This is the third part in a series that will look at actions taken by some Worcester City Councilors over recent years that, when viewed collectively, display a disturbing downward spiral towards a council that serves the interests of its members, not of city residents.
The introductory piece of the series, The City Council Circles the Drain, looks at a Worcester City Council resolution supporting Worcester Police Department actions in several recent cases. In isolation, the resolution is harmless. When viewed in the context of the behavior of the majority faction within the council, the resolution tells a different story.
The second piece of this series, Worcester Council Holds Fewest Meetings in 20 Years in 2025, looks at the near-total elimination of the ability of residents to put issues before their local elected legislature and the events from October 2024 through January 2025, which some councilors cited as the reason for eliminating that ability.
This piece will review a discussion within the city council related to the specialized stretch code during its meeting on April 28. It’s not the stretch code itself that is important here, but how the discussion shows how the council operates and comes to conclusions.
The Worcester City Council has become for, of, and by the controlling majority of councilors.
Note: In the previous piece, I wrote that the next part of this series would involve the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) actions on Eureka Street in May 2025. That was my intention, but then the city council did council things. So here we are. The piece related to Eureka Street will come next.
Opt-In Building Codes in Massachusetts
Massachusetts maintains three versions of building codes. All three are based on the International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) and amended at the state level.
The lowest level, the Base Code, applies to all. Just 50 Massachusetts municipalities operate on only the Base Code.
The next two levels require a municipality to opt-in for them to apply.
The Stretch Energy Code, which first became available in 2010 for opt-in, resulted from the Green Communities Act of 2008. It requires higher energy efficiency for new construction and major renovations. Since becoming available, 243 municipalities have adopted it. In 2011, Worcester elected to opt-in.
As part of Massachusetts’ goals for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, the Specialized Stretch Energy Code became available in 2023 for municipal opt-in. It applies only to new construction. Since becoming available, 58 municipalities in Massachusetts elected to opt-in.
While these codes are complex, the focus of the Specialized Stretch Code is electrification. A new building using fossil fuels for energy must also wire the building to be electrification-ready and include a small solar panel as an offset to the use of fossil fuels. If the building operates on electricity alone, no solar is required. There are other enhanced efficiency standards included, such as the efficiency of the windows installed.
The City of Worcester opted-in to the Specialized Stretch Energy Code in 2023. The application of the code went into effect on July 1, 2024.
Recommendation to Pause Specialized Code
During the city council meeting on April 14, City Manager Eric Batista, based on recommendations from Chief Development Officer Peter Dunn and others, recommended a pause in applying the specialized code. A majority of councilors supported the pause and were ready to vote during that meeting.
The primary factor cited to support the pause was feedback from developers about the costs required by the specialized code.
Councilor Khrystian King asked for more data and held the item, an option each councilor has to delay action on an item until the next meeting of the council. King received significant criticism for holding the vote.
Most observers, myself included, expected that the council would vote for the pause at the next council meeting. However, in the intervening two weeks, Batista’s administration learned that state law and regulations prohibit the city from issuing an opt-out of the specialized code until three years after it opted-in.
There is also no option in the law to “pause” the specialized code. A municipality is in or out.
Councilors were quite unhappy when they found out they didn’t have the full facts.
Upset Councilors
Much discussion occurred during the April 28 council meeting, including these portions of comments by Councilors Moe Bergman and Gary Rosen .
On the one hand, I appreciate that there was some pushback on this fiasco by some councilors. I cheered out loud while watching from home at this portion of Rosen’s comments. No equivocating and no spending more time praising everyone under the sun than time saying anything even remotely relevant or critical. I love it.
On the other hand, these comments include a perspective that cuts right to the heart of why government in Worcester fails its residents.
Source of Information
Councilor Bergman refers to making decisions, in his words, “based on the information I receive.” He also listed several pieces of information that he believes the council should have received before it voted to opt-in to the specialized code.
Councilor Rosen criticizes the administration for not knowing that pausing the code isn’t possible and that the city cannot opt-out until three years after it opted-in.
Both councilors appear to expect that the city manager’s administration provides the council with the information councilors base their decisions on.
Within the way the city council in Worcester operates, these comments make perfect sense. Worcester’s governing system operates far from how it was intended.
Governing with a City Manager
Sumter, South Carolina, became the first city to adopt a council-manager system in 1912.
Today, a majority of cities with a population under 250,000 have a council-manager system where. like in Worcester, a city manager, appointed by elected city councilors, leads the administration of municipal government.
The intent of the system is simple: to take politics out of the operations of government. The system intends a city manager to be an operations expert who carries out policy.
In other words, the manager’s job is to implement and carry out policy. The council’s job is to create those policies. The council says what, and the manager implements and manages. They say, he does.
In reality, policy almost never comes from the Worcester council. Instead, it comes to the council from the manager’s administration.
This creates obvious problems.
Policy Making
Politics, in its purest form, is largely a competition to implement a platform as government policy. Any political party or faction seeks its platform implemented, believing it has the best solutions for the right challenges. That doesn’t stop at the border of Worcester.
As councilors Bergman and Rosen appeared to say, the council’s decisions are based on information provided to them, mostly by the city manager in reports.
Often, those reports are the administration providing its perspective on policies it proposes. The administration is selling its proposed solution.
That’s not nefarious; that’s natural. Expecting complete objectivity is to expect them not to believe in their own ideas.
A Council Against Its Own Resources
The city council majority, long led by Mayor Petty, has fought against resources for councilors, creating a near-total dependence on the administration for information.
Mayor Petty’s coalition has opposed hiring its own legal counsel and hiring more support staff.
A statistical comparison I compiled in 2025 showed the Worcester City Council’s budget as the third smallest as a percentage of the city’s total operations budget when compared to the top 10 cities in Massachusetts by population. Only Springfield and Lowell funded their city councils at a lower level.
The city council has five employees supporting councilors, and two of those work only for the mayor. That leaves 10 councilors with a total staff of three, leaving it with no ability to develop its own information in any significant way.
The city manager leads an organization of over 2,000 employees.
This is not Sparta. There is no Leonidas on the council. This is not the film “300.” When it’s 2,000 vs. 16 (with the 11 councilors part-time), the balance of power is quite clear.
While the council continues to refuse to play its policy-making role, it could investigate policy proposals from the administration and monitor the performance of those policies. That’s how the authors of the U.S. Constitution envisioned the role of a legislature and its power of oversight as checks and balances on administrative power.
The Anti-Oversight Majority
While the Worcester City Council doesn’t create policy, that could be tolerable if the council took a robust approach to oversight.
Mention oversight to some in the council’s majority and they become outright offended.
Oversight isn’t about uncovering wrongdoing, though that can be a result. Instead, oversight should analyze policy in practice to determine that programs operate efficiently and achieve intended results, safeguarding taxpayer funds. It is about learning from mistakes to prevent them from happening again.
Independent oversight is non-existent in Worcester, despite claims from administration officials that oversight of itself is somehow legitimate. It’s not.
The most irresponsible example is lawsuit settlements of two cases in 2025 totalling over $2.25 million.
Natale Cosenza was wrongfully convicted of a crime for which he spent 16 years in state prison. After his case was overturned, a civil jury found that a Worcester police officer manufactured and manipulated evidence in the case, and that another conspired with him to do so.
Dana Gaul spent 5 months held at the Worcester County House of Correction on a murder charge. He did not remotely match the description of eyewitnesses, and significant evidence showed that he couldn’t have been at the crime scene.
These lawsuits are over. Completed. Finished. The settlement agreement includes provisions whereby both sides agree all claims related to these matters are now closed. There is no liability in investigating these issues through city council committees.
Yet no one in city government has made any effort at all to determine how these things happened or attempt to identify policy solutions to prevent similar situations from happening again.
Do you think city government should take steps to prevent issues that cost over $2 million in taxpayer funds from happening again?
I think most of us do.
They don’t. Especially on police matters. That’s not in their political interest. The endorsement they received from the union that represents patrol officers in Worcester far outweighs ant obligation they feel to uphold their oath of office, which includes upholding the state and federal constitutions. The city council majority simply doesn’t care.
While I believe that is the most serious case of total indifference to residents within Worcester’s government, it’s not only police matters where oversight doesn’t exist. It’s everything. Checks and balances offend the majority of the council.
What Does the City Council Actually Do?
District councilors have the responsibility of responding to constituent issues. That’s a full-time job in itself. I don’t want to take away from the effort it requires for those representing a district.
That doesn’t excuse what it does with its responsibilities at City Hall, which it largely defers to the administration.
It does no investigation or substantive inquiry. It actively opposes additional resources for itself to enable it to fulfill those responsibilities. Instead, it takes the information it’s given from the administration on its own policy and decides almost entirely based on that information.
That’s it. Anyone who asks councilors to do more, or proposes solutions that enable them to do more, becomes an enemy.
I appreciate Councilors Bergman and Rosen speaking up. However, their question shouldn’t be to the city manager, but back at the council.
Why didn’t the council know more?
The answer: Because it operates as a report-reading service.
Government by ChatGPT would be equally effective.
(Note: The original version of this piece said the city manager leads an organization of over 8,000 employees. That included Worcester Public Schools employees in error. That figure was corrected.)
