6 thoughts on “Charter Review Committee Debates Vision for Town, Ways to Improve Government

  1. Nice write-up on the Charter Review Committee. Communication and collaboration between Town Manager and Town Council can be positive but in Watertown it’s not working well. due to differing values and styles and a weak charter – weak or no transparency and accountability requirements, for example, there are long standing problems that are at a logjam.
    I hope you continue writing about this.

  2. The nitty gritty of running a town should be done only by a professional manager overseen by elected officials.

    Mayors and council members are not professionals.

    In fact, they often have other jobs and are not full time.

    They’re mainly politicians, a job for which a person needs no experience whatsoever, just connections, money to run a campaign, a big ego, and a need to be liked and reelected.

  3. Watertown has a good Charter and 40 years of success under it. The manager-council system works very well, and the proof is the financial strength of the community. Perfect? No. No system is.

  4. Now more than ever Watertown is in desperate need of a different form of government. We need someone that is elected by the residents and answers to us. It’s not limited to that either. Our Town Hall has known issues with department heads and management and that needs to change as well.

    In the past few months Watertown has been in the spotlight for many negative reasons. Ongoing racism in our schools and the lack of action by the school officials, a state audit of our schools and the failure to return to in person learning when it was safe, a police and town lawsuit alleging an atmosphere at WPD of bullying and harassment and even more worrisome is that our Town Officials knew all this years back but still made the choices they did in terms of leadership. Now the residents are being exposed to a lawsuit that could result in millions being paid out.

    The time for change is NOW

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