Legal Updates for the City

Question: Mayor Nicholson, you’ve taken your legal hat and your legal training and you’ve put it to work for the City of Gardner in a number of ways, changing the city charter, updating it, the city ordinances, administrative policies, various policies for the city, zoning changes, getting Gardner out of civil service, and tell us about all of that and how much of an impact that has made over the last few years.

Answer: I’d like to say it’s made a very positive difference in that some things just need updating. The world is different than it was in 1923 when the charter was originally adopted. The world is different than the early 2000s when a lot of our ordinances were adopted and everything that happened in between when we became a city in 2023 when we celebrated our 100th anniversary and where we are now in 2025. So a lot of it’s just going through and seeing what still works and what doesn’t and what we need to change to increase our efficiencies and effectiveness to get the best output that we’re giving to our citizens in the end. So yes, we’ve taken a lot of legal analyses, a lot of operational analysis and feedback and put it into practice. And what we’ve done is we’ve now codified it in a way that makes it so that, again, we want to show that we in the city are here to be open for business, for businesses that want to come in here and actually put our money where our mouth is when we say that we’re open for businesses and are looking for businesses to come. But also that our residences who are looking to call this place their home have what they need to make this place their home. And that’s all of the things that we’ve taken into working with the city charter, our ordinance code, our policies and procedures. Again, it goes back to people and policy and how can we get the best outcome for the people who live here.