City Council Endorsement Process
The Process
The process that the sub-committee used was a combination of factors with the primary one being the candidate responses to our questionnaire. We wanted to evaluate the incumbents on their performance as city councilors during the current term, an evaluation factor that non-incumbents would not have. In order to accommodate these unique factors, we established a scoring system as outlined in Table 1.
Table 1: Evaluation Factors
| Category | Part | Points | Incumbents | Non-incumbents |
| 1 | 1 | 55 | Questionnaire Responses | Questionnaire Responses |
| 2 | 1 | 20 | Voting history on 10 key items, weighted | Discussion of issues from candidate websites, campaign literature and other sources |
| 2 | 10 | Motions brought forward that were considered productive | Candidate background, to include government service, neighborhood work, work history, related experience | |
| 3 | 5 | Current actions on council and during campaign | Effectiveness of campaign and indication of hard work | |
| 3 | 1 | 2.5 | Experience in government | Experience in government |
| 2 | 2.5 | Education degree and life experience |
Education degree and life experience |
|
| 3 | 2.5 | Business experience | Business experience | |
| 4 | 2.5 | Timeliness of response | Timeliness of response |
In addition to this overall allocation of points, the 11 question groups that were posed in the questionnaire were assigned weightings as shown in Table 2.
Table 2: Weightings for Question Groups
| Question Group | Points allocated |
| Professionalism in City Government | 7 |
| City Finances | 7 |
| Effective Public Services | 4 |
| Educational System | 5 |
| Opportunities provided by good jobs | 6 |
| High Quality of Life | 4 |
| Affordable Housing | 5 |
| Safe, Clean Neighborhoods | 5 |
| Efficient Transportation | 4 |
| Specific Other Issues | 4 |
| Candidate Issues | 4 |
| Total | 55 |
-
Initial Results
The sub-committee gathered all the information that was readily available, and received copies of the candidate responses to the questionnaire as they arrived. Of the 21 candidates on the ballot, questionnaire responses were received from 14 of them. All candidates received follow up requests. Since the questionnaire accounted for more than half the scoring, and based on initial scoring results that showed that one could not reach enough points without the questionnaire scores, those candidates who did not respond with answers were dropped from the final scoring.
Move Lowell Forward will not be releasing candidate scores. We do not prefer any candidate of our slate over any other. We list our recommended slate of nine candidates alphabetically, as ballot does.
-
Final Selection
In the final selection, each of the 4 sub-committee members scored the candidates independently. We then averaged the 4 independent scores to come up with a final selection.
In scoring the questionnaire responses, we assessed both the strong points and the weak points of each candidate’s responses in each question category, and based on those assessments provided score in the range of 0.0 to 1.0. After scoring all the question categories in this manner, we entered the score into a database where the weighting factors were applied and the total for all 11 questions were summed, with a maximum of 55 points.
In assessing the responses there was not necessarily a right or wrong answer, but rather it was judged on how well thought out the response was. But in those cases where the question was directly a goal of Move Lowell Forward (such as professional city management) only supportive responses were rated highly.
Considering the evaluation of responses is subjective, the overall process was done as objectively as possible with four individuals independently rating the candidates and then combining the results to provide a numerical consensus for endorsement.
-
Consistency of Selection
With regard to the internal consistency of the process, the overlap between individual committee members' top 9 scorers before averaging, and the top 9 endorsed in the end, was considerable. While no one subcommittee member had all of their personal top 9 scorers (before averaging) represented in the final list (after averaging), three members had their top 8 candidates endorsed the other member had their top 7 endorsed. Furthermore, every candidate in the final endorsement list but one had at least 3 subcommittee members rate him/her in the top 9. The one exception candidate was represented in all four committee members' top ten scoring. The conclusion from this is that the final scoring is reasonably representative of everyone’s perspective in the evaluation.
-
Consistency of Selection
Latest PAC News
MLF Releases Set of Considerations for City Manager Contract
Move Lowell Forward PAC has released a document entitled Considerations for a City Manager Contract for the City Of Lowell, MA (download PDF here). The document is a set of ideas based around the PAC's stated mission, on ways a City Manager contact might incorporate goals and measurements in the evaluations that could help determine a performance-based contract with the City Manager.
Related News
MassHousing Aids Hamilton Project
Hamilton Canal project awarded MassHousing grant to support the rehab and conversion of the Appleton Mills into affordable housing.
Interested in more information?
You can email us using the form below.