City Council - Government Operations Committee Hearing on Docket #0410

Thank you for watching!

City Councilor, then the Chair of the City Council Committee on Government Operations. Today's April 24th and the exact time is 1033. In accordance with Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2025, modifying certain requirements of open meeting law and relieving public bodies of certain requirements, including the requirement that public bodies conduct its meetings in a public place that is open Physically accessible to the public, the City Council will be conducting this hearing virtually via Zoom. This hearing is being recorded. It's also being live streamed at boston.gov forward slash city dash council dash tv and broadcast on Xfinity Channel 8, RCN Channel 82, and Fios Channel 964. Written comments may be sent to the committee email at ccc.go at boston.gov. and will be made part of the record and available to all Councillors.

Public testimony will be taken at the end of this hearing and individuals will be called on in the order in which they signed up. and we'll have two minutes to testify. If you wish to sign up for public testimony and have not done so, please email our central staff liaison, Megan Cavanaugh at NEGHAN. For the Zoom link and your name will be added to the list. Today's hearing is on docket 0410, order for a hearing to examine and modernize the Boston City Charter in advance of the city's 400th anniversary. The matter was sponsored by Councillor Julian Mejia and was referred to the committee on February 25th, 2026. Today I'm joined by my colleagues in order of arrival, Councillor Ed Flynn and Councillor Julian Mejia, We'll go to the lead sponsor for any opening remarks you may have, and then we'll go to the first panel.

Councilman here, you have the Zoom. Thank you Madam Chair and I want to thank all of our panelists for being here today and I also want to excuse myself for not being on camera. It is school vacation week but a public servant's work is never done just because you have You know, family situations to handle. So my bandwidth is a little bit low. And so I'd rather make sure that you can hear me and spare you seeing me. So I just want to thank Madam Chair and thank you Again, to our panelists and everyone who has worked hard to get us to this point, our office is excited for this hearing today to start the discussion about the charter reform and modernization of the city We want to thank the advocates who have reached out to us on this issue and inspired us to file this hearing order. As our city approaches our 40th, oh my God, 400th anniversary of its founding, we are presenting

We are presented with a critical opportunity to reflect on how the city governs itself and whether its governing framework continues to meet the needs of the residents. The last time we reformed our charter was approximately 75 years ago. and since then modernization is far long overdue. We understand, however, that this will be a complex process as community decides which path is most appropriate. ideas and recommendations are developed and meaningful community input is collected. The complexity of this process multiplied by the fact that the Boston City Charter is in fact not a single document, but rather a collection of statuses, statutes, amendments, and home rule petitions. Our office is committed to the long game on this issue. We also want to thank Meg Kavanaugh on our central staff for her research to prepare today's hearing.

The biggest takeaway for this research is that we have three pathways for charter reform. An amendment for charter reform. An amendment. A charter commission which requires certified signatures of 15% of registered voters to initiate Thank you. Two, a home rule petition. This may be a pathway if there are items that we want to amend in the charter, but are maintaining the governance structure. Three, binding ballot question. One reason example, of this is the ballot question that then-Councilor Edwards led in 2021 that gave the Council the budgetary powers it now allegedly has. With this third option, there are three ways a binding ballot question can be initiated. First, the city council may

By two-thirds vote and with mayoral approval submit proposed amendments to the voters. Second, the City Council shall consider and vote upon any charter amendments formally suggested by the mayor or the City Council. Third, The City Council shall consider and vote upon any charter amendments or revisions suggested via a citizen's petition signed by 200 voters. Residents, advocates, and policymakers have raised ongoing concerns about transparency, accountability, and checks and balances, civic participation, and accessibility within Boston's current governance structure. And we are excited today to begin this conversation in the process of restoring trust in our local government and as many pathways as we can to increase civic engagement. and I look forward to listening to those folks who have already taken the lead in other spaces and places around this issue.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Councilor Mejia. Councilor Flynn, do you want to provide any opening remarks or should we go straight to the advocates panel?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm here to listen to the panel. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Okay, great. So I'll introduce the folks who have joined us today. And then Councilor Mejia, you let me know who I apologize, I don't have that in front of me of who you'd like to go first. And I apologize if I say any of your name wrong. Ilona Rabofsky, who is the Executive Director of GenUnity. Richard Young, who's the founder and executive director of Civic Lex, and then John Smith, St. Cyr, founder and executive director of the J.L. Smith Suicide Prevention Center for Young Black Boys, Inc. Councilor Mejia, do you have any preference if you want to go first?

Yeah, I believe that Richard has a hard stop, and I also believe that Enona Thank you for being here and the whole gen crew. You guys have been active participants in this process, so I believe they're going to be doing their presentation together. Is that true? Just seeing people shaking their heads so that I know... So I think that they're going to be presenting together, Madam Chair, and then John.

Okay, great. Richard, do you have access to share your screen or have you shared the presentation?

I'm not planning to use slides. I'm planning to just speak.

Okay, great. Go ahead. Thank you so much.

Hi. So first, I wanted to thank the council for their time and for allowing us to join this hearing. My name is Eleanor Bobbski. I live in East Boston, so shout out, Madam Chair. And I'm the executive director of GenUnity, a Boston-based nonprofit. We create intergenerational multiracial cross-class cohorts where people come together and build relationships across difference to learn about and take action on the issues that are impacting their communities, particularly by creating participatory spaces that elevate lived experience and institutional decision making. When Councillor Mejia connected with our founder, Jaron Chang, he mentioned our friends over at Civic Lex, who recently implemented a citizen assembly process to deliberate on city charter updates in Lexington, Kentucky. So we are super grateful to be able to introduce Richard Young, the founder and executive director so he can share a little bit more about their process and learnings. Richard, I will hand it over to you.

Thank you so much. I'm so pleased to be with you all here today. As stated, my name is Richard Young. I'm the founder and executive director of Civic Lex down here in Lexington, Kentucky, where I'm zooming in from. CivicLEX is an organization that's focused on strengthening civic health here in Lexington, Kentucky. We do that by helping folks in our community understand and get involved in civic life, connect with their neighbors, and work to reimagine decisions and how they get made in our community. The best example of that, of doing all three of those things, I think, would be the Civic Assembly that we just hosted last month here in Lexington. As stated, the Civic Assembly was focused on charter review. It is in fact the first review of the Lexington-Fayette County Charter that has taken place since the year 1998. and we are really grateful to be leading the process.

I'm gonna speak a little bit about how it came to be, how this process sort of unfolded, what outcomes came out of it and what we've learned and how that could be transferred in any way to other communities. So we were approached in late 22, early 23 by a couple of council members who were interested in doing charter review. Like I said, it had been since 1998 since the charter had been reviewed. And particularly in the 2021 redistricting process, a number of concerns were brought forth both by council members and the committee. and the community about the way that the redistricting process here in Lexington worked. And that sparked a bit of a larger conversation about charter review more broadly because the city's redistricting process is housed inside the city charter.

Over a couple years, we were in conversation with our urban county council about what it would look like to most effectively tackle charter review in a way that deeply engages the public. and what we ultimately settled on was hosting a civic assembly. And you all may be familiar with civic assemblies, but the quickest way of describing them is, I've been told not to say this because it sounds a little bit boring, but jury duty for public policy It is a representative lottery selection process where random residents from across our community are selected grouped together based on their demographics and then sort of empowered to learn about an issue, deliberate on that issue, and then ultimately come up with a recommendation. We decided to host our civic assembly in 2026 because any changes to our urban county charter

have to go on to the public ballot and we wanted that to take place in the same year that it would go on to the ballot. So the recommendation that came out of our assembly will hopefully be going on to the ballot this November. One of the conditions for us in wanting to do this was that we wanted council to stay at an arm's length. We wanted them to deeply listen to our process, to respond meaningfully to the results that came out of it. but we wanted to run this process ourselves and not have council significantly involved in the process. And so Civic Lex's role was really top to bottom running this assembly. We decided to build our assembly with 36 people and we did that via a lottery selection process. We sent out 10,000, ended up sending out 11,500 mailers. to randomly selected residential addresses using property valuation data here in Lexington.

From there, we had a number of respondents apply. They gave us their demographic information across eight demographics. and then we used a software called Panelot to build as many representative groups of 36 people that would represent Lexington within a meaningful margin of error across all eight of those demographics. So age, race, housing status, political registration, income, various other demographics. That gave us 204 panels. We randomly selected one using a bingo cage and we got panel number 24. That lottery selection process took place in January of this year. But in the process and the time before that, we spent a lot of time engaging our community onto what specifically our assembly would be looking at in the city charter.

We did a citywide public engagement process and ultimately picked the two topics for review out of eight potential ones inside our city charter. The first one is the compensation of council members. The second one was the frequency of charter review in our community. Those topics were selected because one is the most controversial in our data and one is the least controversial in our data. And we wanted to see how people would move on those controversial and not controversial issues when presented with additional evidence. So we convened these 36 people across the month of May. We compensated each one $1,200 in addition to providing them with child care and transportation stipends. They spent about 35 hours together across the month of March in seven sessions that took place at a historic university here in Lexington. During that time, they learned about local government.

Some of them had never even considered what the Urban County Council was before becoming part of this process. They learned about the two issues at hand, council compensation and charter review. We looked at what other communities do. And then they deliberated on potential changes. In their first session, they adopted a threshold voting process in which 70% of the assembly had to agree on recommendations for them to advance. We're happy to say that three recommendations, one more than we expected, came out of this process. The lowest of which had a recommendation threshold of 84.6% of our assembly members. The three recommendations that came out were increasing council compensation,

to the average annual wage in Lexington-Fayette County, which is around $59,000, just under 60. The second one was creating new accountability and attendance expectations for council members. which assembly members voted to create as a sort of package with the council compensation increase. And the third one was to actually institutionalize the process of hosting a civic assembly every eight years here in Lexington to review the urban county charter in addition to creating a new standing committee that would receive feedback on an annual basis about what needs to be reviewed in the city charter. What we've heard from folks is that it was an incredibly wonderful process for them. The assembly members that went through it were, I think,

One of them said, I don't agree with any of the recommendations that we came up with, but I thought the process was fantastic and I don't feel bad about it. One of the other things that was incredibly encouraging about it was hearing assembly members who entered this process with Pre-disposed views on one of our topics actually switch positions when presented with new evidence. One person saying that they thought the charter should be reviewed regularly At the end of the assembly, they thought that it shouldn't. And one person who didn't think the charter should be reviewed regularly at the end of the assembly thought it should. And so that is always a good sign when you have people presented with new evidence changing their positions. In terms of next steps, we are presenting out these recommendations, these three recommendations with our assembly members.

Four of them are going to be presenting alongside us in our council's general government planning committee Tuesday of next week on April 28th. From there, Council has agreed, they adopted a resolution to meaningfully respond to the recommendations. Our hope is that those recommendations will be advanced into council work session unchanged and will be placed on the ballot by council. in subsequent council meetings to go on the ballot this November in our general election. There are a lot of learnings that we have from this process, but I think The biggest takeaway for me is that hosting a civic assembly of randomly selected demographically representative of Lexington residents is an excellent way to review a public document like a city charter.

It is a topic that very few people, if anyone, knows anything about. Traditional public engagement mechanisms, large surveys, focus groups, town halls, convenings. kind of would have a limited effectiveness because people don't quite know what they are, what the charter review is, nor the implications. So this process feels uniquely suited for this particular topic. because it allows residents who might not otherwise have any sense of framework or context to learn deeply about the ramifications of their decisions, really wrestle with those ramifications, and then ultimately try to find some sense of shared consensus in a broad way particularly with supermajority voting.

So with that, that was the quickest version I could do of our civic assembly process, and I'm happy to answer any questions if appropriate.

Great, thank you. And to Ilona, is there anything you wanted to add or before we go over to our next panelist?

No, just to share that, you know, we at GenUnity have been looking more into hosting these types of assemblies and are happy to share any learnings that we come along the way if this is the direction that you choose to move in. Yeah, just happy to to be a part of it.

Great. And just quick question for you. Are you a successor agency of the Center for Economic Democracy? Or you had mentioned Aaron Tanaka. Oh, no, I said Jaron Chang. Oh, OK. OK, never mind. Thank you. No worries. We have our next panelist, John. Hello. Hi, good morning.

Good morning.

So we, if there's any way to have the mic closer to you, you're coming in a little faint. Just want to make sure that we can hear your presentation.

Okay. Is that better?

That's a lot better. Thank you so much. And you have the Zoom.

All right, thank you. So yes, my name is John Smith St. Cyr. I've been a Boston resident my whole life. I'm here because the Boston City Charter is not just about a legal structure. It also speaks to how power is organized, Who controls major decisions and whether Boston's system of government is built to produce real accountability? Boston's own charter materials describe the charter as a patchwork of statues and amendments rather than a single clear code. That matters because structure shapes power. If the structure is fragmented, difficult to follow, and overly concentrated, accountability becomes weaker and reform becomes harder. Boston's government is structured in a way that concentrates too much power in one office and leaves too little power elsewhere to meaningfully counterbalance it. Boston has already seen what it looks like when the public votes for a more democratic structure and City Hall resisted.

In 2021, Boston voters approved the ballot question asking whether the appointed school committee should be changed to one elected by Boston residents. The measure passed by a wide margin, about 79% to 21%. But that vote was advisory, not self-executing, so it did not automatically change the law. The result is that in 2026, Mayor Wu is still making school committee appointments, which shows the larger point. Even when the public votes clearly for structural change, the existing system can still keep real power concentrated at the top unless the underlying structure is actually changed. So the problem is not just whether there is public process. The problem is where actual decision-making power lives inside that process. So yes, residents can testify, hearings can be held, public comment can be taken,

But when the key leverage points are already concentrated in one office, participation becomes thinner than it looks. Sorry. By the time the public enters the process, the framework is often already set. By the time oversight begins, the executive branch has already shaped the most important terms of the decision. That is not a balance of power. And for me, this is bigger than any one budget cycle or contract. A charter should distribute authority in a way that creates meaningful checks, clear responsibility, and real counterbalance between branches. If too much power is concentrated in one office, then oversight becomes reactive instead of effective. That is why this hearing matters. The question is not whether Boston has hearings, votes, or formal procedures. The question is whether Boston's governance structure is balanced enough to produce accountability before decisions harden.

Not just commentary after they do. That matters the most in a city that says it values democracy, transparency, and public trust. A system can be legal and still be overly centralized. A system can allow participation and still give too little influence to anyone outside of the executive branch. A system can look functional on paper while producing weak checks in practice. That is why modernization has to mean more than cleanup. It has to mean structural change. It should mean clearer lines of authority and responsibility. It should mean stronger legislative power, stronger oversight, and a direct rebalancing of authority away from a system where too much power remains concentrated. And it should mean a serious examination whether the current strong mayoral structure leaves too little power anywhere else to function as a real check. So I'm not saying that government should be unable to act.

I am saying no office should hold so much power, so much structural advantage, that accountability becomes weak by design. A city charter should not make counterbalance difficult. It should not make oversight secondary. And it should not leave the public entering the process after the most important decisions have already been shaped. Boston has had a charter commission in 1947. Its work led to three options of government structure being put before voters in 1949. And I think that history matters because it shows Boston has confronted the structure of city government before and has already recognized that the organization of power is not permanent, untouchable, or beyond public reconsideration. The question was put directly to the people once before, and there is no reason structural change should be treated as off limits now.

While Boston is approaching its 400th anniversary, that makes this the right time to ask a basic question. Is this structure being preserved because it still serves the city well? or because concentrated power becomes normalized once institutions get used to it. A modern city should not rely on a governing framework that is fragmented, difficult to navigate, and overly centered in the executive branch. A modern democracy should be built to distribute power, clarify responsibility, and strengthen accountability. So my point is straightforward. Boston does not need a charter that functions. Boston does not just need a charter that function. Boston needs a charter that is structurally stronger, one that creates a better balance of power, one that gives oversight, and one that makes accountability easier to enforce.

and also one that does not confuse public participation with actual public influence. Because if power is too concentrated, accountability will always be weaker than it should be. If oversight enters too late, it cannot function as a real check. And if structural reform avoids the question of power, then it is not real reform. I mean, I think that is the issue this hearing should confront. Thank you.

Thank you, John, and to our panelists for their presentations. I just want to acknowledge, I apologize, they've been here for a while, Councilor Brayden, and Councilor Weber have joined the Zoom. We'll now turn it over to questions starting with the lead sponsor, Councilor Mejia. We'll do six minutes and then when you see my camera come on, that means that six minutes has just happened. But feel free to start counseling here and then we'll go in order of arrival.

Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Okay, great. Thank you again to the panelists and thank you to my colleagues for joining us in this discussion. So I want to just kind of start off with Richard first. If you can please describe the relationship between your nonprofit and your local government. For example, what are some of the benefits? Thank you for joining us. Sometimes there's friction, and I just would like to know how you've been navigating that. And then also, what are some of the issues that you are facing in Lexington that led to the Civic Assembly? I know for us here, In Boston, a lot of the work has been about voice and how people participate and folks really wanting to feel like

They have a real meaningful seat at the table, not like the checking the box type of situation. So this is coming from trying to understand the appetite from residents and elected officials. What's that been like? and then I'm asking you all my questions just so that you know.

I'm writing them down. You're fine.

Okay, good job. And I'm just curious, how did you secure the funding for compensating the Civic Assembly? Thank you so much for joining us. On the ground are usually the ones that are not getting paid to do the work, and then the big-time consultants and the Harvard law folks are making thousands of dollars off of the Boston Public Schools, but the real stakeholders... you know don't even get a small stipend for showing up you know so just curious about kind of like how you all are grappling what that what does that look like and then um yeah and I have questions for everybody else but let me just start off with you because I know your time is limited

I appreciate that. Yeah, so I will try and answer your questions in the order that you asked. So we have, I think, an interesting and complex relationship with our local government. We both partner with them on projects to reimagine how public decisions get made. So we've worked with local government on reforming the structure of public meetings and the process of public Participation in those meetings. We've done comprehensive reviews of our city's boards and commissions. We've worked with them on reimagining the process of Long-term land use planning. So we have a long history over our nine years of partnering with government to consider new forms of decision making. I'll also say we also are a news organization and report on local government. So it's a little bit of a complicated relationship. I think it was essential for us to do it outside of local government.

One of the things that we heard from our assembly members is that if it had been local government itself running every aspect of the assembly, they might have been a little bit more suspicious. I don't think that precludes a government from doing it itself. I think that absolutely can happen, but I think it's just an additional consideration that That should be part of the formula of decision making. I think that there were also, we were able to move, even though this process took about three years from sort of initial planning through execution and we'll probably go for another year. For now, we were able to move, I think, a little bit more quickly than local government would have been able to. And I think we were able to, we just had a little bit more freedom to like engage with national experts. And it just, I think it just was a little bit easier for us to do that.

In terms of the issues that we are encountering in Lexington, it's all the same thing that it sounds like you all are grappling with. How do everyday residents have A meaningful say in the decisions that shape the community, right? I think a suspicion of government. I think frustration with traditional government decision-making processes. I mean, all of those things I think are very similar to some of the issues that we're experiencing here in Lexington. And I'll say, I've said this to a number of people over the past couple weeks, that this room, that when you randomly select people, and it was true truly random um it uh i cannot overemphasize that enough it these went to random residential addresses apartments homes random people applied then random people um were built into these panels, and then we randomly selected panels. It was like triple randomization.

You get people that don't traditionally participate, right? I think we all know the typical people that show up to government meetings, and we love them. They're great. It's good for them to show up. but we really need to broaden who participates and this really did that and and the thing that was like I think so special about it is it was the least I've been in in a really long time. People were genuinely enthusiastic to participate. People were excited to show up. Frustrations with government, frustrations with how decisions have been made in the past, but most of them didn't have the experience of showing up to public meetings to sort of... Jade them in a way in advance. And so I wouldn't have traded that for the world. It was incredible. It was just an incredible experience being in a room filled with people that are, again,

exactly demographically representative of our community, and people that have never participated in decision-making like this. And I'll say that the funding, on your last question on funding, it took us about two and a half years to raise the funds from local donors, members, grants, to make this possible. We did our assembly for a very, very low cost, far lower than most other assemblies cost. Our budget was around 225,000. I think most assemblies are closer to half a million dollars, if not higher. I wish we had had a little bit more money, but that's what we had to work with, and so that's what we worked with. The expensive part of the assembly is the staff time. It is really all of the planning that goes into this.

It is the making sure that we are appropriately caring for and supporting our assembly members, making sure that we have all of the time and energy to do the educational resources they need to make an effective decision and an informed decision. So that was the most money-intensive part of it. But we also spent almost $70,000 directly on our assembly members. All of them, like I said, received a $1,200 stipend for their participation for about that 35 hours worth of work. They all received transportation stipends if they needed one. Many of them used that for bus fare. Some of that used that for car rentals. Some folks didn't have access to technology. to call a car rental and weren't on a bus route so we actually reserved a taxi service for them.

They had child care seconds if they needed it and of course we fed everyone many many meals across our assembly.

Thank you. And I see that the chair has come back on screen and I don't know if I have two more minutes. Oh, thank you. All right, so my last two minutes, one is for Iona. I hope I said it right, and I'm sure you're going to correct me. And I apologize. In Los Angeles, the Charter Reform Commission issued a formal letter endorsing Rewrite LA's an organization similar to Civic Lex's role in Lexington, efforts to help expand public participation and committing to considering the recommendations they bring forward. Why is it important to have this type of collaboration between community and government? And for John, my last question, and then I'll come back for my second round. I'd like for you to answer this, please. What barriers exist for public engagement in city government as it stands now? And how can we do better? What processes and norms need to be changed? So those are the two questions that I have for the last two minutes that I have.

Thank you. It is Ilana. Ilana. The spelling is not helpful at all. Yeah, I mean, I think that... A lot of how I would answer that question has already been said. I think that having a participatory process where people are in rooms with people and making deliberations with folks that they may never not usually be in the same room as, just does a lot for our civic strength as a community. I think more importantly, as we've mentioned, like I think that it does help to sort of restore trust and process. I think people, whether at a local or a national level at this point have some skepticism on how much their actual voice counts and having a governing body institute or, you know, Be engaged and bought into a process like this really sort of turns the power back over to the people. I'll keep my answer short because I know that there's another question. So thank you. Thank you.

I think some of the barriers that I've been able to identify has been accessibility and then power. When you think about like the city council hearings, they're scheduled 2 o'clock in the afternoon or 10 o'clock in the morning. Usually, you know, residents are at work. and they can't make it. They're dealing with families, doctor's appointments. It's just not accessible. I make it to some of the hearings and sometimes I'm the only person there or maybe it's like two or three other residents. And then it's so much. Things get decided in those rooms and it's not any real public participation. But even with that, I think power is still a major barrier because If we do show up, there's no say that our voice is going to shape anything. There's nothing that says that

Our city council has to vote with what we believe in or our thoughts and ideas. It's nothing to say that the mayor has to take into consideration residents' voices. Yes, accessibility matters, but once we are there, how are we making sure our voice actually means something and it is not just a performative show?

Thank you for that. I'll wait for my next round. Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Thank you. Just flagging for central staff, Councilor Culpepper is here. I think he may be. in the attendees list under the iPad designation. So just flagging that. Next, we'll go to Councilor Flynn. You have six minutes.

Is it my internet? Because I can't hear anything.

No. Councilor Flynn, are you available for your questions? He is on, but he's not putting his mic on or video, so we'll go to the person who came in next, and I apologize. I don't know if it counts. Let's see here. Brayden. You have six minutes for your questions, and then we'll circle back to Councillor Flynn.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you. And thank you for the presentation about Civic Assemblies. I am a big fan. I've been following the Civic Assembly process in Ireland where the national government has used Civic Assemblies to put forward referenda questions on big, big issues. The most important for me being same-sex marriage, which they had a civic assembly for the whole country. And then they put it on the ballot and it passed by 73% of the population voted. in support of same-sex marriage in Ireland. The other issues that they grappled with in the civic assembly were abortion and divorce, I think. I'm a big fan and I'm interested to see how it worked locally.

I think it's really important to emphasize, if you could sort of... Go over again the selection. The selection of your members. I know it's totally random, but do people... Thank you very much. How you ended up with the questions? Was there a range of questions? Who generated the questions that were going to be considered by the Civic Assembly? Those are the two questions I had at the moment.

Great, yeah, so I'll start with the selection process. So we decided against allowing open application process and we required it based on randomly selected residential addresses. So we got a list of every single residential address in Fayette County from our property evaluation administrator. And then we used a script basically to randomly select 10,000 of those. And those are the addresses where we sent these postcards that had essentially was the invitation to apply. Everyone in the household that received the postcard could apply if you were over the age of 18. I'll say we did use a different selection process to pick one youth representative on council under the age of 18. and I'm happy to go into that process if you would like, but 35 of the members were selected using this random residential address population.

so when someone got the postcard they would apply using a QR code or some we would bring them a paper copy if they called and we could also take applications over the phone and that gave us their demographic information. We anonymize that demographic information with an individual code for each person and then use that to build our representative panels. I'll say that when someone applied, they had to provide their address so that we could verify that they received a postcard. And the main reason for that was to try and limit the number of people that, you know, that had that, you know, that were outside. It's just basically a way to make sure that we were truly reaching random people. And we had a lot of people ask if they could apply, even if they didn't get a postcard. And we sadly had to say no, but you can volunteer to help us if you would like.

So the selection process went pretty smoothly. We had a good response rate on our postcards and we felt really great about our panel. In terms of how do we generate questions, so we decided to focus on, for the most part, a single article inside our charter for this review, and that was the article focused on the Urban County Council. and there are a number of reasons for that this is our first time out of the gate doing this and no better way of saying this we wanted to sort of limit the potential damage that could be done from a charter review process to the council since they were the body that approached us about doing this. And so we really were, it was really asking questions about accountability and representation in government. via the legislative body.

So we had eight potential topics and we used a public engagement process that reached thousands of residents. to narrow that down to our two final topics. And then we wrote the mandates for the assembly based on those two topics. in consultation with an advisory group of residents and experts here in our community that helped us all the way through the process. I think you're on mute.

Yes, so in terms of educating, you know, you're going to go to the ballot this fall with these changes to the city charter. or your charter. In that process, were people able to watch it on TV? On YouTube or whatever, watch the deliberations and hear the conversation, all the pros and cons of all the different questions as a way to educate the populace and how many people checked into that process or wasn't. Not just a group of 36 people talking to themselves in a room all on their own, you know?

Yeah, sometimes it was a group of 36 people talking to themselves in one room. But no, all of our sessions were open to the public. We began most sessions with about an hour of closed session. That was really designed for relationship building purposes, right? Giving the assembly members a space to be a little bit more open and vulnerable with each other. because you know these are people that are not used to being on television they're not used to having all of the public eyes on them and so we wanted to try and strike a careful balance between giving them the space to build relationships and to get comfortable with each other while also making sure that we're being open and transparent so most of the sessions we had about a An hour that was closed and then the remainder of the session for the larger sessions was about five hours of open. So we had news media there filming. Every single session was streamed live on government television.

We're really grateful to the government here for providing that service. It was enormous to have that, not just that, That ability for people to watch live, but that permanent record of everything that was said being archived forever on government television. And yeah, we had tons of members of the community show up. We also had a public input session. So we had a number of community members come to that and speak. We had a number of community members coming to watch. We had a lot of people talking to us about watching it on TV and watching it on the news here. We also released updates after every single session to help our community understand what deliberations were made and sort of what direction people were going.

And in terms of, were there any surprises in terms of your, you know, things that people felt strongly about or... Were there any sort of things that surprised you in the process or any takeaways from that? I'm sure there's a few learning points.

Yeah, a lot of surprises. Well, I think the biggest surprise is that we expected them to put out two recommendations and they put out three. That was the biggest surprise. You know, honestly, I think the thing that was the most, beyond that, the thing that was the most surprising to me is I think, you know, We've done a lot of public engagement on an annual, I mean, annually we reach, you know, 30, 40,000 residents across our community. We reach a lot of people. We host over 150 events every year. We're on the ground a lot with our community. The thing that was most surprising to me about this was the genuine joy and enthusiasm that these folks had for simply getting the invitation.

Yeah.

Right. And like, you know, a lot of times for better or for worse, the people that participate are the folks that typically show up. Right. They have a stake in the outcome or it's part of their professional obligation to be there or They're someone who has the time and resources to participate and engage with local government. The assembly really leveled the playing field and brought out people that would not typically participate. And I found that they had far more joy in their participation and enthusiasm about it than the typical person that we've engaged in the past. And that's not to disparage anyone. I think it's just to say that that Watching a room of people that are built to disagree with each other, do so with joy and happiness. was like, you know, in our modern times, quite a bomb.

Yeah, it was wonderful.

Good. Well, thank you. I'm inspired to think about doing this more locally as well. But thank you, Madam Chair. That's all the questions I had for now.

Thank you, Councillor Breadon. We're going to circle back to Councillor Flynn if he's available. Okay, and then also flagging to Councilor Culpepper, I believe that central staff is trying to invite you to be a panelist. So if you just want to click yes on that. Okay, we'll go to Councilor Weber.

Hello. Thank you, Chair. I guess in terms of the city charter, is there anything in there? I'm just thinking back to when I started working as a lawyer, I represented my group of farm workers and, you know, I had a lot of... I focus on cotton gin workers who were exempted from overtime pay in the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act. And, you know, people thought that there was like an economic justification for that. It turned out it was You know, really just part of FDR to get the New Deal legislation for minimum wage and overtime passed, made a deal with Southern Democrats that basically exclude Black laborers from minimum wage and overtime requirements and a way to do that was to be excluding farm workers and and other domestic workers from these rules.

So I guess in terms of when we look at our city charter, are there things that we feel like are baked in? John, you talked about just generally how we have the government structure, but I heard your comments on that. Is there anything else in the city charter that really you know we're sort of we just think is there for there must have been a good reason for that 1910 or something but um you know that that we really need to take a look at and maybe, I don't know if you saw anything in Lexington, cried out for reform.

I'm happy to speak to Lexington very briefly. I think there are so many things that need to be updated in the Charter. And that is one of the reasons that our assembly members, I mean, just hearing sort of colloquially through the process and through testimony that we heard from public officials here, that is one of the reasons that the assembly members voted. by an 88.8% supermajority to create a standing charter review process that requires the charter to be reviewed every eight years. I mean, it's from very small things, right? Everyone in the charter is referred to as a he. And there are, of course, people that refer to themselves differently in our local government.

and from things like that to major structural issues that need to be updated. There are a number of things that need to be reviewed and potentially altered moving forward. And so that is the reason that they created that structural review process.

Yeah, I don't think I can speak to just one specific thing that might be outdated or not relevant. For me, it's just like the overall Way where power is concentrated that should be really evaluated and looked at. So, yeah.

And I can just quickly jump in as well. I know when we had our initial conversation with Councilor Mejia, She mentioned, you know, that there are like laws that aren't being used or fines that are either too low or not being implemented. And so I didn't get into specifics there, but I did like Google Boston city charter as a citizen to try to figure out like oh like you know just to try to educate myself and I think the the fact that it is a series of documents that are I'm challenging to find and put together in one place. To me, that speaks to something that it should be at least a document that's accessible to a citizen.

Okay, and then can you just I apologize, I missed the beginning. In terms of the process for amending, what are they doing? Is it different here than in Lexington? Does it have to be Does it just get put up for a vote for the city? How does it work?

I think if we're looking for more structural change, then it would be a charter commission. And that process looks like Basically, nine people would go up for election that the people would vote on. They'd select nine people to be on their charter commission. and then the Charter Commission would have, I think it's 10 months to come up with a reformed charter and they would put that in front of the people to vote on.

In Lexington, there are two paths to the ballot. Our city can really do anything to do a charter review, which is how we were approached to review the charter. There is also a charter review commission process in there, but the city doesn't necessarily have to follow it. The two processes or two paths to develop any charter change has to be amended to put on the public ballot. Council can either vote to put something on the ballot or there can be a public petition of 15% of the voters in the past mayoral election.

Okay, well, I'm sorry, I don't have any more questions. Chair, I'm going to hand it back to you.

Okay, you're relinquishing your time?

Yes, I guess that's what we're calling it.

Okay, yeah, no worries. So there was actually three different ways that was talked about to amend this. We had talked about a binding ballot question, there's a charter commission, and there's another Way. So I just wanted to clarify that there are three separate ways, but happy to send more information that we got based on this presentation.

Yeah, thanks.

Yep. Okay. Councilor Culpepper, is he in? Oh, a homeowner petition is the third one. Sorry, thanks to team. I don't see Councilor Culpepper, so we'll circle back to Councilor Mejia for her additional questions.

Yeah, thank you. And just for Councilor Weber's question, in my opening remarks, I laid out the various pathways. With a little bit more scaffolding so you can have somebody from your team just synthesize those notes. and so that might be helpful. All right, so I am curious for both of you, With both Civic Lex and Rewrite LA, they're using civic assemblies in their processes where residents are chosen randomly in order to have representation. and sample their city. Why are civic assemblies being chosen across the country? Could a civic assembly work here in Boston? And if so, how do you see that? And I'll tell you this. I am more of a community organizer. I'm not a lawyer. I am not a policy wonk. I am just somebody who grew

Thank you so much for joining us. And oftentimes what I see is that engagement, you know, people are just frustrated. And so this is one of the reasons why I was so super excited. to explore ways that we can rebuild trust and create as many pathways for us to have better relationships with our residents. And so that's why we are really excited about exploring this as a tool and a tactic for restoration of trust in government. So I'm just curious, you know, how would a civic assembly work here in Boston? and how do we give people the power in that process? I'm gonna ask you a few questions, so whoever wants to answer. What does good governance and good government look like, okay?

We talk a lot about, oh, everybody has a voice and then people come in and tell us what they want and then we don't execute against those deliverables. So if you could tell me what good governance looks like, I would really appreciate that. And what are major issues we're facing in Boston's local government that need to be addressed? Like, you know, and maybe Richard, you may not know too much because you're not living in Boston, but I'm sure you travel around the country and you probably have heard some things about us. So Boston politics are an appetite So I'm just curious, you know, what structures, norms, and processes do we face or that you believe we face that we should consider changing? And the big question here, the final bonus round question is, how do we restore trust in our city's government? So I asked a lot. I don't know who wants to go first or what order. You don't have to answer them all.

But I asked enough questions to allow for our panelists to take the ones that they feel most passionate about. and dive right into those. Oh, for real, none of y'all like them? Okay, go Ilana.

Oh, sorry. I can just jump in quickly. I think in terms of how this could work in Boston, there's a lot of different ways that it can work. But as an organization that is bringing together everyday Bostonians to grapple with issues, on a regular basis. We have a lifetime community, an active lifetime community of 450 members in the greater Boston area. I know that's small compared to the scale that we'd be talking about in terms of some of this participation. but just wanted to echo like what I've seen and heard firsthand with our community members really echoes a lot of what Richard shared earlier, which is just that people are excited to learn a pathway to even feeling like they have a voice, whether those are people that have tried to have a voice before and failed or folks that hadn't really been activated at any point up until this point or not, and like not really tried.

I think that Boston is a is such a great city with so many like driven smart and many other crazy, crazily engaged folks in a lot of ways. But there's also a lot of people that haven't been engaged. And I think that this process, if we were to move into a sort of civic assembly process, I think there's a great space for that because we're passionate about where we live and I think that bringing in more opportunities have everyday residents sort of build trust, build that collective knowledge and really feel like they have some power to drive change, I think would have impacts far and beyond just the specific issues that we would mention. on a modernization of the cop charter.

Thank you. We're definitely, politics is a sport here. We're fanatics when it comes to that. And, you know, to your point of there are some folks who don't feel heard or not as civically Thank you. Thank you. Non-English speakers so that they understood what neighborhood council meetings were about, what civic associations do because they make a lot of decisions that impact Everyone, so that we can make it a little bit more accessible to folks who are not English speakers, but they live in the neighborhoods, they pay taxes, are part of that civic life, but they had no voice. And so we're always trying to explore ways to do that. And I'm gonna follow up with John regarding this power, how do we share power?

With this whole idea of having civic assemblies or a charter commission, how do you see that as a way to activate people who don't feel heard or who haven't been engaged in the process kind of like as a way to re-engage communities. How do you see this kind of serving as a tool to do that?

Yeah, I think the charter commission would actually be a great tool to do that because it's not appointed. It's not an appointed commission. It's elected from the people. And when they do come together, It's not them making the final decision. They're then again putting it in front of the people to vote on. So I think in essence, what that does is it moves the power back into the hands of the people to decide. How their government is going to be shaped and what it's going to look like moving forward. So I think a charter commission would be great and Getting people more excited and more engaged in city government because it's not performative. They can make actually like real changes. And so, yeah, I think that's something that's really concrete.

Thank you for that. I traveled, I had to go all the way to a different country, to Chile, actually. In 2022, I believe it was, worked. with a cohort of folks on the national level who were looking at civic discourse and Chile went through their rewriting the entire constitution. and I was there for some of that and I got to see it at play and it was such a beautiful thing to see to Richard's point. in terms of how random it was that it was a process in which people who were the least likely to be engaged became the most likely to understand and inform what are the things that need to happen because those who are living the realities usually have the best ideas of what needs to change. And so I was really inspired by what Chili,

The country was able to do in terms of activation at a time when they were going through protests and there was a lot of turmoil politically there but rewriting the constitution was with that and that was also citizens led was really inspiring and one of the things that I learned from that experience, and I'm just curious if you all can talk to it. I'm sure that you probably did not answer 101 questions that I had, but I want to get this one in here, is that within their process, they had different... committees that were tackling issues of like housing, issues of education, issues of public safety. So even within their processes, they had different committee members. Can you... Is that something that Richard or you guys have seen in other cities where there is a commission or the civic assemblies, but then there are folks who are doing work

Specifically around different issues or not? Just curious.

Yeah, absolutely. There's for sure a precedent of that. Civic assemblies are somewhat new to the United States over the past couple decades. But I think people are using them to tackle all sorts of different issues. There are also folks talking about using permanent assemblies that could essentially be an advisory body that sits alongside legislative bodies like an urban county council. or sorry, I'm so predisposed to saying Urban County Council because we have emergency county government. And I think, but I think like the big thing, right, is the The randomization and the selection process for any of these, right? I think the piece of that that is so transformative, like you mentioned, is

inviting people who would otherwise likely not participate at all to have not just a seat at the table, but to have some real meaningful decision-making power. I think that is just, it is truly powerful. And I'll say I went into our assembly process somewhat skeptical because they take a long time, a lot of work, they're expensive. But I've kind of come out on the other side a bit of a convert. I definitely see the power that they can have in making really tough decisions and in making decisions on things that maybe the government itself shouldn't be deciding, particularly issues about itself. So those are all things that I've certainly observed over the past couple of years.

Thank you for that. And I'm sure my time is up. But one more question, Madam Chair, if you don't mind, as I'm curious, If you could tell me, who are the naysayers? Who are the folks who would be against something? Because, you know, you got to know who your targets are, right? At the end of the day, we're here all... Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for joining us. are not in favor of charter reform or things that change government structures.

Who are those folks so that I know what I'm up against and what we need to prepare for? And what are their arguments? What do they say about why we shouldn't do that? So who are they and what type of... You know, rhetoric should we expect to hear from that opposite side of the fence.

I'm happy to speak a little bit about our experience. I think the thing that, you know, I've found that assemblies are actually a pretty easy case to make to people. It's confusing and alienating at first. I think people don't understand it. It's not something that they are used to knowing about. But particularly when you talk about that selection process being representative, you start to see people's minds change a little bit. You know, Lexington's a politically contested city. It's a fairly, you know, it's on the blue side of purple, but it is a purple city. And I think, you know, When there are, whether it's certain political ideologies that always feel like they're in the minority or certain

uh lived experiences or certain perspectives um that feel like they aren't typically at the table when you go through extreme lengths to ensure that they are at the table, they start to come around a little bit, right? So there are a number of people that I was talking to that are like, oh, more conservative perspectives are never part of discussions in local government. And I was like, well, Whatever percentage of our county is Republican, that is how many Republicans will be on This assembly. And they're like, oh, so it's just what the county is. Yeah, it makes sense. The same with people. Our community has a significant problem. 90% of the people on our city's boards and commissions are homeowners. So that is a huge perspective about issues in our community where folks that rent, 50% of our community isn't at the table.

And so we were able to talk to tenant groups here in our community and say, yeah, 50% of this assembly are going to be renters. And so it really starts to change this sort of Traditional calculus that we have about who shows up and who participates and who has a meaningful say in our community when you actually are being fully representative and it's designed to be that way. I think the big pushback that we got is like maybe things in the charter don't need to change. And that is, you know, That is a perspective that is a little bit challenging to get past. I will say, going into our assembly, Not quite 50%, but a pretty substantial group of our assembly members said that the charter didn't need to be reviewed regularly. and they came out with 88.8% of them recommending that the charter be reviewed regularly. So I think

The way that to get through to people that at least our experience of people that think that things don't need to be looked at, things don't need to be updated is talking to them about the issues, very concrete issues about what could be changed and what could be addressed. And I think, you know, trying to make the case that like All government should always be looking at itself and examining its own structures and trying to determine how they can better serve the community that they represent. That is the sort of promise at the heart of self-governance. And so, I think that there are clear arguments that can resonate even with skeptics. Again, I went into this process as a skeptic and I'm coming out feeling pretty good about it.

Thank you. And I see that the chair has already surfaced yet again. So my time is up. And if there's an opportunity, I'll end with my third round of questions. Thank you.

Thank you so much. I just want to go to... So it looks like Councilor Flynn left. Either Councilor Breadon or Councilor Weber, if you have any questions, feel free to put your... Yes.

I'm checking out... I'm checking out your Civic Lex website and learning more about the work you do. Very impressive. I had a question about, in terms of your demographic spread, So you ended up with like 36 members for this civic assembly. I'm wondering, did you have folks represented, the folks with disabilities and Folks with English wasn't their first language. Incorporating a different... Making sure that you have, I'm sure you did a good job, but those are two particular spaces that I was wondering were those people incorporated. 36 doesn't seem like a huge number of people at the end of the day.

Yeah, absolutely. So I can speak a little bit to that. So we decided to use, to go with demographics that we could get really clear data from the census. and from other sources to build our eight categories. Most assemblies, particularly in Europe, are really looking across two or three demographic groups, and we were trying to hit many more with eight. We did make a determination early on that language was going to be for our first assembly. Too much of a lift for us as a relatively small organization to do our assembly in multiple languages. And we recognize fully that is a barrier. A lot of people in our community speak languages other than English as their primary or even only language.

our experience over the past eight years we've run many programs bilingually or trilingually or some even in five languages and that the our experience has been that every aspect of it from top to bottom to give someone a really fair shot in participating has to be available in that language in order to help those folks participate fully and we were just concerned that we weren't going to be able to do that with this assembly particularly for the deliberation pieces um if we do an assembly again i think that we that's something that we would like to remedy um but for our first time out of the gate um we we made the determination to do the assembly only in english we did have a number of people who english wasn't um their first language necessarily So that is something of note. But if I'm able to share my screen, I'm happy to just very briefly show you the demographics that we went with. Let's see if I can do this here.

um this is uh these are the demographics this is from a presentation that we're doing to our to our council um next uh on Tuesday um but on the right you will see uh the gold demographics which are the demographics of Lexington over the age of 18 and then what our assembly was. So this is for age and race and ethnicity. You'll see it's almost exactly identical to our community. Political registration and council district. You'll see again, it's almost exactly representative of our community. Sex and education. Education was our one outlier where we lost a few people along the way. that just didn't have the time and space to do all seven of the sessions. So it ended up throwing that demographic out a little bit. And then housing status and income.

and we ended up a little bit off on income with more people being low income than would be representative in our community. So across all eight of those demographics, we feel really good that we hit all of them.

That's good. And I have one more question. Just walk through my head. In terms of the participation, you did 25 hours of deliberation. 35. 35 hours. Over seven sessions. Okay. And in terms of funding then, how did you, did your county government put money in or how did you have to fundraise for it or?

We did fundraise for it. We actually told our government we didn't want them to put money in because we wanted to This is our first time doing this process, and we wanted to make sure that there was no perception of or reality of influence on the direction that we were taking our assembly. And for better or for worse, I think that had there been substantial investment from local government that that could have been a perception. That being said, if we do the assembly again, I would love for the government to come to the table to at least match, if not exceed the match of what we raised. We raised about $225,000. from accommodation of local donors, our membership in National Philanthropy. Then we also dug into our reserves to make this happen. And

yeah um yeah sounds good that's how we did it excellent thank you thank you madam chair that's all I had Thank you.

Thank you so much. Councilor Mejia, we'll do a third round and we'll do four minutes. Thank you. I see your camera is on.

My bad. Just had one quick question. Sorry. In terms of like So I guess there's three options for us in terms of actually rewriting the city charter, where, you know, there's, I think, it's like getting signatures to have the issue put on the ballot, then elected Commission to rewrite the charter or there's a home rule petition. or there's another one I can't remember at the moment. But I think John said the elected charter commission would be the way to go. Ms. Hrabowski and Mr. Young, I guess, based on your experience, do you have any thoughts on which pathway would produce the best results?

There's a hand up. I'll say I'm not super familiar with all the ins and outs of your all-star review process. I'm terribly too familiar with the ones of ours.

Yeah, I guess, I mean, in terms of... electing a commission to draft a charter to put it up for a vote. I think the home rule would be the city council drafting a charter and doing, so like, I don't know, how should we think about those two options?

So I'll say for, again, for our perspective, our council, in our city charter, there is a... A provision that the council can form a 20 person charter review commission to look at the charter and do it not as sort of an official commission of the local government. They, in the 1998 review, they opted not to do that. Instead approaching our city's Chamber of Commerce and asking them to put together a commission. And then for this one, we did it. And so that was also not done through that process. I think that the Whatever option would enable more and greater participation by residents would be the option that I would recommend.

The 1998 Charter Review, that was, you know, here in Lexington, there was not a whole lot of public engagement. And so the things that went on the ballot failed. The same with past charter reviews. So I think the more opportunities for the public to have a really meaningful say in the decision making around charter review, I think the better. And so whatever of those processes would enable that would be the ones that I would encourage you to pursue.

I think you're on mute.

Council Weber, are you good? Oh, you're on mute.

I'm on mute. Yes. Sorry. No, I'm good. I saw Councilor Breadon had her hand up. Thank you very much.

Yeah, I think just in the local context, the City of Newton had a Charter review process in 2017 that went to the ballots and it was ultimately rejected by the voters so We could go through the whole process. That's why I think this civic assembly approach seems to be a way to Thank you very much. and not necessarily be very well informed. So I think it's certainly worth considering and it's an interesting approach that's worth looking at. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Councilor Birden. Councilor Mejia?

Yes, thank you. And I guess the reason why I'm so excited about all of this because In 2000, oh my God, like 150 years ago, I worked at MTV trying to get young people engaged in politics. In every single state that I went to, every single young person said, Why should I vote? They don't listen to us and they don't care about young people. And that to me was... I think what set me on a path around making sure that people have a voice because representation is, people are never going to listen to folks who don't vote. Obviously, that's why, because their votes don't matter. That's how they feel. And so this for me is, I hope, the long game of how we're going to restore civic engagement. We don't even have civic you know

Thank you for joining us. to get people engaged in their own lives and for me given everything that's happening on the political landscape nationally I believe that Boston locally has an opportunity to join other cities and figuring out how we are going to not only just restore trust in government but build meaningful pathways for real civic engagement because That I believe is what's going to change the way we technically do business in Boston. And so my understanding is that You know, aside from a home rule petition, everything that we introduced, you know, all of the recommendations that we...

We would have they will end up on the ballot for citizens to vote on so I think that that also is another opportunity to build that political muscle because you're educating the public about something and then they go out even if they don't vote for anyone that's you know up for re-election or or running for office they at least vote for a ballot initiative that is near and dear to them, right? So that either way I think we're gonna win. And the reason why I asked who are the folks who are most likely Unwilling to do this type of reform, my hypothesis is that people who are in power want to maintain power. And so this is a power sharing exercise here in the city of Boston. And I think that everyone who is engaged in this process needs to understand The importance of really what representation is. And so I'm excited. This is the long game.

I have no expectations that we're going to get this through the council. Probably not even in this term. This is like... To Richard's point, you guys had been at it for a while and change is hard, especially when people don't want it. So we are committed. to continue this work whether I'm in office or out it doesn't really matter I'm committed to this work because we have to give people back the power so I'm just letting everybody know that we're going to be continuing to move forward. So you've been advised and you've been warned. And lastly, Richard, and I see John, you have your hand up. I'd like to know, you know, for me, young people, are the reason why we do most of the work that we do here. And I'm just curious, how did you guys go about electing your youth representation? Because... Diversity is important, age is important, but young people usually get left out of everything.

And every single board or commission that I've established in my office, we've always had a direct connection Youth voice in that like board or commission just to make sure that we have youth representation. So I'm curious, how did you go about making that happen?

Yeah, so very briefly, I'll just say that we have a pretty robust youth civic education program that we house at Civic Lex. We teach between three and four thousand students. We actually use that network to allow self-nominations so students could nominate themselves to participate but we also collected their demographics and so we factored their demographics into the larger demographic representation pool. We did build just one seat in there for folks under the age of 18. For a variety of reasons, we made that design decision. that, you know, youth privacy reasons, given that all this is going to be on TV. We required parental accompaniment to a lot of the sessions for a variety of reasons.

and so we ended up having one 16 year old high school student participate and yeah she was wonderful. and actually she's going to be one of the three members or one of the four members that is presenting to our council on Tuesday. So we're really excited about that.

If I can just jump in really quick, sorry. We invited Richard to this, and he informed us that he had a hard stop at 1145, which we were I'm going to try to honor, so I wanted to just give Richard, thank Richard for joining us and also give you the opportunity to move on to your next meeting as well.

Yeah, thank you, Richard. Yeah, if anyone has any further questions, you're welcome to email me at richard at civiclex.org. And if you can share my email, that would be great. But I really enjoyed talking with you all today. and thank you so much. I hope you continue considering doing a civic assembly for your charter review.

Thank you. And Jeremy had your hand up. I saw before my time is up

Yes, I just wanted to make a quick point about the Charter Commission. And so over the span of the 10 months that they have to put together the reform charter, They are required to engage the public in hearings over that time. So I think it's just another level of engagement there because not only is it the nine members elected by the people, But those people are then coming together to bring the community and to have these hearings to shape like what the charter will look like. So I think if we think about just resident engagement and like civic life, I think that's a great opportunity.

Thank you, and unfortunately, as always, my time is up, so I will not... Well, if you have any more questions, Councilor Mejia, I'm sorry. Okay, sorry, because I saw you there, so I was just like, oh no.

Sorry, no, I, yeah, if you have any other questions, please feel free. I don't think any of our colleagues have any more questions. So this is your time. Thank you.

Thank you so much for the grace. Yeah, I think as we continue to navigate this conversation and scaffold it, you know, I think about participatory budget. We passed that in 2021. which gave the city council the power to amend the mayor's budget. And we also had the participatory budget Thank you for joining us. A percentage of dollars that they can then decide. So we have been dabbling with participatory democracy now for some time. And so there's some good examples. And I'm just curious, you know, if any of you are familiar with the participatory budget process and

Any reflections on the implementation of it and what we can learn about what is working and what is not working as we continue so that we're not replicating bad Policy, so that we can get it right. Can anyone talk to me about what's working and what's not as it relates to participatory budgeting? If you're following any of that work.

So I actually was at the hearing yesterday on the participatory budget. And I think So prior to the hearing, I didn't have too much information on it, but I think Culpepper raised some great questions surrounding how input from all areas of the city is like, sorry. He made points around just like making sure like Every district is included in planning. And so he had made a recommendation that like maybe it's like each district gets to come up with an idea that can better shape like their district. on where the funding can be spent. So I just think about maybe just really fleshing out who is being included in the process.

I know they said that they have like revolving meetings in different areas like East Boston, Charlestown, etc. But yeah, so just making sure like each I guess each election cycle or however often it's coming around that everyone is included.

Thank you for that. Ilona, I said it right?

Think of the state of Illinois, Illinois. I think just in interest of time, I haven't followed the process piece of it closely enough to give a useful response to that question. So I'll give you back some more time. Great, thank you.

Yeah, the reason why I point to that, because that was a ballot initiative, that was a big charter reform. that it was also citizen-led and council supported. And it was a really good example of what it looks like to decentralize power. And I think... As we continue to navigate this process, I just want to make sure that we're looking at some of the things that work. and some of the things that are not working so that we can make sure we get ahead of it. But I think the civic assemblies piece provides us with a really good partner here in Boston or a few organizations that we can work with. I really love the fact that, you know, it definitely should live outside of government. I don't think government should be engaged. I mean, we have to have a role in it, you know, because obviously we have to be the ones to Thank you.

Thank you. is what I believe is going to make this successful so that it doesn't come from within. It really is being led by the people. And so to that point Any feedback that you could provide us here as we finish our time together so that we can think about... What are some viable next steps? Then we're going to transition into working sessions and trying to figure out kind of how we write this up in a way to present it officially at some point. But I'm just curious if you could just provide some insight in terms of next steps and things that we should be thinking about.

Yeah, I mean, I can tell you that GenUnity and our sister organization, Partners in Democracy, are currently working on scoping out a statewide citizen assembly as well. So we've been doing a lot of research and a lot of upskilling on our team to ensure that We have the proper, you know, we have, we know we have facilitation skills around having conversations across difference, but this is like a very specific thing. So we've been working sort of behind the scenes to get ready to be able to help support a process like this. I will say that one of the things I keep hearing over and over again is that before you put people in a room together you need to make sure that you have buy-in from decision makers. I think the ways that it has gone the most poorly

as people have had this really amazing, empowering, trust-building, several days usually in a room together coming up with recommendations, but the proper buy-in wasn't um established in the first place and so the recommendations don't go anywhere and that has that is worse than not doing it at all so So I would say, although we'd be happy to help or consult or support in any way in terms of actually scoping and looking at budgets, things like that, that's what we've been doing for this statewide project. would be delighted to partner on that. But I wouldn't put the process forward until there is a clear understanding of how those recommendations would be used by the council. So that that's the main piece of advice that I would give.

I mean, so I think that's probably just socializing it with your peers and ensuring that if, you know, let's say that we at the end of this, whether it is, you know, just changing a small small Few things are a whole overhaul. How is the public opinion actually going to be used? Because you don't want to do any damage to trust when this is a process that primarily builds trust.

Thank you. Thank you for that. All right, John, any other last things that we should be mindful of as we continue to move forward with this that you want to share? And then I'm definitely going to not hold the people hostage and give up the rest of my time.

Yeah, no, I think a lot was covered. I think it's great and just looking forward to seeing how things move forward.

Thank you, Chair. And thank you just for those folks who are tuning in. This particular hearing was designed specifically to hear from community. and to work alongside those who hopefully will be leading the efforts to do this on the outside. We are hoping to have a second hearing or maybe, I don't know, Chair, you could provide some guidance in terms of what logistically would be next just because the administration was not here and we did not get to hear from Our legal counsel in regards to what this potentially could look like. I offered potentially doing a second hearing, but because we already had a hearing, if we go straight to a working session, and then that's when the administration comes in. If you could provide some guidance on what the appropriate next steps are given the fact that we didn't have any administration here. and many more.

Thank you. Today, I just want to get ahead of any potential roadblocks in the future if we're going to have them at a second hearing, if we're going to go into a working session. I just want people to know kind of what to expect so that we can all manage our expectations here.

Yeah, so there's a lot of work when it comes to this. So what I was hearing was that the preferred pathway moving forward is potentially a ballot question. But then even at that point, there's nothing physically to look at at a working session. So are we going to be, some of the things that were brought up today that I heard, Was this supposed to be intended for like a targeted adjustment in the same way that the city charter amendment was for the budget and participatory budgeting or like targeted for a specific issue? Are we going to think of a broader This is a part of a broader thinking of how governance operates in Boston. And so if it's the latter, I think we need to understand how this reform will will be in the context of larger structural changes. And yeah, like what is the preferred method moving forward?

I heard you talk about the ballot question, which is something that we did in 2021 as well. With that, it may come with a constitutionality check from the AG's office like the last charter amendment did. So I think there's a lot of questions here. So I just don't have a firm answer for you. but if I would only want to do a working session if there's like something that we need to look at and pass during the council if that's something that you you and your team want to do

Thank you, Chair. I just, you know, it's about greater governance, but not necessarily the change of our government structure. So I just, you know, I think that that is a heavier lift than I don't think anyone is At this point, we have the capacity to do. Our office is not talking about this with a specific agenda. We don't have a clear agenda Thank you for joining us. and so that's kind of where we're at in this process. And so given that this is going to be a different way of how we normally do things, we're gonna need some thought leadership from,

Our legal counsel and how we shepherd this through the process. Maybe we do this work outside of city government, y'all, and we... It kicked out and work with the people and then we bring it back into the city council with whatever it is that you all come up with. But I still think what I need to hear chair is, The role that the administration will play in helping to support The work, like we didn't have legal counsel here, right? So I don't know if you see doing a second hearing before we move into working sessions so that we can then hear from The administration about what is possible, what we need to be mindful of.

That's the question that I want to get at so that when we're communicating to the public, we're communicating with what we can and cannot do and have a better understanding of that.

Yeah and I have not had specific conversations with the administration so I can't speak for them but I do believe like given the fact that charter reform touches like the very foundational structures of city government including the role of mayor and the council and then we have How we are currently existing right with the signature of the mayor being necessary, like what role would they play? What role should they play in helping to shape maybe what some of the oversight we're trying to put in? So I don't have an answer for you because I haven't heard from them, but I would be curious to know what they think their role should be, whether that's advisory or... operational or directive in the future so particularly in drafting proposals like do we want them to to be helping draft the proposals or conducting the analysis so these are all questions I think that we should have in earnest with them. and then figure out how we wanna move forward after that.

Yeah, no, cause I know this particular iteration of our work, the administration has, They usually have a voice and drafting a lot of the things that we put forth, not drafting, but at least they've had a lot of input in some of the things that we've tried to push. So that's why I wanna make sure that they're engaged because we're going to need their buy-in. And so, you know, we're just, for us, it's about We're exploring the process rather than just the reform and the content of the reform, right? Like for us, it's really about the how we get there, not so much where we're going, right? So this is why I'm saying this is gonna be a different, Thank you.

Thank you. direction would be helpful at some point so that we know who are the stakeholders and the players that are going to be actively engaged in our decision making.

Yeah, totally. And I think the understanding the balance between like the administration's involvement and then the council's legislative role is going to be as well as like what coordination is going to be necessary with the state. But again, if you want to go forward with the ballot. Initiative, then that's like what, 15% of the voters and all of that, and that doesn't necessarily require their buy-in. So I think there's a lot of conversations that need to happen, and specifically like what we're trying to accomplish here. which may be informed by you know an outside citizens assembly that you do or you do separately from the council so that yeah at this point I just don't have anything to find because I really just don't know.

Well, I appreciate that. And so we just need to continue to speak with community as stakeholders and getting our directive from them and then working alongside Thank you all for next steps and we look forward to doing this in partnership. The last time we tried to pass something, it was the Inspector General and it took us two years to do that. And so this is, Thank you for joining us. and while we say change can't wait, we are, you know, we're gonna get this right and it's gonna take a time for us to do just that. So thank you for your active participation in making that happen.

Thanks, everybody. I don't see anybody signed up for public testimony. So we will go ahead and just move forward to close this hearing. But I want to thank everybody again for their participation. Thank you to Councilor Mejia for bringing this forward. This hearing on docket 04, 10 is adjourned. Thanks, everyone. Thank you. Thank you.