Boston Massachusetts was founded in 1625. Its history is tightly intertwined with the history of the United States itself. Nevertheless, Boston was founded as the historical center of New England and the capital of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. This is because Boston's history has greatly affected the entire country's history and thought. However, Boston was not the first significant European settlement in this area. In fact, both the Plymouth Colony of 1620 and the Salem colony of 1626 preceded it. The reason why Boston has become so popular is because of its deep harbor and advantageous geographic position. This actually helped to make Boston the busiest port in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In this way, Boston eventually surpassed both Plymouth and Salem. Boston continued on to be the United States' largest, wealthiest and most influential city until the 1760s. However, it was not until 1949 that the the Boston city council was actually established through a charter. It was based upon 2 key concepts:
Due to the decentralization of political organizations neighborhoods have been able to greatly influence the Boston city council. Now instead of being concerned about civic issues, the council has become overly involved in bread-and-butter issues instead. This has also made it very difficult to form any strong biracial alliances. Those who have been elected to city council are not up to the task of doing this either because they are fearful that they will lose their elected position over it. In order to truly understand how this has been embedded into the Boston city council over many centuries, it is important to first understand the legislative process.
The city council has the power to approve or defeat anything that the governmental committees put before them. If they accept the recommendation, it then goes before the Mayor to approve and sign into full force. When the mayor does not take any action within 15 days, most likely it will go into force. Those things that are disapproved of need to have the reason why put into writing and then the matter returns to city council who may then pass it with a 2/3 majority vote. This is not true with ordinances, home rule petitions and 17F orders though.
City council is also able to refer anything on their docket to a committee to take action upon at a later date. The councilors, press and other interested parties are then invited to attend a hearing about this matter via a written invitation that must be sent out 48 hours in advance. These meetings are also open to the public who can present testimony only after those most interested or affected by the subject matter, have testified. After the hearing, the chair will submit a report to the council with their recommendations. Sometimes items get hung up here though because the committee does not have to give a report until the chair determines that another hearing should be held or that a report to the Council should be sent.
One of these modifications occurred in 1981 when the council was changed from 9 to 13 councilors. This change was encouraged due to the fact that urban leadership required that there be a more powerful council. This also helped to make sure that the mayor would not be able to hire so many employees that would be dedicated to electing him mayor once again, which happened in both 1975 and 1979 by Mayor Kevin White. Of course, a lot of the most recent mayors have still tried to increase their power even though their powers are already quite extensive. This has been stopped recently by Mayor Thomas Menino who worked hard to decrease the size of city bureaucracy by consolidating a lot of free-standing departments so that now there are only 8 cabinet departments. Each of these is headed by a chief cabinet officer.
Throughout time women have played a very important role in helping to form the Boston City Council. In the 1960s Katherine “Kitty” Craven fought for urban renewal and in the 1970s Louise Day Hicks fought for school desegregation.
It was not until the middle of the 1990s though that women had the biggest impact. It was at that time that they held 4 of the 13 city council seats. These women were Maura Hennigan, Maureen Feeney, Peggy Davis-Mullen and Diane Modica. Together they formed a critical mass, and with the support of the city council president Jim Kelly, they were able to rise to positions of power on committees and thus make way for other women to enter into leadership positions in other government offices.
Unfortunately this ended in 1997 due to a combination of individual political ambitions and the realities of Boston’s political culture. Since then, only 2 women have retained seats on the council. In 1981 Maura Hennigan began working as a councilor. She was in office for 6 years, which is actually the longest tenure of any current councilor. Then in 1993 Maureen Feeney joined the Boston city council. While there are numerous opportunities for women to get involved with local politics, very few women actually consider running for office.
Boston city council has been in place for quite a long time now. The city itself has gone through a lot of great changes itself. It started out in the 1770s with the Boston Tea Party, which was then followed with a period of greatness in the 1800s. Following that were periods of great growth as well as times of great rebellion too. There are some great things that Boston is known for including:
Much of this success has to be credited to the Boston city council and the ups and downs that it has helped this great city through.