Following his swearing-in as mayor of Somerville on Jan. 3, members of Jake Wilson’s transition team say that his administration will prioritize community input and collaboration following months of outreach and preparation.
The transition team, led by former Mayor Joe Curtatone and Ward 1 City Councilor Matt McLaughlin, is guided by 18 policy committees, made up of approximately 160 residents and experts, who are currently finalizing recommendations and reports. McLaughlin said that the Wilson transition included a larger number of staff than previous transitions.
“We haven’t really had a transition like this in a very long time,” McLaughlin said. “We’re talking about 20-plus years that we’ve never really had a full assessment of city services.”
“[They are] talented and dedicated public servants who want to deliver results for the community and who believe in local government,” Curtatone said.
The transition’s policy committees are made up of teams aimed at improving government efficiency, including constituent services, information technology and finance, budgeting and capital planning.
Curtatone said strong communication between the Wilson transition team and the outgoing administration of Mayor Katjana Ballantyne helped the team identify areas for improvement.
“The transition process is aided in that because we’ve conducted a full and deep assessment of every department over the last two months,” he said.
These assessments have revealed gaps in intergovernmental communication, which the transition team and new administration hope to resolve.
“A lot of departments feel they’re siloed. They’re not really communicating with each other and there’s not a lot of cooperation going on,” McLaughlin said. “When I speak to each department, they feel optimistic that there’s going to be a lot more cooperation moving forward.”
Grant Pinsley, a sophomore at Tufts and transition intern for the intergovernmental affairs and school relations committees, noted that communication and transparency challenges have extended across all levels of government in Somerville.
“Both miscommunication and a lack of communication has been an impediment to progress in Somerville,” Pinsley said. “One of the easiest and first big steps for Mayor Wilson will be to set up new relationships between each of the different layers of government.”
Wilson has put community engagement at the forefront of his transition process. His mayoral transition community engagement survey has reportedly collected over 300 responses.
“There certainly was a very robust response. … It was very clear that there was a lot of community concern and a lot of community care,” Madison Rossi, a junior at Tufts and a transition team community engagement intern on the affordable housing committee, said.
“We distributed out the responses to all the policy committees weekly, if not more frequently, for them to review and factor into their own recommendations,” she added.
The administration also prioritized engagement with Somerville’s immigrant and senior communities, according to Rossi. All the surveys were translated into Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese, the two most prominent non-English languages in the city.
As Wilson begins his term and implementation begins for the recently-passed city charter, city officials expressed optimism about the new administration’s engagement goals within city government.
“We’re going to reset the way that the City Council and the Mayor’s Office work together,” City Council President Lance Davis said in his inauguration ceremony speech. “Under the new charter, and with a new administration, we have a real opportunity to reinvent that relationship.”
McLaughlin noted that Wilson’s decision to appoint him as vice chair of the transition steering committee also points to a future of collaboration between the City Council and the Mayor’s Office.
“Lots of times, the City Council feels like we’re a secondary department of the city, like where we’re not co-equal partners in the city with the Mayor’s Office,” McLaughlin explained, “So to have the mayor invite me to the transition … I think is a great sign of cooperation.”
Other members of the transition team said they were eager to see what the Wilson administration would accomplish.
“The future looks bright for Somerville,” Pinsley said. “There’s a surprising amount of power in the culture that you create in your administration, especially for municipal government, and I’m very confident that Mayor Wilson will create a culture that is healthy and allows for progress.”
“As a resident of Somerville, I’m excited for Mayor Wilson’s administration,” Curtatone said. “The fact that he really understands the gravity of the transition process and what that means for the likelihood of the success of his administration and the impacts in the community speaks volumes about his leadership.”
