He’s only got about four months left, but Precinct 2 Greenfield City Councilor Mark Berson is clearly looking to make that time count.
Berson has proposed two ordinances and one non-binding resolution for the council’s consideration, all of which are likely to generate potentially heated debate, both among the membership and residents they represent.
“These are all important issues, and they very much go to who we are as a community,” Berson said.
Let’s start with the resolution, which asks the council to acknowledge that enough evidence exists to warrant the impeachment of President Donald Trump. The measure, which carries no force of law, also calls for the council’s sentiments to be shared with Congressman Jim McGovern, who represents Greenfield in the U.S. Congress.
Berson says the resolution is different because it does not ask the council to vote to impeach, nor is it asking Congress to file articles of impeachment against Trump.
“It’s more about looking at the evidence and expressing the sentiment that there is enough there to support impeachment, and sharing that with our elected representative,” Berson said.
Berson filed the resolution two days after the council’s recent vote to approve a Safe Cities Ordinance, and says he was moved to do so after reading the Mueller Report cover to cover.
“A lot of people haven’t read it, but I have,” Berson said. “And I believe there are multiple instances of obstruction of justice which would warrant impeachment.”
When asked how he would respond to the criticism that the council should restrict its focus to local and not national issues, Berson immediately invoked the words of a Massachusetts political icon.
“Tip O’Neill said ‘all politics is local,’ and that’s how I view this,” Berson said. “It’s our responsibility as community leaders to make our voices heard in situations like this.”
The ordinances filed by Berson would significantly raise the pay of local officials. The first would set a $15 minimum wage for all Greenfield city employees, regardless of their position-an idea which Berson said grew out of his examination of the union contract for Greenfield’s cafeteria workers.
“I couldn’t believe it when I saw these people made $11 an hour,” Berson said. “How does a person live on that? We have a responsibility to pay our employees a living wage.”
Berson said the only caveat in the ordnance is that it would not apply to existing collective bargaining agreements. So if the cafeteria worker’s contract, for example, pays them $11 an hour for three years, that wage would have to remain at that level for the balance of the pact, unless both sides agree to update it.
“But once that contract ends, $15 would be the minimum hourly rate we would be allowed to pay,” Berson said.
As changes go, this one appears relatively minor, as Massachusetts’s minimum wage rate is slated to go to $15 within two years. Berson said the ordinance, if passed, would be legal now “because, as it turns out, cities and towns aren’t subject to minimum wage laws,” which he says he learned while researching the issue.
Berson’s other ordinance would correct what he felt was a mistake made during the effort to draft the city’s mayoral charter. Benson chaired the mayoral charter commission, but disagreed with setting the mayor’s annual salary at $70,000.
“I argued that it should be $85,000, but there were people who were concerned that it would create higher taxes,” Berson said. “But the position requires that this person manage a budget which now sits at around $44 million dollars… it’s a huge responsibility, and the person who does the job should be paid accordingly.”
Toward that end, Berson has proposed that the mayor’s salary be boosted from the current rate to $105,000, which, he says, “is still lower than the school superintendent’s salary, who manages a budget which is less than half of the one the mayor’s responsible for.”
Berson’s ordinance also boosts the city council’s salaries from $3,000 to $15,000 a year, a bump he says is very much deserved.
“One thing I’ve learned in this job is the amount of time it requires,” Berson said. “People who want to serve shouldn’t have to worry about having to pay child care just to do so.”
Berson says all of these proposals transcend money and politics.
“This is about who we are, morally, as a community,” Berson said. “That’s why they are important.”
I wonder how many of his colleagues will share that opinion.
Chris Collins is a Greenfield native who has covered local and regional politics for close to a quarter of a century. He can be reached at sourcechris.collins@gmail.com.