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BuxMont DSA

Council Watch

The BuxMont DSA Council Watch was established in October of 2020 to encourage participation in local politics and to find opportunities for other BuxMont DSA Campaigns. The first step toward that of course is awareness. You can't organize to stop a sewer sale like we have with NOPE unless you know it's happening!

We meet (virtually) on the third Sunday of each month at 4pm (excluding holidays) and the agenda always starts with a short orientation to help newer members figure out what their local government is up to. We also have some resources a little further down this page for reference and for the more independent types.

The second section of each agenda is a follow up for the action items from the previous meeting. This is necessary for accountability.

The third is report backs and discussion. Where we each talk about anything going on in our local government that might be relevant to a current or potential future campaign. We also frequently use this section to talk about things we learned, since keeping up with local council/supervisor/board meetings will naturally give you an idea of how power is distributed in your local government!

Finally, each meeting concludes with action items. Whether that be simply determining what to share in our monthly bulletin, or making a public comment, or assembling a guide or resource for other members.

Click here to view the full text of the initiating resolution Resolution 2020:09:00 To Create a Council Watch

Author: Will M

Co-Sponsors: Hamer R

Whereas, more and more infrastructure across Pennsylvania is being sold to the highest bidder for a short term budget boost at the cost of much higher costs to ratepayers and less accountability to the ratepayers and these privatization efforts can be combated at the municipal council level.

Whereas, legislation like 287g hijacks local resources to attack and harass immigrant communities at the whim of racist and fascistic organizations like ICE and can also be combated at the municipal council level.

Whereas, Pennsylvania is the only state in the northeast that does not have statewide LGBT nondiscrimination protections, but these protections can be passed as municipal ordinances and we can support these ordinances to combat bigotry against LGBT folks.

Whereas, harmful land developments that will cause massive damage to our infrastructure such as roads and runoff management systems, or to the local environment for little to no net benefit for our communities are also something we should be fighting, and can be combated at the municipal level.

Whereas, to fight these indignities of privatization, racism, fascism, gender and sexual discrimination, resource extraction, and environmental destruction we must be vigilant with regards to our local government.

Whereas, to build working class power from the bottom up we need to start by engaging people at the local level where we can win power that can be built upon for larger campaigns.

Therefore, be it resolved BuxMont DSA shall establish the Council Watch. A group made up of individual volunteers each taking responsibility for watching their municipal councils. To check through the agendas of their local councils and boards and attend or watch their meetings and generate a short monthly report to be made available to the membership, on a monthly basis, via whichever means the Media and Communications Committee or Secretary decides is best suited to the information.

Therefore, be it further resolved that an interest and sign up form shall be distributed to collect members for this project and a meeting for this group will be scheduled by the steering committee to take place before the next general meeting, this first meeting of the Council Watch will be for establishing standards and document templates for use by the Council Watch.

Recently published Council Watch events

Resources

Primer

So first of all, the commonwealth of Pennsylvania actually comes with a manual. You can find most published versions of it available digitally here. and the current up to date version (volume 126) is here. You could even pay a fee to get a physical copy made by the commonwealth if you really, really want something you can look at without a computer. But a 1000+ page document might be kind of overwhelming so I'll give you a shorter primer.

Whatever municipality (township, city, or borough) you live in, it will have it's own council, or board of supervisors, or board of commissioners, and you may or may not have a mayor. Whatever they're called, there will at least be a legislative body, and probably some kind of executive office. School Districts, ZIP codes, EMS response areas, and public infrastructure (like a sewer or drinking water system) vary in how they overlap with your municipality. Your municipality might cross over county lines. It might be very small, or it might be right next to a similarly named, but legally distinct place (like Bristol Township and Bristol Borough. No matter the case, if it has it's own government they will have a website of some kind.
This is thanks to what are called Sunshine Laws. These are laws that mandate a certain level of transparency in government, and it's good to keep this in mind if you feel like you are having trouble finding any kind of meeting record.
We've compiled this document listing many of the municipalities in Bucks and Montgomery counties, meeting dates for some of their bodies, elected officials, and links to their websites. If anything is missing please let us know if you'd like it added! Agendas and Minutes are usually found somewhere under a tab called "Meetings" or "Public Information" or maybe just "Government". Many times, there will even be videos of meetings.
A lot of stuff will be kind of unclear or genuinely boring outside of public comments. There's a lot of context you won't have early on, but if you keep checking in and just observing what's happening in your community then things will become clear. It's also very helpful to talk with other people about this stuff.