The Winthrop town government has published the five referendum questions that will appear on the town’s November ballot, including measures to potentially increase pay for Town Council members and to better protect council members with repeated absences.

Town officials posted the ballot as they reported that voter registration numbers appear to be rising in Winthrop – leading some local anti-housing activists to suggest that they may start investigating the identities of new registrants.

The referendum questions were put forth by the Ordinance Review Committee – an advisory panel charged with suggesting changes to town rules – and then approved for ballot inclusion by the Town Council.

They will appear on the November 4 town-wide ballot along with the candidates for open Town Council seats and several other elected offices – the School Committee, Housing Authority and library trustees.

Other questions appearing on the ballot would give the Town Council president a more direct role in choosing the council’s vice president, by offering a nominee ahead of the council’s vote on the position, and would allow the use of electronic messages to announce special meetings of town bodies rather than keep requiring the hand delivery of such notices.

Two matters not appearing on the ballot, after extended debate and battling, are a proposal to remove an existing member of the Town Council, Max Tassinari, and an Ordinance Review Committee suggestion to shrink the Town Council from nine members to six. The recall campaign against Mr Tassinari failed to receive enough resident signatures. And the Town Council declined to act on a suggestion that it cut its size from nine to six members, citing an opinion from the town attorney that a more complex process involving an elected charter commission likely would be necessary to consider the issue.

The ballot question concerning Town Council absences would make clear that council members who exceed a set number of absences from regular council meetings – either three consecutive absences, or half of the meetings over a three-month period – would be granted a council hearing to explain the reason for their absences. Such a council member currently needs a two-thirds vote from the full council to remain a member, while the change would require both the hearing and a two-thirds majority vote to expel.

Due process

“Basically it’s giving due process” to any council member facing such a situation, the current Town Council president, Jim Letterie, said in outlining the ballot questions.

Another ballot question would establish a process for reviewing salary increases for council members at least every two years, with town voters still approving any suggested increases. Council members are currently paid $50 per week, with the council president paid $100, and the existing method of changing those numbers has proven to be a “very long and convoluted process,” Mr Letterie said. Advocates of the change, within the Ordinance Review Committee and beyond, have argued that the low salary level is among the deterrents to the town finding more willing candidates.

The issues of removing council members and encouraging new candidates have both gained attention recently in the context of a prolonged debate in Winthrop over a state law known as 3A that generally requires communities in the Boston area to expand their geographical areas that allow multifamily housing. The law doesn’t require any new housing in Winthrop because of the town’s existing areas of multifamily developments. But four current Town Council members have accepted the idea put forth by a small group of activists from Winthrop and beyond that the town should reject 3A compliance as a means of asserting the principle of local control. Most cities and town around Boston have abandoned that position, but Winthrop has not, subjecting itself to the potential loss of state grant funding.

Leaders of the campaign against Winthrop’s compliance with the 3A law sought Mr Tassinari’s removal from the council because he has backed a compliance plan and because he had pointed out that a council member opposing 3A compliance had missed three council meetings. That council member, Rob DeMarco, retained his seat after Mr Letterie used his power as council president to block action on Mr DeMarco’s potential removal.

And a leader of that anti-3A campaign, Diana Viens, recently stated in a posting on Facebook that Winthrop has had 456 newly registered voters between April and a report in mid-August, saying the increase “feels unusually high” and offering to supply the names of the new registrants to anyone who “wants to do a bit of digging” into their identities.

The office of the Winthrop town clerk said that the town recorded a net gain of 267 additional voters during that time period, after removing 94 inactive voters. Winthrop added 490 net new voters during the same period last year, the clerk said. State figures showed 14,326 voters in Winthrop as of February this year, up one half of a percent from 14,247 voters in Winthrop in February 2024.

Winthrop’s population has remained around the 19,000 level for several years. But at a moment of federal pressure on immigrants, white-majority Winthrop has the second-fastest-growing Hispanic population in the entire state of Massachusetts, after only Nantucket, according to a Boston Globe analysis based on population shifts between 2018 and 2023.

The voter registration deadline in Winthrop for the November 4 election is Friday, October 24.