Election Day is less than two weeks away. Four City Council races (Districts 3, 5, 6, 7) are competitive, meaning that there are more than two candidates on the ballot that will be winnowed through the Sept. 12 preliminary election to two contestants for the general election on Nov. 7.
The council has limited power but many of the initiatives that would reform city government require its approval, so where candidates stand on critical issues is important.
Our recent voting history, however, tells us that very few Bostonians will take the time to vote in these elections. With only the City Council on the ballot, we’re likely to see less than ten percent of registered voters casting a ballot. This is based on the last three municipal elections with no mayoral contest, when an average of eight percent of registered voters cast ballots.
The general election will likely draw some 20 percent of registered voters to participate (the three-year average was 16 percent). In raw numbers, this means that about 400,000 registered voters (of 437,493 on the rolls) will not vote in the preliminary election and about 360,000 will not vote in November. This leaves who gets elected in the hands of an extremely small number of voters who typically represent the status quo. It’s a sad commentary on Boston, which prides itself on being the birthplace of American democracy.
There are lots of ideas on how to improve election turnouts, most of which would need council approval. These include day-of-election registration, changing the preliminary election to the spring (like many other states), moving municipal elections to even-numbered years when turnout is twice as high, moving elections to a weekend day, or providing a tax rebate of $100 to those who vote.
Many of these ideas are considered by District 3 candidates in the questionnaire available on the Dorchester Reporter’s website this week, and the candidates have very different opinions on how to improve turnout.
There are many other issues that the City Council will need to consider if there are to be changes in how our city operates.
A major one is how the Boston Planning and Development Agency (BPDA) and the Zoning Board of Appeal (ZBA) operate. When Michelle Wu was running for mayor, she advocated the abolition of the BPDA, but has walked that back in favor of reforming the BPDA.
The key issue here is that the BPDA and ZBA currently review all planned developments on a parcel-by-parcel basis without considering impacts by other planned developments in the same area. The result, therefore, can be over-development without consideration of the infrastructural needs (transportation, open space, schools, utilities, etc.) of the total impact of all the developments.
In the end, it is the developers who determine what is built in the city, not the zoning code, which is the way most communities decide what is appropriate. In Boston, the code is ignored.
This could be resolved via comprehensive planning of city neighborhoods, or by creating zoning that takes community vision and needs into consideration in determining what can and cannot be built in each neighborhood. Add to that limitations on the ability of the ZBA to overrule zoning. This columnist has advocated re-zoning the city by taking into consideration what is appropriate and desired for each neighborhood, rather than the current process, which creates unnecessary fights between neighborhood residents and developers.
Other important issues include where the candidates stand on rent control, requiring city workers to live in the city via the residency law, and whether there should be an elected or appointed school committee, or an abolishment of the school committee. This columnist has advocated the latter, which would place all responsibility for the management of the public schools with the mayor instead of continuing to separate how schools are financed from how they are managed.
How our city will handle global warming is also on the ballot. Currently we have lots of plans but very little implementation. Where the money will come from to prepare Boston for dealing with rising sea levels is unanswered. Right now, we can only hope that a hurricane such as Sandy, which devastated New York and New Jersey, will avoid Boston at high tide. The damages could be in the billions of dollars.
It is this columnist’s opinion that the city needs an audit that looks at how our city is managed and asks if there are better and more efficient ways to deliver services. Perhaps this would result in our ability to finance the long-term investments necessary to protect our coastline.
All these issues are on the ballot as voters determine who will make the decisions regarding these important issues. Check out the answers to the Reporter’s questionnaire at dotnews.com and be sure to vote on September 12.
Bill Walczak is a Dorchester resident and the co-founder of Codman Square Health Center. His column appears regularly in the Reporter.
