ORDER-2019-45 : Home Rule Petition to Amend Melrose City Charter, Section 2-11: Filling Of Vacancies, As Set Forth Herein.

Transcript (~24 min @ 1:39:40)

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▶ 1:39:44 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: Appropriations Committee we're back the Appropriations Committee and next on our agenda is order 2 0 1 9 dash 45 home rule petition to amend Melrose City Charter section 2 dash 11 filling of vacancies as set forth herein this is

▶ 1:40:02 Francis X. Wright Jr.: sponsored by alderman right Alderman right thank you madam chair Late fall we received notice from the State House that the Charter amendments that were proposed a year earlier had passed and had now become part of our Charter which is a Charter that was amended in reviewing those changes I noticed in

▶ 1:40:35 Francis X. Wright Jr.: section 2-11 that the Charter is now changed in such a way that should have seat be vacated on this board that it will be filled by the next highest vote getter and there's no restriction on what percentage of votes that person has

▶ 1:40:57 Francis X. Wright Jr.: to have received and I I was opposed to this originally and the more I look at

▶ 1:41:05 Francis X. Wright Jr.: I think it its intentions of I think you know it's well intended so I think it honors the candidate and not so much the voter in that you know we all know to

▶ 1:41:24 Francis X. Wright Jr.: get on the ballot you only need 20 signatures to be a ward alderman and I can get 20 of that without leaving my living room um and i can get the rest of them within 100 yards of my house so it's not a particularly difficult feat get your name on the ballot

▶ 1:41:54 Francis X. Wright Jr.: further i pointed out to the city solicitor that if if there's only one candidate on the ballot and that person is elected and then doesn't fulfill their term I asked him if they were preserving all the ballots till the next election because a writing

▶ 1:42:09 Francis X. Wright Jr.: candidate with two votes if they're the height next highest vote getter will take a seat on this board I don't think that's what the public understands so

▶ 1:42:25 Francis X. Wright Jr.: I'm proposing that we set a requirement that the next highest vote getter who gets at least 40% of the vote so that means you only have to come within 20% which is a very wide gap of the highest vote getter in order to to succeed a person who vacates the seat and if you don't get 40% and you're still interested and it goes to the the existing process for filling a vacancy which we've all seen which Alderman McMaster went through which is you make your intentions known to this board all those who do so come before this board the public gets a chance to comment because they can contact us they can appear and that then we can make a selection to fill the remaining the remaining length of time for that particular term I think that works better I think that honors the constituents more than it does the candidates we also know that candidates just because you put your name on the ballot doesn't necessarily mean that that people are inclined to support you like i said the constituency in any particular ward or across the city may have an issue with a candidate a candidate could get 10 of the vote less than 20 of the vote less than 30 of the vote and does that person do the people in the city really want that person to sit on this board automatically i would i would venture to guess no

▶ 1:44:15 Francis X. Wright Jr.: that said if that person wants to come forward and make the argument that hey I made the effort I put my name on the ballot I've worked hard there are people willing to speak for me whatever their arguments are and they want to come forward and members of this board believe there's there's

▶ 1:44:38 Francis X. Wright Jr.: some measure of some measure of the the interest of that person that they want to take into consideration when appointing someone to fill out a seat then fine but right now as it stands we have a situation where people could just fill a seat and I really I really do not believe that that's what we had had in mind or we had we thought this through it's not what we would have had in mind when we passed this so you know I lay it before this board and I hope you'll take it into consideration I would appreciate your thoughts and you know I look forward to a healthy discussion on this thank you thank you madam chair first

▶ 1:45:37 Michael P. Zwirko: I'd like to say thank you to the maker of this order taking a detailed look at this and creating a threshold which didn't exist it did actually exist prior but was removed in the recent charter review so I have a I guess I in the spirit of this I think we should have a further discussion about in many parts so the this is now the third attempt to alter the Charter since the Charter review process occurred 15 months ago and when we were deliberating this section the aldermen in their Appropriations Committee of hearing the over 40 items that were recommended this item for section 211 passed 7 to 2 so there was overwhelming support to remove the barrier I will also say that anytime you make home rule on a charter because it is state law it does take a while I I was actually surprised at how long it took the legislature to codify all the edits that we had made it took nearly 11 months so we can talk about this but I also know that there's an appetite of which I support to further alter the Charter doing so potentially by changing the name of this board so if we are going to make further edits to the Charter I think it would be expedient to lump them together and do it in a manner in which we're sending the legislature any other changes that we have instead of a piecemeal fashion but to this particular piece I think the 40% is a very high barrier I feel that it could be lower just like when we talked about the threshold for a citizen's petition we did that with the basis of trying to allow the public to participate in what it is that we do and I think the spirit of the removal of the threshold was so that it would hopefully bring more candidates to make our democratic process and elections more vibrant so I could see myself supporting some of these changes here in section 211 I do think that the 40% is a little too high so I think we should discuss this a little bit more if there are gonna be other changes to the the Charter those are those are my comments at this time

▶ 1:48:24 Francis X. Wright Jr.: Alderman Wright thank you madam chair I appreciate all the minister Arco's comments personally as someone who works for municipality and has for 20 years and has been through a number of these home rule petitions in a in a city that's very aggressive about continuing to stay current with with you know trends in municipal government I've seen dozens of these go through sometimes in a year so I don't see a need to wait to lump anything together I think we can pass this and if there's other things we want to do throughout year we can revisit and we can do that and then we can look to our state delegation to shepherd them

▶ 1:49:18 Francis X. Wright Jr.: through the state house for us um i um so that that for me is is is uh not something that hold should hold this up uh and i do agree with all the moserco that it takes a while every home rule petition can take more than a year um sometimes it can take several months but that's that's uh not comment that usually takes somewhere I'd say between nine months in a year

▶ 1:49:43 Francis X. Wright Jr.: other issue that all the Missouri co raised was the 40% the way it was structured before it was 30% of the highest vote getters total which I mean do the math I mean so if the highest vote getter gets 70% and the 75% and the next person gets 25% even though they've got 25% of the total vote they've got more than 30% of of the highest vote getters total you could bring that all the way you could bring that down to I think close to 20% and still get 30% of the highest vote get as total so if 80% of the people who turn out to vote do not select someone to be their next elected representative do we really want

▶ 1:50:38 Francis X. Wright Jr.: to award that person with the seat without any type of process to bring that people before the public and before this board you just want to say you got 20% of the total vote we're gonna give you a seat I as we saw with me Madolin that could be someone could get on this board and then for some personal reason have to leave right away now you're gonna be end up with somebody who most people in a ward or across the city had no interest in voting for being put on this board so I don't see any reason to hold this up to lump it with anything else I don't see any reason if you can't come within 20% of the highest vote getter why you should be given a seat so I think we need to think about the voters that can stitch our constituents and what's in their best interest and what did they choose when they went to the ballot box so again that's my

▶ 1:51:39 Monica C. Medeiros: thoughts thank you Alderman Medeiros thank you yes I recall our debate about this in in committee in regards to the last Charter review I think there was some merit to the to having some limit there's a couple of things that should

▶ 1:51:55 Monica C. Medeiros: should we move forward with this I think we need to take into account and one is is the time taking effect I think it's very important for us to have a clear understanding one way or the other if well if we are going to move forward with the change that that we perhaps consider as an amendment to this the time taking effect to make it in effect with the next election date so that you The rules are very clearly set forth before the election of what our intentions are, and so the candidates know when they're deciding whether or not they're going to run and how hard they're going to run, and the voters understand the ramifications at least somewhat. So I think that would be important, and I think it would be wise to add time-taking effect to be synonymous with the election date in November. That being said, I think the 40% threshold is probably a good one for a ward alderman, although if there's multiple people running, you could certainly get into a situation where the winner doesn't get 40% of the vote. So I think we do need to think about this in that regard. In particular, in the alderman at large race, and I think some of why the old charter was written the way it was is because the you we want to make it very clear if that total votes cast includes the what's called the under vote so for instance every voter goes in to vote for Alderman at large and they get four votes so they are that voter has gone and voted but they don't always use all four of their votes and the difference of the unused votes I think they believed to call the the under vote so if you look at like the last city

▶ 1:53:53 Monica C. Medeiros: election, the total votes between the undervotes and the votes cast are much higher than ... So

▶ 1:54:08 Monica C. Medeiros: you see that some of the candidates that won, maybe if you count them both, might not have even got 40% so it's I think that was the reason why the old Charter took you know 30% of the highest vote total vote getter and I thought that was a good threshold it did allow for you know the next runner-up to go in but with some kind of threshold and so I think if we're going to to vote on this we should definitely make sure that it's it's clear and I would like to see the city solicitors opinion on on the language and if it's clear enough to stave off any challenges because obviously none of us want to challenge any other my

▶ 1:55:05 Francis X. Wright Jr.: mission is before the first time all right very briefly I appreciate all the member Davis's comment and I welcome having the city solicitor present he

▶ 1:55:21 Speaker 10: drafted this. At my request. What is the will of the committee tonight? Alderman

▶ 1:55:33 Manisha Bewtra: Dutra. I'm inclined to support this. I'm looking at our last election totals so I

▶ 1:55:48 Manisha Bewtra: just quickly did the math and I remember going through this whole process and I know my colleague the chair of the Appropriations Committee and I knocked on a lot of doors to get here um and so to me i sort of to grapple with the notion that somebody

▶ 1:56:13 Manisha Bewtra: who um maybe showed up to debate and didn't really put in the work could get in um to our board versus going through the process that we did with alderman mcmaster doesn't sit well with me so i'm sorry i wasn't part of the more closely involved as a resident in the charter review process but i appreciate the intentions of this order and i'm inclined to support it

▶ 1:56:40 John N. Tramontozzi: thank you ultimate chairman tozy if nobody else has any other comments i'll make a motion for

▶ 1:56:51 Speaker 10: passage of it of this order second we have a message for passage made by alderman tram and Tosi seconded by Alderman Bewtra one discussion just as I've been looking it

▶ 1:57:01 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: over trying to sort of think through how this would have played out in the last election in my first it looks like under the the way in which the Charter was written previously if I'm correct it was 30% you had to get 30% of the total number of votes that the winner received and in that in that scenario it appears that all three of the challengers to the ward aldermen would have been able to take the seats had someone needed to vacate under the example or the proposal before us tonight one of the three challengers would have been able to take the seat but the other two would not so it's there's it's just a little complicated for me to sort of wrestle with here's how we you know what are the merits of the Charter that was then amended what are the merits of the current Charter that has no threshold which I I do find it sounds like of all the people who've spoken tonight there's at least some recognition that there are some drawbacks to the current status but it did go through a vetting process I wasn't on the board either so I wasn't focused on this particular provision and then there also are merits perhaps you know to this proposal so I don't really know how to vote tonight but I'm just I'm just thinking out loud and sort of demonstrating that a choice between 30% of the top vote getter versus 40% of the overall votes would have significant differences in just our very last

▶ 1:58:56 Speaker 10: election or what that's worth we do have a motion on the floor for passage that's been duly seconded there's any more discussion alderman Medeiros if you find

▶ 1:59:03 Monica C. Medeiros: it an order I'd like to move to make an amendment and to amend to add under

▶ 1:59:11 Monica C. Medeiros: section 10-6 time of taking effect this Charter shall take effect upon its

▶ 1:59:25 Speaker 5: ratification actually I shouldn't say this this this Charter shall take effect

▶ 1:59:32 Monica C. Medeiros: under the first election of officers should be held on the first Tuesday

▶ 1:59:43 Monica C. Medeiros: following the first Monday in November 2018 for the purposes of electing gosh I know i actually you know what i have to tell you that i'm going to withdraw that and i believe that that some some amendment would be in order um however i'm going to vote against moving this forward for for recommendation for passage at this time because i really think we could use a little bit more time to tweak something like that and to have a little bit more discussion in the in committee so it's not necessarily that i'm opposed to it but that i just think we could use it a

▶ 2:00:19 Scott M. Forbes: little bit more tweaking alderman forbes thank you um i i intend to group i i do agree with the language that's in the order i appreciate uh allman wright for drafting this i think that i'm with some of my colleagues here that are kind of unsure how i want to vote this evening that being said if there is any other back and forth that we could have with the city solicitor if holding it one more session would be the right thing to do so we all have kind of a um a better understanding and confidence in our vote when the time comes i think that that may be the answer i'm not sure what my other colleagues feel at this time but i know right now i i intend to agree with the language i think i do have some questions uh so being able to have that length of time in order to make a well-informed decision would work in on behalf of myself i'm not sure how that would work on behalf of my colleagues i know there's a motion already on here uh to to approve but i would hope that we could possibly consider to hold it in committee for one more

▶ 2:01:23 Speaker 10: session alderman oh sorry is that all yes alderman mortimer thank you very much madam chair um

▶ 2:01:32 Peter D. Mortimer: that's where i stand as well if i'm forced to vote tonight and under procedural purposes we have a motion to recommend for passage uh duly seconded and the only way that can be rewound is if they

▶ 2:01:46 Peter D. Mortimer: both agree to pull it back if i'm forced to vote tonight if i'm forced to vote tonight i will vote in favor of it but i would also like to see uh maybe a little further discussion automatic master

▶ 2:02:04 Shawn M. MacMaster: thank you madam chair um i'm inclined to support this tonight as it is currently written i appreciate alderman Wright um order and i accept his representation that he's been in contact with the the city solicitor so if it comes down to a vote tonight i'll be voting to support this thank

▶ 2:02:27 Francis X. Wright Jr.: you madam chair alderman wright very briefly uh as i indicated when all the members originally spoke i don't have any issue with uh having the city solicitor come forward and speak on this so um if the maker and the second uh withdrawn and uh rather there's a motion to hold it in committee

▶ 2:02:47 John N. Tramontozzi: i'm fine with that with that in mind i will withdraw my motion if the second one's still withdrawing and i'll um file i'll request a new motion to hold it in committee i will withdraw

▶ 2:02:56 Manisha Bewtra: my second and second that motion then i move to hold in committee okay we have a motion to hold

▶ 2:03:02 Speaker 10: in committee made by Alderman Tramontozzi and seconded by Alderman Bewtra I need

▶ 2:03:10 Kate Lipper-Garabedian: more discussion okay all in favor opposed okay we'll hold that in committee and maybe hear from the city solicitor at a meeting upcoming thank