Brookline Group Asks Town To Consider Becoming A City

BROOKLINE, MA — Every few years, usually amid a controversial issue —be it rent control, the location of a new elementary school or, most recently, racial justice— someone suggests that Brookline, the state's largest town with nearly 60,000 people, should become a city. Still, officials say that for all of the discussion, there has not been an organized movement to consider the question in earnest.

Until now.

A group of about 30 residents has formed a grassroots campaign to bring the question of whether the town should seriously look into becoming a city to voters.

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, going door-to-door to ask people to sign a petition to get the question on the ballot for next year's town election is not an option. And the Secretary of State said the group is required to get the signatures on real paper. So, they've been posting petitions in each of the precincts and getting the word out mostly through social media to tell residents how to sign it in person. On Saturday, they are setting up a table, complete with sanitizer and masks in Coolidge Corner, to get the word out.

"Right now we are just focusing on letting voters choose if we want anyone to look into the possibility of Brookline becoming a city," said Ronnie England, 17, a rising senior at Brookline High School and co-founder of the A Better Brookline movement

How it started

Ashley Eng, 19, who is studying at UMass Amherst, said she watched how the town's elected officials responded to requests from the community to channel parts of the police budget to other areas in town. She watched as teachers expressed fear and frustration at budget cuts. And she felt disheartened at the process.

"It that pushed me to realize how inefficient our form of government is," she said.

She said she was inspired to research the pros and cons and what it would take for Brookline to become a city. She reached out to Winikoff, 19, who is studying at Swarthmore College, and England, whom she knew is passionate about local politics. Together they spent hours, days and weeks looking into what it would take for the town to consider such a thing.

Along the way, they discovered this was not a new idea, but no one had really taken it beyond talk.

"So we decided to really take this chance," said Eng.

Now, just a couple months into the effort, they've recruited some 30 volunteers and have started to collect signatures. They need 7,000 to get on the ballot.

The three say they believe a city government would benefit the community, helping to bring about quicker decisions, a more accountable government and higher voter turnout.

"And make sure the government is truly representative of the people and not just following their own agenda," Eng said.

Brookline's history as a town

For some 315 years, as communities around the commonwealth have given up on town meeting-style government and chosen to have a mayor represent them instead, Brookline has held out. Locals have chosen, instead, to have a Select Board of five and an elected Town Meeting body of 240 members representing 16 precincts make the decisions.

The question came up in the 1970s and again in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the topic of rent control split the town. After the effort to eliminate rent control failed, a frustrated group looked into changing the form of government as a way to effect the change they were looking for.

The last time the question was raised here was in 2016, when Framingham became a city. Framingham had difficulty maintaining a Town Meeting quorum. Brookline has not had that problem.

And the process is no small effort. After getting the community to vote on whether to consider a change, the town would have to set up a charter commission, which would make a proposal for voters to again weigh in on.

The argument

Proponents of town government say Brookline’s current form ensures residents decide what issues take priority — and those decisions and the process depend upon community volunteers. Brookline has a plethora of residents who care what happens and are willing to volunteer and it works, they say.

"The question is not 'Is it working?' but 'Who is it working for?'" Winikoff said.

To be a Town Meeting member, you need to sacrifice several nights a year plus commit to keep up with town politics and committee meetings — and you don't get paid.

When you look at who has that ability it skews older, it skews wealthier, he said.

"To our minds that's not fully representative to who this town is," Winikoff said. "Leveling the playing field with a smaller legislative branch could be beneficial in allowing people whose voices aren't traditionally heard, and they could be heard more equitably."

Also, Brookline is getting too complicated to run as a town, they argue.

"We have big-city problems but small-town government," said Raffe Lewis, a Brookline resident who is among those who has thought about the idea for years, but been unable to commit the time or effort to push the effort.

"If it all comes down to a mayor, it's pretty easy to for the citizenry to change leadership if they're unhappy," he said.

He said in a diffuse-leadership model such as Brookline's where there are multiple people sitting on a board, it's much more difficult to bring about change.

Having fewer people in positions of elected power in government allows more people in the municipality to understand chain of command and makes it easier to know who to vote for — in turn raising voter turnout, the group argues.

Youth-led movement

Like many of the recent movements the country is seeing, this movement is being led by college and high school students, although volunteers also include young parents and retirees.

"That we're a youth-led movement does mean some people take us less seriously than if we were not," England said.

But there's another side to it.

"It's a time of generational change," she said. "And with so many things dire right now, it's really our responsibility to get involved and try to fix what the previous generation hasn't done."

Next event:

They group will collect signatures from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday in Coolidge Corner outside Bank of America.

Got a tip? Patch reporter Jenna Fisher can be reached at Jenna.Fisher@patch.com or by calling 617-942-0474. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram (@ReporterJenna). Have a press release you'd like posted on the Patch? Here's how to post a press release, a column, event or opinion piece.