The Town of Framingham: 318 Big Years from 1700-2017

After a great 318-year run, I just learned that beginning next year, my hometown will no longer be a town. Framingham will become a city.

For me, the main reason this is notable is that Framingham has long held the distinct title of being the “biggest town in the country.” It’s one of those things that everyone from Framingham learns at a young age, and then proudly repeats whenever given the opportunity.

When two strangers from Framingham meet in some distant non-Framingham place, it’s often the first thing they bond over and share with anyone who will listen.

Here’s an example. A few years ago I went to a bar in Palo Alto with my good friend Ed. We started talking to the bartender, and he asked where we were from. Ed explained that he was from rural Tennessee, and then I shared that I grew up in Framingham, Massachusetts. “No kidding, me too!” he responded, then he turned to Ed and said, “Do you know what’s special about Framingham?”

Before giving Ed a chance to respond, he looked at me and in unison we both bragged: “Biggest town in the country!” {fist bump}

Similar variations of this scene have played out dozens of times for me. And I’d have to guess that over the years there have probably been hundreds of thousands – possibly even millions – of similar conversations about Framingham’s size among strangers, acquaintances, and friends.

Whenever you tell someone about Framingham being the biggest town in the country, you predictably get the same two questions:

(1) What’s the difference between a town and a city?

(2) What do you mean by biggest?

The first one is straightforward to answer. Towns and cities have different forms of governance, with the most notable distinction being that cities conform to a state-level standard and are run centrally by a mayor. Towns can choose a range of other approaches. Framingham has historically been run by five elected selectmen, collectively making decisions in periodic town meetings.

I’ve always incorrectly been under the impression that the selectmen were representative – with each one living in and representing a different neighborhood within the town. But after reviewing the listing of Framingham’s elected officials, I learned that’s not the case. They are all from the most affluent parts of the town, with nobody representing Framingham’s south side.

On its surface, this is a good reason to support the city movement, as Framingham will soon have 11 city councilors with nine representing neighborhoods, and two at-large (i.e., representing the entire city). That sounds more reasonable and fair, and will probably facilitate needed improvements to the lower income areas.

The second question, “What do you mean by biggest?”, is easy to answer, but more difficult to defend. The correct response is that it’s the biggest town in the country as measured by its population of about 70,000 people. You can usually get away with this, and then the conversation shifts to an in-depth discussion about why Framingham hasn’t decided to be a city, with the main talking points being that “township just works for us and we like it, ok?,” and “why would we want to lose our status as the biggest town in the country?”

But many people aren’t satisfied there (e.g., my friend Ed). And the problem is that if you Google this, there’s not much conclusive support. The first entries, including Google’s suggested answer, link to Framingham’s own website, which offers this: “Many people refer to Framingham as the ‘biggest town in the country’, citing the town as the most populace municipality in the US with a town meeting form of government.”

That statement certainly doesn’t refute the claim, and arguably helps perpetuate it, but the site also doesn’t back it up with any meaningful sources. And if you sit with that statement for a moment, it almost feels as though the town is hiding something.

If you then venture further into the search results it quickly becomes clear there’s no readily accessible list of US towns ranked by population, and you can find forums with claims like this: “The Largest Town in NC is Cary with a population of 134,545, which is a suburb of Raleigh.” It would be easy to brush off this type of low-quality forum comment as nonsense written by some uninformed biggest town wannabe (I’ve done this in the past), but after briefly digging further, I was surprised to find that it appears to be correct. A town with 65,000 more people than Framingham.

Decades of pride make me reluctant to admit this, but now that it’s clear Framingham will no longer be a town and I need to let go anyway, I’ll say it: I’m not so sure we’ve been the biggest town for a while now. Maybe we were at some point, and just never let go, but it’s time to move on.

To its credit, Framingham Source, a local news website that covered the election results appears to get it right in its election coverage article, indicating, “Framingham no longer is the largest town in the Commonwealth or New England, but the newest city in Massachusetts.” But claiming you’re the biggest town in New England just doesn’t have the same air of importance as biggest town in the country.

The town vs. city debate has been going on for as long as I can remember. At least now it’s settled for the foreseeable future, as I can’t imagine it’s too common for cities to vote go to back to township status. And while I haven’t researched all the implications in detail, as I’ve been living in Boston for almost 15 years, I suspect this will be a positive change. It’ll shake up the system, and probably provide better representation to parts of the community that need it most. I’ve heard counter arguments that it will favor real-estate development interests and will give too much power to the mayor, but many other cities get on just fine with mayors. And even if power does become more centralized, at least every neighborhood will now formally have a seat at the table.

Not surprisingly, the vote was close. Of the 39,901 registered voters, 28% turned out to vote with 5,689 voting city and 5,582 voting town. After decades of debate, a very big town decided to become a small city by a margin of just 107 votes.

After sharing the news with my wife Laura, her immediate response was “Oh no! Well, you can at least still tell people that up until recently is was the biggest town in the country!”

I think I’ll do that, just for old times’ sake.