only one change to our current governance but it is a big one and from it other desirable democratic changes will inevitably flow. I propose an elected Board of Appointments which will make all appointments to the Planning Board, the Zoning Board, the Finance Committee and all other committees currently appointed by the Town Council and the Town Manager.  (The Town Manager would continue to appoint department heads and town employees and the Town Council would continue to appoint its own standing committees, although with the exception of the Finance Committee – which would become independent of the Council – their work is largely duplicative and unnecessary.

Over the past six years, it is in the area of appointments that we have seen both the Town Council and the Town Manager at their worst.  When this regime began, six years ago, the Town Council actually had an appointments committee, but as it showed some independence in its recommendations it was quickly abandoned.  The Town Manager has regularly left committee positions vacant rather than appoint any resident who might show independent judgment. Those in power seek to appoint residents who share their vision for Amherst.  The majority’s vision for Amherst is urbanization, and its vision for Amherst’s governance is concentration of power.

Adding a Board of Appointments to the town’s charter might even conform to the state’s strictures on amending home rule charters, but since such an amendment would have to be approved by the majority of the Town Council it would hardly be worth the effort. Instead, as we have done twice before, a petition signed by Amherst voters might put a Charter Commission on the ballot, and such a commission could write a charter with a Board of Appointments in it, as well as term limits, more flexible opportunities for voters to interact assertively with the Town Council, and collaborative budgetary processes. 

Imagine a   town government that actually sought resident participation and a diversity of viewpoints!  Imagine potholes more promptly and permanently filled!

Michael Greenebaum was Principal of Mark’s Meadow School from 1970 to 1991, and from 1974 taught Organization Studies in the Higher Education Center at the UMass School of Education.  He served in Town Meeting from 1992, was on the first Charter Commission in 1993, and served on several town committees including the Town Commercial Relations Committee and the Long Range Planning Committee.