The final vote on the proposed new Newton City Seal, which was due to take place on February 3, was delayed until Monday, February 17, after some Councilors said that they needed more time to consider the design.
Councilor Bill Humphrey, a member of the Ad Hoc City Seal Working Group that has been shepherding the project for five years, asked to “charter” the vote at the end of Monday’s meeting, effectively delaying consideration until the next City Council meeting. He cited several reasons.
“I got enough feedback before tonight’s [February 3] meeting that enough Councilors weren’t ready yet, and Council President [Marc] Laredo and Mayor [Ruthanne] Fuller agreed with me that this was the most appropriate course of action,” said Humphrey.
Councilor Julia Malakie, another member of the working group, agreed with the move and said she would have asked to charter the vote if Humphrey had not done so.
“It was always a possibility that we would have to delay [the vote] by a couple of weeks,” said Councilor-at-Large Joshua Krintzman, who is chairman of the Programs and Services Committee.
“I have not heard from all Councilors, but heard from a non-trivial number who, while on board with replacing [the 1865 image of Rev.] John Eliot proselytizing [to Native people, specifically the Massachusett], are not satisfied, or are ambivalent, about the proposed new design,” said Malakie.
She was also concerned there had not been enough time between January 22 – when the Programs and Services Committee voted to recommend the seal – and February 3 for Councilors to review the results of the public survey on the image.
“We got nearly 475 responses [to the survey] as of Friday [January 31], of which the majority indicated support for the design,” said Hattie Kerwin Derrick, Newton’s Director of Community Engagement & Inclusion and a member of the working group.
Before Councilor Humphrey requested that the vote be chartered to give all Councilors more time to consider the new seal and survey results, he made it clear that no further changes will be made to the final proposed image.
Five years of hard work
The Ad Hoc City Seal Working Group was created in 2020, after it was decided that a new image was needed because “the seal does not sufficiently or accurately depict historical events … the design is outdated, unnecessarily complicated, and has degraded over time,” as Fig City News previously reported.
After years of work — listening to feedback from the community and Eastern Massachusetts Native groups — members of the Working Group recommended a new image created by Sebastian Ellington Ebarb Design (SEED).
If approved by the City Council, “The emblem will be replaced gradually, as materials need to be reordered in the normal course of the existing budget. This is not a large one-time expenditure; it will not happen all at once,” according to Kerwin Derrick.
The proposed revision of the image:
- Places the seal within a closed circle
- Adds a black line around the image itself
- Includes the words “Liberty and Union”
- Spells out both “City of Newton” and “Massachusetts”
- Highlights the year 1688 because that is when Newton became an independent township
- Includes a tree which “echoes the one on our current seal and amplifies Newton as ‘The Garden City,’” according to the Mayor. There are also bushes in front of City Hall, adding another natural element
- Includes the words “Thirteen Villages”
- Features the color orange, since both high schools use it
