It’s more than a week after our Northampton municipal elections, and the enormity of how you cast your ballots is still sinking in. You have entrusted me, as one of your two at-large city councilors, with actively bringing your voice, your concerns, your knowledge and skills into our governance. With a vote difference of less than 1% you very nearly elected a new mayor. Over 200 of you chose to leave your mayoral dot blank rather than filling it in for the incumbent.
You have voted for change and a giant step away from decades of legacy politics. You have called for city and ward forums on issues that impact you, and for using that data to actively inform council and mayoral decision making. You voted for transparency. You want to know a lot more about why, who, how and how much. You want to work with us to identify what our real essential priorities are, and how best to implement them. You believe that our children need us now. Right now.
Most heartening is that you voted for across-the-table genuine out-of-the box problem solving, and against power through politicking. You want to be part of creating a vision that includes all of us and a plan on how to get there. You want to see our mayor and council pull back from protecting their political legacy and engage in a new era of working with us and not at us.
That honest effort starts on the very first day our City Council meets to elect leadership. We no longer use council seats as kingmaker pathways. We continue with protocols that body can put in place to ensure we stay focused on votes rooted in constituent evidence and data-based best practice and move away from those founded on personal opinion or agenda.
I am enormously grateful to the seven-ward efforts so many of the hundreds of Support Our Schools members respectfully and clearly made to help us sit up and take action because our children need us. They talked with thousands of residents. They heard the disconnect voters had with the way things work. We would not be having these conversations without their grass roots dynamism.
Thank you for creating this opportunity to reshape how we work together to represent our unique and gorgeous community. This sea change to inclusion, transparency and focus can happen only when those you have just empowered as mayor and council read the room, count the votes, and feel the mandate you have made to push our City Hall doors wide open.
You want our city to earn back your trust. Let’s do it.
Meg Robbins won election to an at-large council seat on the Northampton City Council in the Nov. 4 municipal election.