When I asked Carol Lewis-Caulton to name her proudest moment from the two years she served on the Springfield City Council, I wondered if she'd choose one of the higher-profile issues she'd been involved in. Her work to make the Springfield Library and Museums Association more accountable for its use of public money? Her campaign to get what she calls the city's "mega-non-profits"—the large tax-exempt institutions, like hospitals and colleges, that control large portions of land but pay no property taxes—to contribute more to the city coffers?
Instead, Lewis-Caulton chose an issue that received minimal attention outside its immediate neighborhood: a controversial 2001 application by auto body shop owner Fitzroy Brown for a zone change to add a storage yard to his property in the Old Hill neighborhood.
Lewis-Caulton grew up in Old Hill, and knows that its residents' concerns are not always a top priority in City Hall. "It's a neighborhood that's kind of marginalized. I could hear people when they said, 'I don't want to own a house next to a junk yard.' And I had a part in making sure that didn't happen," said Lewis-Caulton, who sided with the neighbors. Brown eventually withdrew his application in the face of that opposition.
The first and, to date, only African-American woman to sit on the City Council, Lewis-Caulton served one term, in 2000-2001. During that time, she distinguished herself as a strong advocate for neighborhood issues. In 1997, she signed on as a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit filed by activists to add ward representation to the City Council. Supporters argued that the existing at-large system favored candidates with name recognition and money and left entire portions of the city without a voice.
This fall, ward representation will finally come to the Council. And Lewis-Caulton hopes to be among the first class of ward councilors. On Sept. 15, she will run against DeJuan Brown, George Bruce and Clodo Concepcion in a preliminary election for the Ward 5 seat. The top two vote-getters will go on to the Nov. 3 general election.
Lewis-Caulton's fight against Brown's zone change won her fans in the neighborhood, but it did little to endear her to the petitioner. "He hates me to this day—he hardly speaks to me," Lewis-Caulton said, with a chuckle that suggested she's not losing too much sleep over the snub.
Behind Lewis-Caulton's unassuming personal style lies a political courage not seen often enough on the City Council. In her time on the Council, Lewis-Caulton took on major city institutions like the hospitals, colleges and the SLMA. The library fight, in particular, landed her in the doghouse of the Springfield Republican, whose president, David Starr, is a long-time SLMA board member.
If that wasn't enough to marginalize her from the city's power players, Lewis-Caulton also supported state Rep. Paul Caron's campaign to unseat incumbent Mayor Mike Albano in the contentious 2001 election. Caron lost the race, and Lewis-Caulton, one of his more visible supporters, found herself voted off the Council.
In the intervening years, Lewis-Caulton, a nurse with the Mass. Department of Public Health, served on the Police Commission, and, now, the Community Complaint Review Board. She's also remained a steadfast supporter of ward representation, and disputes critics' contention that the system will result in "pothole politics," with councilors focused on minor neighborhood matters at the expense of broader issues, like economic development. As a ward councilor, she said, she'd still care deeply about the larger issues faced by the city, starting with maintaining its hard-won, and still fragile, fiscal stability. She'd also like to see city leaders take a multi-pronged approach to stemming street violence, one that includes law enforcement but also looks at alternatives—community centers, jobs-skills programs—to draw kids away from the lure of gangs and drug-dealing.
Besides, as Lewis-Caulton notes, many of those so-called "neighborhood" complaints—about noise, for instance, or absentee landlords—are, in truth, universal complaints that affect the quality of life throughout the city. Under a ward system, she said, those concerns will finally get the attention they deserve. "I think the Council will really be closer to the residents," she said.
