Getting to Know Worcester City Government

Public Hearing is back with another mini-series! In this three-part series we will be discussing the Worcester city government and the importance of community involvement in local politics with Doug Arbetter, who has run for school committee and city council, and Danaah McCallum, formally on the board of election commissioners. In this first episode we dive into the topic of the structure of Worcester's City Government and explain the role of the City Council, City Manager, and School Committee. In the following episodes we will go into further detail about the recent change involving how the school committee is elected, the difference between districts and wards, as well as, how you can get involved in Worcester’s local government and why it is important. 

One of the first ways that you can get involved in your local politics is by registering to vote! You can register to be a Worcester voter here. Not sure if you are registered yet? You can check your registration status here.  

Public Hearing is a podcast from Action! by Design about our home city of Worcester, Massachusetts and the people we should be listening to—residents, artists, activists, community leaders, storytellers, and those most impacted by issues facing our city. Our mission is to cultivate community through equity, inclusion, and design, and that work starts at home.

Want to be the first to listen to new episodes? Tune in Wednesdays at 6pm on WICN 90.5FM, Worcester's only NPR affiliate station. Not in the Worcester areas? No worries, you can listen live at WICN.org

Transcript for this episode

Joshua Croke (00:01):

Hello Worcester and the world. This is Public Hearing, a podcast and radio show from Action! By Design, about engaging communities to address social problems in a way that centers, equity, justice and the pursuit of joy-filled futures for everyone. I am your host and founder of Action! By Design Joshua Croke. I am very excited to welcome back to familiar guests for those of you who are committed listeners of the show, Danaah McCallum and Doug Arbetter. Danaah and Doug joined us in season one of Public Hearing to talk about the power of local politics, and they are back with us for a mini season about getting involved in your local government and demystifying how confusing it can be. Hopefully. this is the Public Hearing podcast. Danaah, let's get you reintroduced to our listeners. What would you like to share with us about you?

Danaah McCallum (00:49):

So hello everyone. And Josh, thank you for having us back again. I'm very happy to be here. So as Josh said, I'm Danaah McCallum and I am currently a resident of Worcester soon to not be a resident of Worcester. Sadly,I've been a resident of Worcester since 2005. I've worked in Worcester in the community, a frontline social worker for some time, I moved on to do other things in public service. Um,st recently, u,was a member of the board of election commissioners for the city of Worcester. I did that for about two and a half years and recently resigned due to my impending move out of the city.

Joshua Croke (01:40):

And so since you're moving, we're gonna get all, all the tea from Genea <laugh>. And thank you so much for being here. All right, Doug, same question. What would you like to share about yourself?

Doug Arbetter (01:50):

Hey everyone, Doug here, I'm glad to be back. Thanks Josh for having me. Yeah, sort of recap. I am a lifelong resident of Worcester. I am a formally unsuccessful candidate for school committee and city council. Most recently, I ran for city council in 2017 to represent district five subsequently. I have been involved with the community development advisory council, which is responsible for reviewing applications for block grant funding for the city of Worcester and excited to talk about boards and commissions later on. And then this past election cycle started a super PAC just support progressive candidates and progressive cans of color in the most recent election. And I'm a notable pain in the butt, too many elected officials.

Joshua Croke (02:46):

Fantastic. Well, thank you both so much for being here. You are the pools of wisdom and knowledge from the vantage point of being involved in the local political scene and being involved in local government. There is still a ton that I am learning as an individual. Who's lived in this city now for over 10 years and is relatively active. And we also host this podcast. So we talk to a lot of residents and folks in how they engage their elected officials and it still has layers of confusion for even me. So I'm excited to talk to you both and share with our listeners, some kind of like civic engagement Worcester , 1 0 1 that also will allow us to kind of travel down different pathways of conversation to talk about like the app actual like implications of things like voting in local elections and like the power that folks have to realize some change by doing that.

Joshua Croke (03:49):

And other ways that you as listeners can be involved in your community. We're gonna have a few episodes on this topic of civic engagement and participation ending really with exploring like the, what can you do and what should you be on the lookout for, to be involved in your local politics, your local government and your neighborhoods, et cetera. But we're gonna start with, so what's the structure of Worcester city, government. UI talked to you people all the time who are shocked to find out some of the structure of our local government. So, Danaah, Doug, whoever wants to kind of jump in what's the general structure of Worcester 's local

Danaah McCallum (04:33):

Government. So I guess I can jump in and I know Doug will hesitate to fill in <laugh> anything that I might miss. But Worcester , unlike some other cities in, in, in Massachusetts Worcester does not have what is known as a strong mayor system. It has,ua system that is run primarily with an executive being,uour city manager at Augustus with the city council sort of acting as the legislative body. So that's pretty much the, the short and, and sweet of it is that the mayor in, in Worcester is more ceremonial than it is actually someone who is there running the, the city as an executive. 

Doug Arbetter (05:18):

Yeah, pretty much the on. So the mayor has no veto authority, nothing like that has no, basically no more rights than any other counselor, except for the fact that to the mayor's discretion can appoint the other city counselors to specific committees and, and who will be chairing those committees.

Joshua Croke (05:43):

And one thing that I was like shocked to find out was that because of the structure of our government, the mayor's position is technically not a full-time role. Like our mayor has another job. Correct.

Danaah McCallum (05:54):

All, yeah. All of the, well, yeah, all of the counselors pretty much have have full-time jobs doing something else. I think, which I think could be pretty peculiar given the size of the city. You wonder if, you know, if that's the best, if the, if that's, if this sort of system is the best, excuse me, the best system for, for Worcester . 

Doug Arbetter (06:16):

I Think, and I think we talked about it the last time where we on when we were on with you and, and we don't have to get too much cuz it's not the focus, but you know, I think personally my opinion of that is like, it really, it allows these folks who may not otherwise serve, serve if it were a full-time job. And, you know, obviously if it were full-time, the salary would be more. But I mean, I think some of the folks who are serving on the council make more than probably what it would pay if it was full-time. And so, you know, it kind of becomes like a side gig status thing, you know, are, are these folks really doing it for the service? You know what I mean, would, would they have this job over their current job? Right.

Joshua Croke (07:04):

And it kind of gives folks a often unjustified position of saying like, oh, I didn't have the time to look into this. Or like, I am not sure about this particular issue as of, you know, time or resourcing. And those are both can be both valid, but also be used as an excuse. And I think when, you know, residents in the city are looking to their elected officials to advocate for them and challenge the city manager in some of the decisions that are being made. And because of the structure seems that there is maybe a by design kind of impedance in their ability to truly like engage in like not only kind of challenging whether it's the manager or other, you know, decisions that are being made in the city, but also to do very dedicated C engagement and like engaging the voters in the city of like asking like what are the things that we need to be talking about? Like how are we building relationship with the, the folks who have put us in these, in these seats? Yeah. So

Doug Arbetter (08:12):

In terms of the council structure, there is the mayor who is an at large city counselor. Then there are five additional at large city counselors, plus five district counselors it's for a total of 11 city counselors. Right.

Danaah McCallum (08:31):

Right. And the only other thing that I would add is that within the district we have wards and we have precincts and currently has a total of 50 precincts, which are the lo voting locations where people, the residents of the city actually go to vote. So within the district, sometimes you'll hear people say that they are, you know, in a certain ward within the district. So it gets a little bit confusing, I think for people to sometimes know the difference between, you know, their ward in their, in their district. So,

Doug Arbetter (09:06):

Yeah. Right. Yeah. And the city council is responsible for all ORs, you know, related to zoning. They're responsible for confirming the appointees to advisory committees for the city manager, any board or commission that is executive or regulatory does not need city council confirmation. So that's to the discretion of ed. And also it's pretty clear in the charter. So a city counselor can in no way direct or command an employee of the city of Worcester or can be fined $500 and be removed from the city council, if, and so that's like a huge violation. So they ha the only way that the city council can like, you know, communicate through to the city is through the manager.

Joshua Croke (10:05):

So considering the city council are part-time elected positions, do they have any support staff or anybody that like assists the council in performing their duties?

Danaah McCallum (10:19):

So I know that one of the recent positions that they had implemented was chief of staff for the city council. And I can't, I don't remember the person who held the position. I don't know if they've actually refilled that position because that individual ended up taking a position with the election with the clerk's office, but they do have, they did. And it was a very recent position, someone to sort of respond to inquiries and so forth from members of the community. And I know I personally had contact with that individual regarding an issue on my street, so, and

Doug Arbetter (10:59):

The clerk and the city clerk and the assistant clerk also provide that support for the city council too. And the mayor has their own chief of staff as well, that field, you know, emails and supports constituent services for the mayor.

Joshua Croke (11:14):

Right. And one of the things that I don't think we mentioned yet, but talk about like the executive structure of like the city manager and mm-hmm <affirmative>, and that person's role is that the city council is the hiring body for that position. Right. So like the city council is, are elected officials who then hire the city manager and is the body that is supposed to hold that role accountable. Correct?

Doug Arbetter (11:41):

Correct. And the city, oh, sorry, go ahead. No, you go. And so, and, and kind of, I guess, so the city council, in terms, when it comes to our schools, the city council has, you know, obviously the authority to endorse budgets for the entire city and what, what we're gonna spend money on. So they ultimately approve of the school budget, but that, but the school budget is driven by the school committee and first approved by the school committee. And also like the superintendent is under a school committee. So there's, you know, the city council has no oversight of the superintendent, for example, also. So that's like one of their, and, and that's why, you know, a lot of people when they run for city council, they say this, that, and the other thing about the schools, but really city counselors have no oversight of the public schools besides like, ultimately they will pass the, it that comes from the that's approved by the school committee. Right.

Joshua Croke (12:37):

Right. So let's get into some of the things that, like, I, I know from having have had conversations with residents in the city, that there are some perceptions of like what the city council can and cannot do. And so let's talk about some of the things that the city council can do. Like, what are the responsibilities? And like, what are the things that city council is supposed to do for the city?

Danaah McCallum (13:02):

So one thing is that they pass the budget for, for the city. And obviously, they receive the information concerning sort of what the budget should look like. And so, so forth from the city manager who manages all of that, but ultimately it's the job of the city council to pass the budget, the city council, from my understanding that he also would be responsible for changes in city ordinances and so forth. So a lot of times you'll, you know, there will be situations where people might come forth with a, a petition. I think we're probably gonna talk about that at some point, but people might come forth with a petition to go towards the, for the city council. And sometimes they send those to petitions for specific things relating to the ordinance that the city council really should act on. But sometimes they send those things to the city manager's office, as opposed to sort of acting on those things. Like one of

Doug Arbetter (13:57):

The, like, yeah, one of the most popular things you'll see is like, oh, you know, a counselor may put an order on the agenda cuz like Bob from sever street wants like the sidewalk fixed. So like they will like endorse that as a council and send it to D P w right. You know, or, or they'll send it to the transportation committee and then they'll, you know, handle it from there, whatever.

Joshua Croke (14:20):

Right. And can you give an example of like some of the ordinances that are in the city?

Danaah McCallum (14:27):

Well, there's, <laugh>, I'll speak to this one personally because I, I tried to actually have it amended and it was the city obviously has a noise ordinance, so, you know, around construction. And so I had filed a petition around having construction not begin prior to 8:00 AM. So that’s an example of a, of, of a city

Doug Arbetter (14:51):

Ordinance. Then there's like the entire like zoning ordinance. Like obviously we have a that's we have a, we have a planning board and we have a zoning board of appeals. But the city council like has responsibility of amending like the zoning ordinances that like those boards operate, you know, or enforce <affirmative>.

Joshua Croke (15:11):

And that's one of the things that I, we a handful of episodes back, we talked with Ellie Gilmore who was formerly on the zoning board and worked with, for, with a community development organization very knowledgeable in like zoning and like those practices and talking about like how the ordinances surrounding zoning can often limit the type of development that is allowed and like permissible in the city, especially when we're looking at more like equity centered development in the city and single family

Doug Arbetter (15:47):

Zoning.

Joshua Croke (15:48):

Right. Exactly. And like that

Danaah McCallum (15:50):

Certain number of parking space per square feet and all those sorts of things can definitely sort of hinder

Joshua Croke (15:57):

Progress. Yeah. And so that's like a great example of how residents can like look to something that is intended, I think intentionally confusing, right? Like what are the ordinances under the zoning, you know, under the zoning board that would have to be influenced in order for these equitable housing projects to move forward and like, what are the processes and changing those ordinances, et cetera. And that's where like, and we'll talk more about like resident involvement in local government and like the importance of that. I think, you know, we're gonna talk about like the value of an individual vote at the local level. You know, we have elections that people are elected by like tens of votes, right? Like the difference of like tens of votes. So how do we encourage more folks to participate in like the voting process, which we'll, we'll talk about as well, are there, are there city council at actions that people think that the city council's responsible for, but they're actually just not, it's like not something that they have the power capacity to, to influence. So

Doug Arbetter (17:06):

Good question. That's a great question, actually. So Massachusetts, we have, you know, things that are, we can't overrule like state law, right? So there are some things, so for example, like property taxes can, there's like a maximum amount percentage that like the city could increase property taxes, which, which we don't do. It, we don't max out property taxes, but there's like a certain limit that they could hypothetically. And there's I feel like there's like, okay. So, like for example, if we, something that survivor Rivera has put forward is like considering to allow non-citizen permanent legal residents to participate in local elections. I'm fairly certain that if it's endorsed by the city council, it would actually have to be what we call a home rule petition from w to the state legislature. And they would actually have to vote to approve to allow us to, to do that or to update our charter, for example, to allow those folks to participate in our elections. Got it. So there are, there is the mass state legislature is a gatekeeper or for many things that like pretty much

Danaah McCallum (18:32):

Everything relating to any charter yeah. Any charter

Doug Arbetter (18:34):

Change. Right. So kind of what Danaah was saying is like, so you'll see if you look at our charter and you go to the section, it says, how do you change the charter? It says, you can change the charter under the laws specified in the mass general laws of the state. And there's a whole section there. And so basically how you would go about changing a charter is someone would've to propose it. The mayor would have to endorse it to the point where he would, he would call for what's called a charter review committee or commission. And they would work together. And it's people from the community members of the council and the administration. They would craft language around what change they want to happen. And then once two-thirds of the city council endorses that it gets sent to the Attorney General's office to make sure it's compliant, like with the Massachusetts constitution. And then it, then that's approved and then it comes back and they have to vote. And then I think actually I think if it gets the, go ahead, is it done or do they have to vote again

Danaah McCallum (19:45):

The state legislature?

Doug Arbetter (19:47):

No. Like if the attorney general says it's cool. Does the does, I don't know. Can't remember, but it's a pretty long, but

Danaah McCallum (19:55):

It's a, it's enough of a process that I think it's a long enough and a confusing enough process that I think it's probably is reflective of why things don't get changed in the city charter all that often. Right. because it's such an arduous process, right.

Doug Arbetter (20:12):

And there have been calls recently to do, to have a charter review committee, cuz I think there's been push to change to a mayor strong system, so

Joshua Croke (20:21):

Right. And, and that was gonna be, you know, I, I, to my understanding there was a charter review process that was put forward, I think like a decade ago that unsuccessful or at least there was, I think folks in the community started to kind of petition for a charter review commission to be assembled that was not successful. And I, and I know many other people are interested in what that would look like now because of things like moving to a strong mayor, you know form of government and other things that might be changed or adjusted in the charter. One of the things that we'll talk about in a little bit more detail in our next is the reformation of the school committee, adding district seats, where currently for listeners our school committee, it consists of only at large seats, which I think seemed to be kind of like an arbitrary decision as went back when the city council moved from all at large seats to, and at large representation, they just decided to not change the school committee to be the same type of like reflective structure as the city council.

Joshua Croke (21:36):

Which, you know, you kind of put like a question mark above some of those decisions and like why or why they were not made. But what are some of things related to our structure of government for folks who are like listening to this conversation, being like, wow, this is really confusing and hard to follow. And do I want to get involved with this? Like what are some of the, like the resources or the, the kind of recommendations of things that you would tell people to be like, you know, it is a complex process, but getting involved at some level is, you know, is valuable. There is value there. And there is like a, there are structures of support for folks who want to get more involved in local government to, to do so and to learn as they're kind of getting, you know, getting involved, cuz it can be the very daunting. 

Danaah McCallum (22:30):

I mean, I know this is gonna sound pro not passing the bus, but what I would say is that a lot of there is a lot of information, more information than I would have expected that's largely available right on the city's website. And I found it to be again, surprising to be really well organized in terms of being able to see, okay, here's the charter here. Here are the members of city council. Here's the role of the government here? Here are the, here are the role here is the role of the city manager. So there is a lot, a lot of information that's available on the website. I don't know what we can do sort of as a, as you know, sort of individuals, I know as members of the democratic city committee, at one point we had talked about maybe putting on, you know, a forum sort of similar to what we're doing now, but just, you know, maybe doing it you know, some sort of web-based programming for civic engagement. The other thing I would say is, you know, people can also volunteer on election day. I know that, you know, realistically, the city has definitely been looking for the clerk's office has definitely been looking for younger individuals to be involved in that process. And they’re really just aren't a lot of young people engaged in that process. I would say volunteer and volunteer on a board.

Doug Arbetter (23:58):

Yeah. And so kind of going off to show going off of that, Worcester has, I don't know how many, but a number of boards and commissions that, residents serve on. And you know, a couple of examples of those are we have a board of health, which is an executive, committee. Uso they actually can set public health policy for the, do they use that authority that much, that we can have a whole nother episode on that. <laugh> and then there, you know, I mentioned I was on the community development advisory council, so we're responsible for reviewing all of the applications from local nonprofits who want community block grant funding from HUD. There is, we have everything from like a parking advisory board and then we have the zoning board, the planning board, we have a human rights,board, a human rights board, board of election. We have the board of elections. Most of them are all volunteer board of elections that you do get paid for. Yes, we, your service. Yep. 

Joshua Croke (25:09):

And so that's an interesting like piece of this as well is like the ability for folks to volunteer versus be compensated for time. And the question of like, does that make participation? Like, is that it's obviously like a barrier for some folks? Oh

Danaah McCallum (25:27):

Yeah. But I mean, I think the meeting times, and, and, and when we say when, when, when Doug says compensation and I can speak for the board of election commissioners because I was on, on that board it's nothing like having a, a full-time job, certainly it's not even, it's not even like having a part-time job. So it's, you know, maybe, you know, a couple hours per month, obviously things get a little bit busier during an election day. Usually you're there all day for an actual election. But I mean, I think for someone who's who works full time, you are still a, you could still do both for sure.

Doug Arbetter (26:03):

And like, for example, for my committee, it's like, we are quiet all year in and then the RFPs go out Jan first, and then we're meeting February through April to review applications. And that's pretty much like the term, like when we're active and then so other boards might have like the first Monday of every month or some boards might have every two weeks, depending on how like, like I think the zoning and play any boards are constantly reviewing things. So like those might take up a little bit more time. And so kind of actually just to go into the process of how you get on one of these boards and commissions, one of the boards and actually therefore the most important one is something called the citizens advisory council. So what happens is, is when you go on the city's website and you apply to serve on a board or commission you submit your application, resume your letter of interest. The first step is to actually publicly get interviewed by the citizen's advisory council, which can be a little bit of intent cuz it's a public meeting,

Joshua Croke (27:05):

Right? I'm actually gonna pause you there cuz we're almost out of time for this episode. So we're gonna pick up boards and commissions in episode two of this mini season in just a week's time. Thank you so much for listening to Public Hearing our podcast and radio show that is Wednesdays at six on WICN 90.5 FM Worcester's only NPR affiliate station and can be heard wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you, Janee and Doug for coming on the show and thank you for coming back next week. Our audio producer is Giuliano D’Orazio who also made our show music. Thank you to Molly Gammon and Anh Dao who also support the production of the show. Public Hearing is created and produced by Action! By Design. I am still your host, Joshua Croke. If you have ideas for the show or would like to become a supporter, reach out to our team@publichearing.co and as always. Thanks for listening.