City Transparency

City Transparency – Gardner MA

The City of Gardner Massachusetts has accomplished successes in City Transparency, including, but not limited to:

GardnerMagazine.com spoke with Gardner MA Mayor Michael Nicholson about transparency in the Chair City. This is what he had to say:

Mayor Nicholson: I think its something that has always been a goal of us here in City Hall, and something that I have said multiple times too, is that the work we do here each and every day is work that we’re doing on behalf of the residents who put us here into these positions, be it either by voting for people like myself and the city council, or by paying our salaries with all of our other employees who are here, Through the property taxes and the other money that’s being spent here in Gardner. So that’s why we want to make sure we are as transparent as we always can be. that’s why the mayors updates exist. We’re always looking for new ways to get information out to the public. We’re constantly trying to keep up to date on our social media platforms and our City’s website. We have an open checkbook function on the City’s website right now where you can see where every penny that is spent by the city, is spent if you go to that transparency tab on the City’s website . These are all things that were doing to make sure people know how were keeping our fiduciary responsibility to our taxpayers here, how were working to build them a better community and what’s going on around the city. Because if you don’t know what’s happening in your own backyard, then we aren’t doing our job here in City Hall.

The Mayor spoke about why it seems other cities and towns in the country have a roadblock from doing things like Gardner is doing them:

Mayor Nicholson: You know, I don’t know, because it really doesn’t take that much effort to do this. If you’re already getting the work done on the back end, there’s no reason you can’t share that with the public. I think there’s there may be a concern about how much time it takes or what needs to go into getting that out there. But you’ll see, you’ll notice once you start with those things its really not as bad as it sounds. And its really quite a light lift to do for a lot of rewards.

The State of Massachusetts has a formula in which the tax rate and property values are set at different times. This resulted in an anomaly in 2022 where 1st and 2nd quarter tax bills were higher than expected, although the yearly total would be correct.. Gardner proactively informed its citizens and Gardner Mayor Nicholson commented on whether work was easier because people were informed:

Mayor Nicholson: Oh absolutely, 100%. And tha’t’s one of the reasons why if you can get out in front of an issue, absolutely get out in front of it as quickly as you can. Because the amount of calls we expected to get versus what we ended up getting as a result of the way that the statutes related to the way the taxes had to be given last year, was tremendously lower than what we thought it was going to be. And that’s because people already had the information. We got the postcards out to the public, We got the Code Red calls that we have, the informational videos put out. It’s something that we share the information and people just understood. And that really helped us out.

The Mayor commented on get-togethers with Mayors from other cities and if there are comparisons:

Mayor Nicholson: Each community is different, so it is a little different here and there. What I can say is different for sure when we get together with officials across the country is how they have access to the public, asking questions. There are certain communities that are only appointment based rather than having an open door policy like we have here at Gardner City Hall. There are certain communities that close their doors on a certain day of the week to allow employees to catch up on efficiencies. And are only available by phone. Which is absolutely okay in the way that work gets done at City Hall. So long as you make sure you are still picking up that phone and really keeping up to date with what the public is out there as just ways to get your message out to the public and show what’s going on in City Hall is the biggest common factor among those conversations and is sharing ways that that happens that’s the best way to describe that.