Medford Moving Forward With Updated Charter

MEDFORD, MA — Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn has submitted an updated city charter to the city council to review. Once approved by the city, the document will be brought to the State Legislature for final approval and implementation.

The charter is the governing document for things such as term lengths for elected officials, how Committees are composed, length of term limits, and overall structure of leadership. Prior to receiving updates, the current charter was more than 40 years old.

A Medford Charter Study Committee was formed in 2022 to gather input from residents on what updates they would like to see made to the charter. The new city charter submitted by Lungo-Koehn contains the four major updates of increasing the number of city council members from seven to 11, doubling the mayoral term length from two years to four years, limiting the amount of consecutive mayoral terms to four, and changing the composition of the School Committee so that two members would be elected to serve in at-large positions, white the remaining five would be elected from the combined ward groups of 1 and 7, 2 and 3, 4 and 5, and 6 and 8.

“I, along with many others, have been trying to get this complicated and comprehensive project done since 2016 and I’m confident we are now ready to move forward with enacting these changes and delivering on the promises made to the community that their needs and priorities would be heard and incorporated into our charter,” Lungo-Koehn said.