The Winthrop Town Council on Tuesday received with skepticism an advisory panel’s report suggesting that the town shrink the size of the council while eliminating its precinct-based election of members.

The town for the past two decades had had a nine-member governing council, with three of those members – including the council president – elected on a town-wide basis and remainder chosen by voters living in each of the six precincts into which Winthrop is divided.

The proposed change – versions of which have been put forth unsuccessfully in the recent past, and which would take more than a year to implement even if the process moves quickly this time – would reduce the overall council size to seven members, with all of them elected by voters across the town.

The idea was championed by the current president of the Town Council, Jim Letterie, who has argued that too many council seats fail to attract enough candidates for competitive races. So far this year, with voting set for November, the race for the council seat for Precinct 3 has not yet seen any entrant.

Mr Letterie, despite routinely refusing to answer questions from the public during other Town Council meetings, repeatedly made exceptions to that rule during a public comment session on the advisory panel’s suggestions, as he tried to rally support for the overhaul.

‘More harm than good’

Yet most other council members either declined to take a position on the idea of consolidating the council, or expressed concern that eliminating precinct-based representation could have unforeseen consequences, including leaving citizens unsure who to contact if they have issues or questions for the town government that they would like to get addressed.

Ending precinct-based council membership could do “more harm than good,” said Patrick Costigan, the council member representing Precinct 1, in the central part of Winthrop.

The proposed change was among a slate of reforms endorsed after weeks of study by an advisory group of citizens known as the Ordinance Review Committee, which is formed every five years to consider and put forth recommendations to the council on changes to the town’s governing charter and to the town’s ordinances.

The Town Council took no immediate action on the committee’s recommendations, which also touched on areas such as compensation for Town Council members. The council members are currently paid $50 a week, which is widely seen as far too little for the number of hours required of the job, potentially limiting the number of people willing to seek election.

Some council members also agreed with suggestions from citizens at the council session that any lack of interest in running for the Town Council could reflect a wider problem of too few people in Winthrop showing the interest or having the time to track the government’s activities.

Mr Letterie said details of the process for implementing the advisory panel’s suggestions were not clear, including over questions of whether the council would first need to arrange the election of a separate citizens panel with the power to make the changes, whether existing council members could serve on that panel, and whether town voters would ultimately need to sign off on the matter. Either way, the Town Council president said, the overall implementation likely would take at least 18 months.

Rising cost of defying state

The Town Council on Tuesday also heard new warnings about its failure to comply with the state’s 3A zoning law, and acknowledged that it’s having trouble reversing declines in MBTA bus service and in winning improvements in conditions related to Logan airport.

The 3A law, also known as the MBTA Communities law, requires that most cities and towns around Boston create zoning districts that allow multi-family housing, as a way of expanding housing near transit service, or face major reductions in state funding. Most communities have complied, but Winthrop’s Town Council has refused.

The council has taken that position – at the persistent urging of a small group of political activists working in Winthrop and other towns – even though in Winthrop’s case, the town could satisfy the state law by rezoning to multi-family status several parts of town led by Seal Harbor and Governor’s Park that already have large multi-family developments. Mr Letterie has sided with that political lobby group, even though he has differed with its leaders by publicly arguing that Winthrop’s proposed townwide compliance strategy would not actually require any new housing units in Winthrop. Instead, Mr Letterie has explained his position by suggesting that complying with 3A might encourage the state to pass similar zoning laws in the future – even though the state retains that authority either way.

And the cost of that defiance of the state keeps getting clearer. At the Town Council meeting on Tuesday, council member Max Tassinari noted that lost state grants due to the council’s pointless rejection of Winthrop’s 3A compliance plan could easily total in the millions of dollars for Winthrop taxpayers. Just the town’s Health Department alone, Mr Tassinari noted, gets about $625,000 of its $900,000 annual budget from state funds that are vulnerable under the 3A law.

Mr Tassinari has become a particular target over the matter. He is facing a recall petition attempt led by the political activists trying to convince Winthrop and other surrounding towns to reject their 3A compliance plans. Among other complaints, the activists are protesting Mr Tassinari’s decision to participate in 3A-related council votes after initially abstaining while state officials ruled on any potential conflict related to his full-time job with the state’s Department of Transportation. He outlined that decision at the Tuesday council meeting, saying he regretted not explaining earlier the state government process through which he was formally cleared to vote on matters involving 3A.

Another council member, Suzanne Swope, consistently voted on 3A matters, in opposition to compliance with the state law, while citing her personal involvement – her residency at Seal Harbor – as informative to her position. Ms Swope has readily acknowledged that Seal Harbor is already a dense multi-family housing development, and has explained her vote against 3A by claiming without evidence that 3A would somehow allow even more people to live there. At yet at Tuesday’s council meeting, while discussing the Ordinance Review Committee’s recommendations and the value of precinct-specific council memberships, Ms Swope said that the 3A issue had generated “no major concern” in her precinct.

MBTA and Logan

The Winthrop Town Council on Tuesday had other extended discussions about the value of cooperation with the state, with specific regard to bus service and Logan airport.

Regarding bus service, Winthrop is currently served by two routes that originate at the Orient Heights station and run through town as far as Deer Island. But the MBTA is cutting back that service, with plans to eventually make one line to Orient Heights and another to Beachmont. The Beachmont addition is welcome, council members said. But that hasn’t yet started, and the town is already seeing reductions in the number of bus trips, especially with regard to Deer Island and Point Shirley, the council’s vice president, Hannah Belcher, told her colleagues.

The MBTA plans to stop some bus lines at the Winthrop ferry terminal, well short of Point Shirley and Deer Island, and it’s also cutting service to Governor’s Park, which is the single-busiest stop in the town of Winthrop, Ms Belcher said. The MBTA argues that its actions are justified by ridership levels, though Ms Belcher said the MBTA does not appear to have first tried to do a better job of coordinating the lines that run through Winthrop. The MBTA also has not made progress on building bus shelters in town, she noted.

At the same time, Ms Belcher noted with concern the recent comments from Massport’s chief executive officer, Rich Davey, describing ambitions to grow Logan into one of the nation’s top-ranked airports. While that does not necessarily mean Logan becoming bigger, Ms Belcher and other council members took the opportunity to criticize the levels of pollution and noise from Logan that affect Winthrop, and to suggest that Massport doesn’t take seriously enough the health harms that Winthrop suffers.

“They don’t treat us fairly,” council member Joseph Aiello, representing Precinct 5, said of Massport.

Other nuisances

Council members also reported widespread concern in town about high levels of seaweed, and the possible connection with high levels of insects along some beaches. Seaweed blooms are associated with planetary warming and food-related pollution from both cities and farmlands, and town officials said they are taking steps that include increased beach cleanups.

The Winthrop Town Manager, Anthony Marino, also acknowledged rising complaints about mosquitos in some parts of town. The town will arrange anti-mosquito spraying in some areas, including around Fisherman’s Bend Park, but would not conduct a town-wide eradication campaign unless the problem reached a definable crisis level, he said.

Town officials also offered an update on progress toward building a new fire station, as approved by voters earlier this year. The estimated completion date is early 2028.