This just in from the Newton Democratic City Committee …
Newton, MA–Members of the Newton Democratic City Committee voted overwhelmingly to endorse a proposed update to the Newton Charter that would change the title of Newton’s legislative body from Board of Aldermen to City Council.
“Our members clearly thought it was time for a change,” said NDCC Chair Shawn Fitzgibbons, “We need to make it crystal clear, through the language we use, that women deserve an equal seat in government. The term Alderman is from a different time and just doesn’t accomplish that goal.”The motion for the NDCC to endorse the change was made by Priscilla Leith who is both the former NDCC Chair and president of the Massachusetts Chapter of the National Organization for Women. The change to a gender-neutral term was also supported by State Treasurer Steve Grossman, a Newton resident, and State Representatives Ruth Balser and Kay Khan.
Many NDCC members who spoke in favor of the change noted that the Democratic Party strongly supports diversity in government and that this initiative is an important step in the direction of encouraging more women to seek elective office in our home city.
The act recently passed the Board of Aldermen’s Program and Services Committee and is expected to go before the full Board in December or January.
The Newton Democratic City Committee consists of over 330 politically active individuals who are City residents, Democratic voters and activists. Learn more at www.newtondems.org. For more information contact Shawn Fitzgibbons, chair of the NDCC, at (617) 997-2577 or [email protected].
Kudos should also go to Alderwoman Emily Norton for starting the discussion in the Board of Alders. This week, Programs and Services voted 6-1 (with 1 abstention) to recommend approval of a home rule petition amending the charter to change the name of Newton’s legislative body from “Board of Aldermen” to “City Council” and change “Alderman” to “Councillor.” It comes before the full board on December 15th.
Maybe not the most important thing the board could be doing according to some people, but this is really a very reasonable and doable thing. I fully support the change!
I would imagine that the charter commission could take care of all of this in a much easier manner
The Newton Board of Alders need to get serious instead of debating superfluous and frivolous dross:
http://newton.wickedlocal.com/article/20141026/OPINION/141027445/0/SEARCH
Here are the three most important priorities that the Alders need to work on:
Eliminating Budgetary Sacred Cows,
Reforming retirement benefit promises and
Reforming Newton’s Byzantine zoning code (which makes it impossible to have healthy commercial development and stifles Newton’s ability to generate new growth tax revenues, while leaving it vulnerable to tear-downs and 40B housing projects)
Unfortunately, the Alders are busy with the following dross:
Debating what to call themselves
Increased tobacco regulations
Legislating Maintenance of private property
Banning plastic grocery bags
Banning leaf blowers
Just for clarification – of 350 of so possible active members of the Newton Democratic City Committee less than 35 were in attendance at this general meeting where this endorsement motion was voted. Similar to our overall elections (extremely low turnout), the so-called endorsement is not a truly representative of the opinions of the entire group. Additionally, the vote was NOT unanimous.
typo correction: …of 350 or so possible active members…
To those who keep whining that this is distracting our Alderfolks from more “important” duties, I suggest that it doesn’t seem to be taking that much focus. (Heck, it didn’t even take 350 city dems to change this light bulb!)
Of course, that could change if there’s two hours of debate on the topic, followed by someone’s charter, one week from tonight.
Meanwhile, if I owned a campaign lawn sign printing business, I’d be thrilled with this. All those incumbents who keep reusing the same “…for aldermen” signs election after election, will need to go print up new”…for City Council” signs next cycle.
If I may respond with a quote attributed to a number of sources with several variations on the theme: “80% percent of success is showing up.” 315 people had the opportunity to show up and didn’t. That’s life.
As a disclaimer: due to a previous commitment, I was not able to “show up” but I support the change. It seems like it’s worth a few hours of the BOA’s time and more importantly, it’s time to move into the 20th century in how we refer to our elected officials.
We had about 40 to 45 people there I’d say, and Janet Sterman was the only ‘no’ vote. There were two abstentions. Otherwise people were quite enthusiastic. And the whole discussion and vote took about 10 minutes.
@Jane – I hope we can move out of the 20th century and into the 21st 🙂
There is no doubt that Fitzgibbons does not know how to count. I actually did count the attendees when I was there. There were under 35 voting members – alas 10% of the total membership is a quorum. (Perhaps these meetings are just not compelling or interesting enough to attract the full Democratic Party membership.) And disclosing my vote is really not the place of the co-chair or the committee, unless he wants to disclose the votes of the abstainers as well, and put forth that valuable information.
It is terrific to have the support of the Newton Democratic City Committee as well as our State Treasurer and State Reps for this important issue.
A local linguistics professor shared with me a link to the Linguistics Society of America “Guidelines for Nonsexist Usage”, http://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/lsa-guidelines-nonsexist-usage.
Note these guidelines are from from 1996, so we’re not exactly leaders here. I think #1 and #3 make a pretty strong case for city councilor over alderman.
mgwa- So true! The reference to the 20th century was not a typo by any means.
Is this a way to pressure ourselves to reduce the size of the Board/Council? Because a City Council of 24 is really going to seem bloated. I looked up on the Mass Municipal Association website, and other City Councils are mostly 9, 11, or 13. (You can go to this page: http://www.mma.org/resources-mainmenu-182/cat_view/146-municipal-government/166-forms-of-municipal-government-charters and click on ‘Form of government for each community in Massachusetts.’ And 2012 population estimates for all cities in Massachusetts are here: http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=bkmk )
Here are population (in 000s) and city council size for the cities above 60,000 in population:
Boston: 636K, 13
Worcester: 183K, 11
Springfield: 154K, 13
Lowell: 109K, 9
Cambridge: 106K, 9
New Bedford: 95K, 11
Brockton: 94K, 11
Quincy: 93K, 9
Lynn: 91K, 11
Fall River: 89K, 9
Newton: 86K, 24
Lawrence: 77K, 9
Somerville: 77K, 11
Waltham: 62K, 15
Haverhill: 62K, 9
Malden: 60K, 11
Personally, I’ve never been really hot to reduce the size of the Board, because it seems like there’s a lot of work they do that would otherwise be done by people we don’t get to vote for. So that’s one reason I liked Nathan Phillips’ suggestion on the earlier thread of going back to Common Council and councillor (councilor?) — it seems appropriate for a larger body, as well as having historical roots and evoking “common” in the good sense, like commonwealth, and commonweal: “the happiness, health, and safety of all of the people of a community or nation” (Merriam-Webster).
I also wouldn’t mind “alder,” which I’ve seen quite a few people using lately since the gender issue was raised, and Board of Alders. But maybe it sounds nice to me because “alder” is a tree (genus Alnus) which I think Marc Welch would like to plant more of if they were available at the nurseries. I think there are a couple on Saw Mill Brook Parkway. So I’m unlikely to ever be bored of alders. 😉
@Jane – I wish there were a like button for that comment.
I fully support this change.
@Janet,
Although I agree that disclosing how you voted was probably not the best thing for Shawn to do, isn’t it still a matter of public record for anyone to seek out?
@The Whole Truth,
I don’t know about whether the voting results of a Newton Democratic Party meeting is considered public record. (Since these results support the opinion of the discloser, it appears the overall results – and some details – are now public.) I do know that written votes (role call) are available to the members of the Party (Committee, whatever you want to call it), upon request. This issue was voted on by a voice vote.
Perhaps the chair of the Ward One Democratic City Committee can explain why she was upset when Shawn Fitzgibbons disclosed that she voted against the change, when she published a letter in the TAB saying she opposes the change? Why the secrecy?
Janet – Why do you oppose the change? It seems to me long over due and only time consuming because people are discussing it as opposed to just quickly voting it through.
Words matter. I’d rather our representatives were though of as gender neutral councillors, as opposed to old men (aldermen).
If the BOA changes the title of its members to “Councilor” (spelling suggested by MSWord), there will be 24 City Councilors and 36 or more Area Councilors. This could lead to some jurisdictional confusion. I think “Alder” might be a better alternative. (I suppose we could also consider a change to “AlderOne” with a “Board of AlderMany”.)