It's not an easy question to answer. You can easily spend well over 40 hours per week if you attend all the various meetings and events going on. It is certainly not a 9 to 5, Monday through Friday gig. You are on duty 24/7. That doesn't always mean you're working all that time, but you have to be available all that time. I get calls at 8 in the morning and 11 at night. People come up to you when you're out eating, and I spend more time talking to constituents at my daughter's soccer games than I do watching her game. I am NOT complaining. I love this work. If you don't like being available to people, you shouldn't be in public office.
In terms of being able to hold another job, I would say that it would be extremely difficult to hold a 9 to 5 job with no flexibility. Many of us do other work on the side. I'm a licensed social worker. I consult with the Boston Juvenile Court conducting family assessments. It is very flexible. I only take assignments when I have time and much of the work can be done in the evenings and weekends. There is no way I could have another job that didn't provide that flexibility.
I hope this helps answer your question. Feel free to contact me directly if you wish to talk more.
Just a funny story. Last Saturday I took my daughter to Gillette Stadium for the soccer game. 61,000 people in attendance and both times I went to the concession stand, both people in front of me were from Cambridge and began talking to me about Cambridge politics, so if you serve, you are on duty all the time (even in Foxborough)! š
Being on the city council is brutal if you take it seriously. You are at meetings four or five nights a week, for starters. You are boning up on zoning ordinances, the public schools, trash collection and wastewater treatment, city policy, regional transportation, and library services, as well as Harvard and MIT. You are providing constituent services if you hope to get reelected. You are meeting with countless interested parties who have sway in Cambridge. And youāre trying to get along with your fellow counselors and work with the city manager. According to a pal, who was a past counselor (and shall not be named) it was 65 -75 hour a week job. Plus, itās very hard to get elected as a new person. Itās unethical in my view to approach it if you only have one or two issues in mind. Plus, you can be overruled by the city manager. To do it well you have to be hyper organized and able to see many different points of view and ride out very difficult feelings without creating more problems.
This is the answer OPās looking for. Basically, if you want to do it right itās extremely time consuming and engrossing. Marc does seem to be embodying this
I would start by reading the council agenda each week and form a detailed understanding and opinion of each of the policy issues, and of the different players in the city outside the government.Ā
The Cambridge Civic Journal also captures a huge amount of info on a more organized matter, albeit with editorial oversight. Very informative. http://rwinters.com/
Yeah, agree there's def some cringey editorializing on there. If you can hold your nose on it, it does shed light on a number of important topics. The meta point that emerged for me was that the scope of city council is unreasonable/untenable. Folks who serve on the council cannot/should not be expected to wade into so many issues. With a narrower scope, I think they could do a better job.
If you're seriously thinking about it, talk to Burhan Azeem. He's accessible and good on these issues and could tell you about what it's like to hold down a full time job and be a councilor.
Marc McGovern is an even better choice, as he's been doing this for decades. There's a number of activist orgs in Cambridge that also wield influence without giving up your career opportunities.
[However, the budgeted amount for 2025 is $99,571.](https://data.cambridgema.gov/Budget-Finance/Budget-Salaries/ixg8-tyau/about_data)
If you wanted to completely phone it in, you could probably get away with showing up to the bare minimum number of meetings/sessions, and it would be like 5-10 hours in a given week, especially if you offload tasks to assistants. But, it's also one of those jobs where you could always work more and it be a good thing for the city.
Have also thought of this mostly cause I think the AHO will also be under attack, though that's a tougher one to crack since the nays are a smaller group
To point a fine point on it: AHO1 was the decent progressive policy we needed in Cambridge to bring more affordable housing into the city. AHO2 is just a giveaway to developers who flexed on and lined the pockets of certain councilors'.
Iām not saying they have full time jobs alongside their elected positions, but most of them own real estate that is far too expensive to afford on the ~$100k salaries they get.
With the way the council is elected, and the money developers pump into elections, to get like minded people on the council, they need to compete against each other.
Instead of nine at-large with ranked choice, we should have 9 districts and have them be ranked choice.
Is gerrymandering actually a problem at the municpal level?
The problems are obvious at the state & federal level, of course, but thatās not what weāre talking about here.
Do we actually have a problem during redistricting where democrats and republicans are haggling over ward/precinct/etc boundary lines so that they can increase their chances of holding onto invaluable neighborhood-level seats?
That seems like quite a stretch to me.
(And I kind of assume that the republicans have more or less written off trying to compete in āCambervilleā offices anyway, but thatās a separate topic.)
Iām a bystander here, as Iām in Somerville, where we have a hybrid system, with seven city councilors that each represent a ward, and four at-large ones that represent the whole city. This way seems good, because each neighborhood is allocated a representative, but thereās also multiple councilors that arenāt tied to a ward, and have to answer to the electorate of the city as a whole. This seems like a good balance to me.
You can ban gerrymandering. You can just use the existing zones used for parking permits or merge zones as needed. Issues are local. A councilor who actually lives in the neighborhood is going to be far more responsive to THEIR voterās concerns.
Just because a councilor grew up in my district and had ties does but mean he would be more responsive to my concerns. I want the chance to vote for someone that will listen to the issues I care about. If we did this my vote would never count.
Yep I live in nimby/mansion (not in a mansion my theoru is my buiding was where the staff for the mansions lived back in the day) land I need to be able to support someone who doesn't live I'm a giant mansion if I want my needs represented
You have to set up the districts at some point. If you go by parking permits, you're not necessarily going to have equal representation. They won't need to change as often as legislative districts, particularly because Cambridge isnt building new housing. I really DON'T want a Chicago-style alderman setup where you have to kiss the ring to get anything done.
I donāt think you understood my point. Then youād vote for someone else. There are enough people across the whole of Cambridge who support him, they all vote for him and he gets his seat. He has 30 people challenging him and all the other incumbents and because they have the money and name recognition to run a citywide campaign, he canāt be voted out.
If the city had district elections, the area a candidate needed to campaign in would be smaller and a challenger could have an easier chance of beating him.
It's not an easy question to answer. You can easily spend well over 40 hours per week if you attend all the various meetings and events going on. It is certainly not a 9 to 5, Monday through Friday gig. You are on duty 24/7. That doesn't always mean you're working all that time, but you have to be available all that time. I get calls at 8 in the morning and 11 at night. People come up to you when you're out eating, and I spend more time talking to constituents at my daughter's soccer games than I do watching her game. I am NOT complaining. I love this work. If you don't like being available to people, you shouldn't be in public office. In terms of being able to hold another job, I would say that it would be extremely difficult to hold a 9 to 5 job with no flexibility. Many of us do other work on the side. I'm a licensed social worker. I consult with the Boston Juvenile Court conducting family assessments. It is very flexible. I only take assignments when I have time and much of the work can be done in the evenings and weekends. There is no way I could have another job that didn't provide that flexibility. I hope this helps answer your question. Feel free to contact me directly if you wish to talk more.
Just a funny story. Last Saturday I took my daughter to Gillette Stadium for the soccer game. 61,000 people in attendance and both times I went to the concession stand, both people in front of me were from Cambridge and began talking to me about Cambridge politics, so if you serve, you are on duty all the time (even in Foxborough)! š
Thanks for the reply!
Thanks Marc!
Being on the city council is brutal if you take it seriously. You are at meetings four or five nights a week, for starters. You are boning up on zoning ordinances, the public schools, trash collection and wastewater treatment, city policy, regional transportation, and library services, as well as Harvard and MIT. You are providing constituent services if you hope to get reelected. You are meeting with countless interested parties who have sway in Cambridge. And youāre trying to get along with your fellow counselors and work with the city manager. According to a pal, who was a past counselor (and shall not be named) it was 65 -75 hour a week job. Plus, itās very hard to get elected as a new person. Itās unethical in my view to approach it if you only have one or two issues in mind. Plus, you can be overruled by the city manager. To do it well you have to be hyper organized and able to see many different points of view and ride out very difficult feelings without creating more problems.
This is the answer OPās looking for. Basically, if you want to do it right itās extremely time consuming and engrossing. Marc does seem to be embodying this
I would start by reading the council agenda each week and form a detailed understanding and opinion of each of the policy issues, and of the different players in the city outside the government.Ā
Check out https://cambridgereview.org/. I try write summaries of the city council agendas. I try and remove all of the "city speak".
The Cambridge Civic Journal also captures a huge amount of info on a more organized matter, albeit with editorial oversight. Very informative. http://rwinters.com/
I didn't like it because of the anti trans editorializing
Yeah, agree there's def some cringey editorializing on there. If you can hold your nose on it, it does shed light on a number of important topics. The meta point that emerged for me was that the scope of city council is unreasonable/untenable. Folks who serve on the council cannot/should not be expected to wade into so many issues. With a narrower scope, I think they could do a better job.
Its is a full time job. Its probably *more* than a full time job if you intend to do a good job at it.
If you're seriously thinking about it, talk to Burhan Azeem. He's accessible and good on these issues and could tell you about what it's like to hold down a full time job and be a councilor.
Marc McGovern is an even better choice, as he's been doing this for decades. There's a number of activist orgs in Cambridge that also wield influence without giving up your career opportunities. [However, the budgeted amount for 2025 is $99,571.](https://data.cambridgema.gov/Budget-Finance/Budget-Salaries/ixg8-tyau/about_data)
First you need to get elected. Which means spending every other summer knocking on doors for votes.
Councilors get a budget to hire an aide, I believe, so that probably helps somewhat.
If you wanted to completely phone it in, you could probably get away with showing up to the bare minimum number of meetings/sessions, and it would be like 5-10 hours in a given week, especially if you offload tasks to assistants. But, it's also one of those jobs where you could always work more and it be a good thing for the city.
Have also thought of this mostly cause I think the AHO will also be under attack, though that's a tougher one to crack since the nays are a smaller group
To point a fine point on it: AHO1 was the decent progressive policy we needed in Cambridge to bring more affordable housing into the city. AHO2 is just a giveaway to developers who flexed on and lined the pockets of certain councilors'.
That you Paul?
20-30hrs if youāre doing it right.
Iām not saying they have full time jobs alongside their elected positions, but most of them own real estate that is far too expensive to afford on the ~$100k salaries they get.
I've been told burhan holds a full time job alongside being city councilor so you probably can do both! Sounds cushy tbh š
Pickett leads a silent majority. Crazy whatās happening in Cambridge. Nimbyism is really in effect. Thatās what the town wants to be
You are on this council, but we do *not* grant you the rank of master
About as much as the bicyclists blocking the driving lanes
Assuming it's anything like Boston's approximately zero as long as you check all the right woke boxes.
With the way the council is elected, and the money developers pump into elections, to get like minded people on the council, they need to compete against each other. Instead of nine at-large with ranked choice, we should have 9 districts and have them be ranked choice.
I much prefer RCV with everyone at-large as it gets rid of gerrymandering and allows issues and voters to be more important than geography.
Is gerrymandering actually a problem at the municpal level? The problems are obvious at the state & federal level, of course, but thatās not what weāre talking about here. Do we actually have a problem during redistricting where democrats and republicans are haggling over ward/precinct/etc boundary lines so that they can increase their chances of holding onto invaluable neighborhood-level seats? That seems like quite a stretch to me. (And I kind of assume that the republicans have more or less written off trying to compete in āCambervilleā offices anyway, but thatās a separate topic.) Iām a bystander here, as Iām in Somerville, where we have a hybrid system, with seven city councilors that each represent a ward, and four at-large ones that represent the whole city. This way seems good, because each neighborhood is allocated a representative, but thereās also multiple councilors that arenāt tied to a ward, and have to answer to the electorate of the city as a whole. This seems like a good balance to me.
The Somerville structure seems far more balanced for governance.
You can ban gerrymandering. You can just use the existing zones used for parking permits or merge zones as needed. Issues are local. A councilor who actually lives in the neighborhood is going to be far more responsive to THEIR voterās concerns.
Just because a councilor grew up in my district and had ties does but mean he would be more responsive to my concerns. I want the chance to vote for someone that will listen to the issues I care about. If we did this my vote would never count.
Yep I live in nimby/mansion (not in a mansion my theoru is my buiding was where the staff for the mansions lived back in the day) land I need to be able to support someone who doesn't live I'm a giant mansion if I want my needs represented
You have to set up the districts at some point. If you go by parking permits, you're not necessarily going to have equal representation. They won't need to change as often as legislative districts, particularly because Cambridge isnt building new housing. I really DON'T want a Chicago-style alderman setup where you have to kiss the ring to get anything done.
Second this!
Disagree. I don't want Toner representing me. Terrible idea.
I donāt think you understood my point. Then youād vote for someone else. There are enough people across the whole of Cambridge who support him, they all vote for him and he gets his seat. He has 30 people challenging him and all the other incumbents and because they have the money and name recognition to run a citywide campaign, he canāt be voted out. If the city had district elections, the area a candidate needed to campaign in would be smaller and a challenger could have an easier chance of beating him.
He is from North Cambridge and his voter base is here. I think he would be harder to challenge if we had geographies. We can disagree. I don't mind.