Medford council votes to send amended charter to mayor after debate over council composition

Medford City Council members at a Committee of the Whole meeting on March 4 debated and approved revisions to a proposed city charter — including a contentious change to council composition — then voted to send the amended charter to the full council and the mayor for the next steps toward legislative review.

Councilor Justin Singh, chair of the governance committee, opened the item by summarizing the committee’s work on the draft charter and outlining two “big substantive edits” and a set of technical clarifications. “The two big substantive edits that we made was to adopt a district based composition for city council to align it with the school committee model that was proposed and to remove the mayor as the chair of the school committee,” Singh said. He also presented technical language changes, such as replacing “highest vote getter” with “candidate receiving the highest number of votes” and specifying that the budget must be posted on the city website.

The meeting turned to a sustained debate over how the council should be structured. Councilor George Scarpelli argued forcefully for the Charter Study Committee’s recommendation of eight ward representatives plus three at-large seats, calling that format the product of two years of work and more than 200 meetings. “8 leaves nobody behind,” Scarpelli said, arguing that ward seats lower the cost and difficulty of running and bring more neighborhood engagement.

Councilor Lehi (first name not specified in the record) and Councilor Collins both said they supported…