Town Edition
Hampden County
East Longmeadow, Massachusetts
Photo: John Phelan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
In 2015 your neighbors gathered roughly 1,700 signatures to force a question onto the ballot, and on April 14 East Longmeadow voted 462 to 90 to elect nine residents and let them rewrite how the town is governed. The charter those nine wrote passed the next spring, 2,406 to 1,621, and took effect on July 1, 2016, retiring the Board of Selectmen and Open Town Meeting and handing the town’s legislative power to a seven member Town Council that hires a professional Town Manager. Almost nowhere in Massachusetts do voters get to redesign their own government from scratch. Here, within living memory, they did, and this guide shows you how the government they designed actually works.
East Longmeadow at a Glance
Sources: Massachusetts DESE, district profile · US Census Bureau (data.census.gov) · Town of East Longmeadow.
- County: Hampden. The town covers 12.9 square miles of land just east of Springfield, with 119 miles of public ways and a high point on Prospect Street 391.50 feet above sea level.
- Government: a council-manager charter. Seven councilors elected at large hold the legislative power, and they hire an appointed Town Manager, Thomas D. Christensen, to run the town day to day. There is no mayor and no town meeting.
- Schools: East Longmeadow Public Schools, 2,355 students across 5 schools, led by Superintendent Joanne Menard.
How East Longmeadow’s Government Works
East Longmeadow’s legislature is the Town Council, 7 members elected by residents, and that body holds every legislative power: it passes the ordinances, sets the tax rate, and votes the budget. The Town Council then hires a professional Town Manager to run the town day to day, who is appointed under contract rather than elected, and who serves as long as the council keeps confidence in the work. Voters also elect the School Committee that oversees the schools. So there are two elected bodies and one hired executive, and the whole of the town’s legislative power sits with 7 people you vote for.
Town Council
7 elected members, and the entire legislative branch of the town. It passes ordinances, sets the tax rate, votes the budget, and hires and evaluates the Town Manager.
Town Manager
The appointed chief administrator. Runs the departments, builds the budget, and answers to the Town Council. Appointed, not elected, and hired under contract.
School Committee
5 members, elected by the voters of the district the schools serve. It sets school policy, approves the school budget, and hires the Superintendent, separately from the Town Council.
Departments
Public works, police, fire, health, libraries and the rest. Department heads report up through the Town Manager, which is why a service problem usually goes to a department first and to an elected official second.
- Residents elect the 7 members of the Town Council and the School Committee.
- The Town Council hires the Town Manager and holds every legislative power in the town.
- The Town Manager proposes the budget and runs the departments that spend it.
- You take part: speak at a Town Council meeting, bring a problem to your councillor, or run for a seat, which is a realistic thing to do here.
Civic Calendar
- Town Council: the charter requires the Council to meet regularly at least once every month, at a time and place fixed by bylaw. In practice it has met on Tuesday evenings, usually twice a month, and the Town Manager filed a report at each of those meetings through 2025 and 2026. Agendas and minutes are posted in the town’s Agenda Center.
- School Committee: meets on Monday evenings, usually twice a month, and posts its agendas and minutes in the same Agenda Center.
- Budget season: the Town Manager hands the Council and the School Committee a draft budget by April 1, submits the proposed operating budget by May 1, and the Council adopts it by June 1.
- Town elections: every year, on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in June. The most recent was June 2, 2026. A preliminary election, when one is needed, falls on the fifth Tuesday before it.
Explore the East Longmeadow Edition
- Town Manager’s OfficeThe town’s chief executive
- Town CouncilYour seven councilors
- School CommitteeSuperintendent & committee
- Town DepartmentsWho does what at 60 Center Square
- Boards & CommissionsWhere residents serve
- LegislatorsYour voice in Boston & D.C.
- East Longmeadow HistorySandstone, and a charter
- DemographicsWho lives in East Longmeadow
- Non-ProfitsCommunity organizations
- Student DataEast Longmeadow Public Schools by the numbers
Your County Officials
Two of the people with the most direct power over your life are elected, and neither one sits on Beacon Hill. The district attorney decides who gets charged with a crime, and what they get charged with. The sheriff runs the county jail. The sheriff is elected by the voters of Hampden County. The district attorney is elected by the voters of a prosecution district, and Massachusetts draws eleven of those across its fourteen counties, so a district attorney’s territory does not always follow a county line. Both appear on your ballot in East Longmeadow. Now you know what to look for.
Massachusetts elects fourteen sheriffs, one for each county, and eleven district attorneys, one for each prosecution district. The job is the same everywhere: the charging decisions, the jail. Look up any town in the state and see who holds these two offices there.
Your First Civic Action in East Longmeadow
You do not have to wait until you can vote to be heard here. The charter this town wrote for itself puts several levers directly in a resident’s hand, and the smallest of them takes one evening.
- Find your councillor. With a body this small, one member is a meaningful share of the whole vote, and reaching one of them reaches the legislature.
- Speak at a Town Council meeting. Meetings are public and most have a public comment period. Check the agenda for the procedure.
- Go to a budget hearing. It happens once a year and it is the only public stage the budget gets.
- Consider running. A council seat in a town this size is won with a number of votes most students would find surprisingly small.
- Town Hall: 60 Center Square, East Longmeadow, MA 01028. Main line 413-525-5400.
- Town Clerk and agendas: the Town Clerk is also the Clerk of the Council by charter, keeps the minutes of every Council meeting, and runs voter registration. Call 413-525-5400 ext. 1001.
- Public schools: East Longmeadow Public Schools, 180 Maple Street, 413-525-5450.
In this form every legislative power the town has belongs to one small elected body. That concentrates responsibility, and it also concentrates access: there is exactly one room to be in, it meets on a published schedule, and the people in it were chosen by a few thousand of your neighbors.