Mayor-elect Marty Walsh is continuing to streamline his transition to succeed incumbent Mayor Tom Menino, making good on his promise to host several town meetings in order to get a better feel for issues hindering the City’s potential at the street level. Today, Walsh announced his Transition Committee’s Issues Working Groups, which will kick off these town meeting forums, an initiative he announced earlier in November.
According to Walsh’s press secretary, the groups will be comprised of “more than 200 practitioners, experts, community leaders and end users” to discuss ideas, best practices, and implementation of the agenda items the mayor-elect put forth throughout his campaign.
The groups are broken down into a number of different categories, including “Arts and Culture; Basic City Services; Economic Development; Education; Energy, Environment and Open Space; Housing; Human Services; Public Health; Public Safety; Transportation and Infrastructure; and Youth.” Walsh’s transition website, available here, breaks down the groups even further into the individual experts and professionals who constitute these groups including members of his own transition team – Charlotte Golar Richie, John Barros, Felix Arroyo, Katherine Craven, Joyce Linehan, Sam Tyler, Dr. James Mandell, Paul Watanabe, and Beth Williams.
In making good on another promise, one of which he’s only scratching the surface of –seeing has how he has yet to even assume office – Walsh has diversified his transition team and subsequent Working Groups to be derived of 49 percent individuals of color and 50 percent women. And all were appointed based on living and working connections to Boston, as well as merit.
Each group is expected to meet several times and host at least one public hearing, while the transition team will also host one public hearing, before they each submit a report to Walsh in January. This way, groups can interact with residents at the local level while benefitting from their specific and direct input. Walsh takes over Mayor Menino’s long-held City Hall office on January 6.
Groups will also be working by the mantra “Keep, Implement and Dream” in which they are encouraged to keep something that the City is already doing that should be maintained, implement an idea or policy that the city is not currently doing and which could be realized without major new funding or legislative changes, and dream of an idea or policy that could be transformative but will require a longer time horizon.
