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Building out the 2025 charter

Updated September 26, 2026

What's happening

Somerville's new charter (approved by voters in November 2025 and enacted as Chapter 31 of the Acts of 2025) is being wired into the city's ordinances one piece at a time, and the biggest piece is still missing. The charter calls for a comprehensive administrative code. Until one exists, a "continuation of governance" clause keeps the old ordinances running even where the charter has moved authority elsewhere.

The Council ordained three alignment ordinances unanimously on February 26. The Review of Multiple-Member Bodies Committee, which the charter requires, is working through the city's boards and commissions and owes the Council a report by its first December meeting. It met remotely on September 23 to take up the agenda it had to cancel on September 9. The ordinance that would move Council meetings from Thursday to Tuesday starting in 2028 is stuck in Legislative Matters. And the sharpest open question, how much the Council can actually do about the mayor's budget, went unanswered in June.

The story

What changed on paper

Legislative and policy analyst Brendan Salisbury walked councilors through the new rules on January 22. Requests to the administration are now "resolutions," and "orders" are reserved for information the Council can legally demand. The Council has 30 days to act on a department head, city attorney or CAO appointment and 60 days on a board seat. Silence means approval, and rejections require written reasons.

The headline: "The mayor no longer has unilateral authority to reorganize city government." Under Section 5-1, organizing the city into agencies "may be accomplished only through an administrative order submitted to the city council by the mayor." The Council may approve or disapprove such an order within 60 days, after at least one public hearing, but may not amend it. No such order has come before the Council. Mayor Jake Wilson's nine-department cabinet arrived inside the FY27 budget book instead (Wilson's City Hall reorganization).

The alignment ordinances

Legislative Matters cleared four items 3-0 on February 17, and the Council ordained them on February 26:

  • A new Sec. 2-186 created the periodic review of multiple-member bodies that the charter requires.
  • Section 10-20 on constables was struck, and the city accepted MGL Chapter 41, Section 91.
  • Rule 57 was amended so the charter's twelve-month clock on repeat group-petition hearings starts at submission.

The board and commission cull

Sec. 2-186 sets up a five-member review committee, repeated every ten years: the mayor or a designee, the Council president or a designee, the city clerk, and one resident named by each. Its report is due no later than the Council's first December meeting. The Council must then vote the recommendations up or down as a resolution within 90 days.

Resident Chris Dwan chairs the committee and Derrick Rice is vice chair. The other members are Brenna Broderick (the mayor's community partnerships liaison), Ward 4 Councilor Jesse Clingan and City Clerk Courtney Henderson. The August 5 agenda listed six bodies pending recommendation: the Urban Design Commission, Human Rights Commission, Commission for Persons with Disabilities, Women's Commission, Fair Housing Commission and Council for Aging Persons. It listed eight more as candidates for retention, including the Affordable Housing Trust Board, Community Preservation Committee, Condominium Review Board and Historic Preservation Commission. Three of the six under review are staffed by the department that just lost five positions (Racial and Social Justice becomes Equity and Belonging).

The September 9 session was canceled, and its agenda came back nearly word for word for a remote meeting on September 23 (agenda):

  • bodies that meet only intermittently, the Traffic Board and the PILOT Advisory Task Force (see The Tufts PILOT working group)
  • the possible dissolution of the Emergency Management Advisory Council
  • retention of the Biosafety Committee, the Board of Election Commissioners, the Fair Housing Commission and the Municipal Compensation Advisory Board

The committee also scheduled a discussion of its own approach and process, plus named public comment. The outcome is not in our sources yet. Rice declared a run for the Ward 3 Council seat on September 12 (Three Council seats turn over).

One body has already been rebuilt. The Climate Action Commission replaced the 2001 Commission on Energy Use and Climate Change. Its 13-member slate, drawn from 49 applicants, was recommended 4-0 on July 6, and it first met August 11.

Thursday or Tuesday

Rule 1 of the Council's rules says regular meetings happen "at such time and place as the city council may establish by ordinance," but that ordinance doesn't exist. Item #26-1946 would create it and would move meetings from Thursday at 7 p.m. to Tuesday at 6 p.m. beginning in 2028.

Salisbury made the case on May 5. Thursday late nights mean staff work a full day and then an evening, and Tuesday votes reach the mayor before the weekend. Council President Lance Davis backed the change but wanted public input. Ward 3 Councilor Ben Ewen-Campen and At-large Councilor Kristen Strezo worried about parents. Ward 2 Councilor JT Scott put it bluntly on May 14: "if it's not broke, don't fix it." He also noted that the 48-hour notice rule would stop any committee from meeting Wednesday or Thursday after a Tuesday Council meeting. The ordinance stayed in committee.

The Council did tighten Rule 4, 9-0, on May 14. Councilors' items are now due Tuesday morning, and everyone else's are due by 12:30 p.m. Friday. The supplemental agenda is reserved for items that are both unforeseeable and genuinely time-sensitive. Davis said he was codifying what he had enforced for nearly a year.

Group petitions are getting used

Section 2-11 lets 50 registered voters demand a public hearing within three months. All three hearings the Legislative Matters Committee held on September 8 came about that way:

The tool isn't foolproof. Davis admitted in February that a 52-voter Armory petition was dropped during the administration transition. Section 2-12, the vacancy clause, gets its first real test next: Councilors Ewen-Campen, Scott and Mbah all resign effective December 31, 2026 (Three Council seats turn over). The charter's other new committees are filling out. The Ranked Choice Voting Committee and the Public Financing of Campaigns Committee each got members conveyed on August 27 and September 10.

The power question nobody settled

The most consequential dispute is over charter Section 6-4 and the school budget. City Solicitor Cindy Amara told the Finance Committee on June 16 that the provision treats the School Committee as a department head submitting a proposal, and that the mayor isn't bound by its number. Scott chaired the charter committee and drafted the provision. He disputed that reading and noted the charter is itself a special act of the Legislature. Strezo observed that the Council is left with only an up-or-down vote on the school budget. See school buildings.

Item 26-1274, filed August 20, is a smaller piece of the same cleanup. It amends the Section 1-11(b) table of which staff may write noncriminal tickets, since the reorganization renamed the departments listed there.

What's next

  • September 23: the Review of Multiple-Member Bodies Committee took up the Traffic Board, the PILOT task force, the Emergency Management Advisory Council and four retentions (outcome not in our sources yet).
  • September 24: the special-election order for Wards 2 and 3 and the non-union salary ordinance (26-0956) were due at the Council (outcome not in our sources yet). Item 26-1274 is still in Legislative Matters.
  • November 1 / December 1: the charter's capital improvement plan deadlines, being met for the first time (The capital plan Somerville hasn't updated in four years).
  • First Council meeting in December: the review committee's report is due. The Council then has 90 days to vote.
  • December 31: three councilors leave, and the Section 2-12 clock starts (Three Council seats turn over).
  • Unscheduled: the meeting-day ordinance (#26-1946) and the administrative code.