How Do the Votes of Town Council Leadership Align with Their Campaign Promises?
Amherst Town Council (2022). Photo: amherstma.gov
Recently, candidates for both Town Council and School Committee have attended public forums, published websites, and sent out literature. Sunrise Amherst would like to thank all these candidates for involving themselves in a vibrant democracy. That being said, we noticed that some incumbent candidates touted their support for certain proposals while campaigning, but may not have actually supported the values associated with these proposals in their writing of legislation or voting.
Voters deserve to know the whole story, without watching hours of Town Council meetings in addition to their work, personal, and family commitments. This is why Sunrise Amherst, in collaboration with activists in other local organizations, have partnered to create a website highlighting the votes of Amherst’s Town Council Leadership. We classified leadership as the Council President, and Chairs of Council Committees who have served in leadership for five years.
In addition, we highlighted articles where councilors made statements and cast votes that do not align with our organization’s values or beliefs. These values include seeking environmental justice, fighting climate change, enacting the Town’s Climate Action, Adaptation and Resilience Plan, equitably increasing wages and working conditions for Amherst educators and town staff, increasing affordable homeownership opportunities for middle income families, and using diverse, inclusive and anti-racist practices in every level of town government.
Although some in our Town Council’s leadership claim to support these views, their votes frequently do not align with these claims. Sunrise Amherst hopes that voters see this, and educate themselves before voting to see if these candidates really do align with their own interests and beliefs.
I am curious why you chose a 5 year timeframe to define “leadership”. Or are you targeting particular councillors and that timeframe enables that? Your website implies that these 3 councillors are the only ones in leadership positions. That is not the case, there are more than 2 committees on the council, what about the leaders of those?
I can’t speak for Sunrise but I can see that Lynn Griesemer is the only president that the town council has ever known, Andy Steinberg is the only finance chair that council has ever known and Mandi Jo Hanneke has chaired a major committee since the council’s inception while also serving as council vice president for the council’s first three years. The question is, are we happy with where our town is now? If you like the work that the council has done over the last five years, then these folks who have been entirely in charge (enjoying nearly supermajorities of support) ought to get a lot of the credit. If you think that the council’s record has been less than satisfactory, particularly in the areas of environment, social justice, infrastructure, taxes, transparency, and fiscal planning, then it’s time to support a change in leadership.
I am one of the three leaders of Sunrise Amherst, and although I can not speak for everyone in our group, we used a five year timeline because that is how long the Town Council form of government has been active, and we thought voters deserve to know the history behind each of these leaders on the council. Sunrise Amherst was also founded roughly five years ago, so the timeline we choose is relevant to our organization’s experience in town government. We choose some of the top leadership positions such as a President and longtime committee chairs because they have served for all five years. We also choose the committees based partly on their relevance to our organizations goals for our town. The website does not state that these are the only leadership positions, but they are the ones we choose for the reasons above. There are other councilors and positions in town that Sunrise Amherst disagrees with, and I can provide examples if you would like, but we did not use them in this website because they did not fit our definition of leadership. So I would say that making the leap to say that we choose a timeframe or specific councilors to fit our opinions would be incorrect. These were simply the people who met the definition. Thanks for your questions and for diligently educating yourself on local issues, I appreciate your curiosity about how we came to these conclusions.
I am sorry but I was expecting a run down of the whole council leadership, against their previously stated campaign promises. Was that reading into this blog and the website too much?
Thanks
The Indy has published a lot of information on the candidates including their own personal statements and there is plenty to learn about them by reading those statements as well as the candidates’ answers to the Indy’s questionnaire. You can find a comprehensive compilation of election information here: https://www.amherstindy.org/2023/10/20/the-indys-election-central/
I think it is unreasonable to expect any civic group to provide a run down of ALL council votes, or all the votes taken by a single candidate, though you could track down pretty much any council vote that interests you in the pages of the Indy. Sunrise and ACJA focused on the votes that were of greatest interest and greatest consequence to their members.
I would second what Art said. It is also worth noting that no other group has attempted to do that, including Amherst Forward or the Progressive Coalition of Amherst and I can not blame them as that would be a lot of work, and not specifically apply to the goals or concerns of an organization’s membership or mission statement. Maybe what you define as council leadership differs…
If you want to know about other current or former “leadership” votes that may be contrary to campaign promises, this has also been published in the Indy for Councilors Pat DeAngelis (District 2), George Ryan (District 3), and Anika Lopes (District 4) in “Do You Want Your Neighborhood to Remain a Family Neighborhood?”
https://www.amherstindy.org/2023/10/20/which-town-councilors-voted-against-protecting-family-neighborhoods/
Those links in that article cover all types of votes, not just planning and zoning.