On June 9, two of us – Watertown residents Bruce Coltin and Josh Rosmarin — spoke at the City Council’s public forum to present our case for the City to commission a polling organization to better determine where residents stand on major issues.
Here are the texts of our two-minute comments.
From Bruce Coltin:
For almost every local election that I can remember, I falsely believed that that election would be the breakthrough election – the one where voters would turn out in record numbers.
In Watertown, non-voters have been an overwhelming majority to the tune of about 75%.
In our most recent election, the percentage of non-voters rose to just under 80%.
That level of non-participation is reflected at most Council meetings, committee meetings, and special meetings.
In Watertown, as in many other cities and towns, too many major consequential decisions are made with declining public input.
At a meeting at the Middle School regarding the Watertown Square Area Plan, a resident came to the microphone and said this to the council, the planning board, and the city manager:
“You published the results of a poll of a sort that attracts primarily activists. Would you be willing to commission a polling organization to do a randomized poll of the residents of Watertown?”
I think our system, where the vast majority of our residents are sitting on the sidelines is a broken system, and I think that serious people who truly believe in a healthy, robust democracy should want to fix it.
And here’s what we should have learned over the past few years: it won’t get fixed by expecting them to come to you.
Commissioning a polling organization to conduct randomized polling of the residents of Watertown would give you a mechanism by which you could ask those who don’t vote why they don’t vote and why they don’t come to meetings. You could ask them lots of questions — like how they feel about dropping a parking garage and a couple hundred apartment units into the CVS parking lot.
Maybe the very first thing you should ask them is simply how they are doing during these trying economic times.
Their answers might be illuminating and the very act of reaching out might be the first step in fixing the broken relationship between our government and the people you are supposed to represent.
From Josh Rosmarin:
Thanks Bruce.
I also want to share my support for a citywide poll of residents’ views as a way to improve our civic discourse.
I’ve had the opportunity to get to know Bruce better over the past few months, and while he and I have a number of substantive disagreements, one thing that unites us is a desire to see our community thrive. We believe that that’s a common view held across involved citizens in Watertown, regardless of what side of an issue we might find ourselves on.
However, Bruce and I have both noticed that, in the search for that thriving community, there are times when lacking a common frame of reference can present barriers to collaboration and compromise.
For instance, I was motivated to co-found a housing advocacy group because I wanted to work with my friends and neighbors to address the cost of living in Watertown. In the course of our work, I’ve also encountered my share of neighbors who disagree with what we’re doing. That’s completely fine!
What presents a challenge is when questions about who represents whom in town get in the way of productive discourse. We of course have biennial elections to sort that out at a high level, but what’s challenging is when there’s a more fundamental disagreement about what the majority of
residents stand for. We have academic research from people like BU professor Katherine Einstein showing that certain types of people — homeowners, older residents, white people — are overrepresented in community engagement processes. But while well-organized activist groups can try to address those imbalances, I’d be the first to acknowledge that the people who engage in long-term community activism are outliers, too.
So we’re left with a conundrum – how do we really know what the community wants, and how can we assess that in a way that everybody in the community believes to be valid? This is why Bruce and I, despite our differences, are strong believers in a more rigorous assessment of community sentiment than we’ve had to date. A citywide poll of residents’ top priorities and concerns can shed valuable light on where city leaders should prioritize time and effort.
Even with the best of intentions, our community engagement processes often fall short of reaching and representing everyone, and I’m hopeful that City Councilors and the city administration will work with us to establish this as a tool to better understand our city.
Thank you.
We invite you to join us on our mission to include more of the Watertown community in the making of decisions that will affect Watertown residents for years to come. You can start by contacting your district and at-large councilors and the Council President and voicing your support for this initiative to introduce rigorous, objective polling on issues that affect all of
us. https://www.watertown-ma.gov/350/City-Council
Bruce Coltin and Josh Rosmarin
Watertown Residents
So we are to govern our communities based on polling information? That’s a hard no.
Paul,
You’re talking about this like it’s not already being done. We’ve had much less reliable and biased polls run by our City (some where even non Watertown residents can vote and multiple inputs by a single person count to decide things like what our city center should become and a new City logo. They’re all run by our City government and their well paid consultants, and the results also happen to all coincide with our City Manager’s point of view.
We’ll be told that it’s too much money to conduct a legitimate poll, all while spending a quarter of a million dollars on plans for a parking garage in the Square without prior assent of Watertown residents (and, in fact, with the City acknowledging that there was great resident opposition to a garage).
Isn’t it about time that we do this right?
Linda Scott, resident