LETTER: City Government —Trust, but Verify

By Linda Scott
Watertown Resident

After attending the April 6th meeting on potential changes to Watertown Square and reviewing comments to my Watertown News Letter entitled “How Honest is our Development Process?”, I decided to tackle the issue of government honesty and transparency head on, with real life, current examples.

First, I’d like to thank commenters for your thoughtful takes. And for. those who’ve served on City committees like the Watertown Charter Review Committee, I give a special thanks! The few months that I spent on the Watertown Blue Ribbon Commission were enough to convince me that this is a lot of work!!

I appreciate your efforts to make our government function in a more honest and transparent manner, and I’m sure that you and your colleagues made positive changes that will be felt for many years to come, but it’s my experience that there’s still more work to be done.

Here’s my take:

I can relate to the Watertown experiences many have described, experiences that have left you scratching your head, wondering what was just agreed to, or wondering if your input was even considered.

Sadly, these moments did not end with the start of a new administration. We’ve experienced quite a few “moments of opacity” when dealing with our City government, both before and after George Proakis became our City Manager.

A City Logo:

One of those governmental “lack of transparency” moments that you might remember was the development of a city logo. George spearheaded this project, which lacked the involvement of the councilors or the community until it was a “done deal,” and a limited and controlled amount of residents were asked to weigh in. One resident’s survey comment:

“There is a FlashVote asking for input on which of 4 versions of this logo people prefer. Not sure why this project has continued without community input until – ‘which version of this logo do you prefer?’

The comments in this thread were clear, sensible and seemingly went completely unheard. I love Watertown & many of the things happening here. I do not support a logo that can induce migraines – especially when it says nothing about Watertown.”

To see more about this: https://www.watertownmanews.com/2025/03/11/letter-so-what-happened-to-the-logo-project/

The End Result:

That logo was scrapped, because the process wasn’t transparent with the City Council and the public. What’s more, the City’s analysis of the limited residential survey results were misleading to the Council. Comments proved that resident approval was mediocre at best. That was discovered by councilors at a Watertown City Council committee meeting.

Because of this, at least $20,000 of taxpayer money was misspent. I’ve been told that George still believes he had the right to unilaterally design our City’s logo.

I’ll leave you with that one example for now. There are more.

Big Changes to the Watertown Square Parking Lot?

As for the April 6 meeting to discuss possible changes (a five story parking garage) to the Watertown Square parking lot, people showed up in a really meaningful way, and George did one of the things he does best … speak in public.

He is a talented man, and it’s been my experience that many people cannot succeed at working in the back and front of the house. George is comfortable with both.

I can appreciate many things about George Proakis. I especially liked his thoughtfully written series on parking, a brilliant example of transparency! It remains to be seen how transparent he and the City staff are on this potential Watertown Square future project.

As was pointed out by one commenter, the Charter Review Committee worked hard to make our government run more transparently, and I’m with you on that!

How the Lack of Informational Transparency for Residents and Councilors Can Affect City Decisions

When the April 6th meeting was announced, there was nothing tangible submitted for residents to focus on in preparation for this meeting.

I wrote and published a letter in Watertown News, and based upon the little knowledge we had from previous meetings, I made a “guesstimate” of what the project would involve that turned out to be fairly on the mark.

This was my attempt to give residents a place to start when thinking about this development project since none was provided. Providing limited access to details is a subtle, but effective way to limit community interest and involvement.

It’s my fear, from multiple past experiences with our current city government, that George will be asking our City Council to commit to this massive project without a complete set of details or complete resident buy in … just trust George and the developers.

Do We Have Anything to Compare This To?

Think city logo on steroids, (see above).

How about a State MBTA plan for 1,701 housing units that “somehow” never reached Watertown City Councilors’ desks as an option, even though they requested it from George?

Or how about learning, by accident and from a professional journal featuring our City Manager, that instead of zoning for the 3,133 housing units that was an agreement between Watertown citizens and their city councilors, we learn that the housing number is now at 3,701 units? Then how about learning that not even our City Councilors, the ones who voted for the 3,133, were informed of the change? End result: Still to be determined.

How about money allocated by our city manager in the 2027 City budget for Flock cameras, without specifically saying so? Alert retired District A City Councilor Angie Kounelis caught that one.

Not including the community from the get-go in allocating City money for a highly controversial diminishment of privacy caused quite a community uproar. Wouldn’t it have been better to be honest and upfront with the community from the start? End result: Meetings were scheduled. Flock was scrapped. City time wasted.

Do you see a pattern here?? When transparency flies out the window, the result is chaos, inefficiency, wasted time and money, and an unhappy community.

How Can our Councilors Ensure Transparency When Considering this Watertown Square Project?

The Councilors have their own responsibility to be vigilant in this regard. Whether you like the overall concept for the CVS parking lot or not, we should urge our City Council to insist that this entire project is clearly defined and transparent and involves our whole community.

And, importantly, not until all of our residents are approached to weigh in, (and weigh in in a way that isn’t manipulated to get the “desired result,” See city logo) should Councilors vote for or against this development project. It’s the transparent thing to do, and as we’ve seen, bad things happen when transparency is side-stepped.

Now, more than ever, we need our City Councilors to step up, ask lots of questions, demand complete answers and challenge assumptions, reach out to all of their constituents, and not simply use a few questions to rubber stamp this project. These times are too financially fraught, and our City’s needs are too great.

We saw the public interest on April 6, a packed and engaged room. It’s only fair to include our whole community in a decision that will “define Watertown Square’s future.”