Petitioners Find Support For

Town Vote On All Charter Changes

By Steve Bigham

You can find them in the Big Y shopping center, in front of the post office, or at the town’s transfer station. They show up at town meetings and parties holding clipboards and pens, and with a confidence that they are doing the right thing, approach Newtown residents for their signature.

Who are these people?

They are the members of the now-defunct Charter Revision Commission and they are on a mission to collect some 2,000 signatures by Sunday. If they do so, they will have successfully helped get their proposed changes to town government onto the November ballot.

The proposal on the petition reads, “Adopt the Charter as amended in the Final Report of the Charter Revision Commission.”

The 11 Newtown residents had hoped to avoid having to go the petition drive route, but were forced to after the Legislative Council last week rejected the major component of their proposal.

The charter panel has rewritten what many considered to be an ill-worded town charter and made changes they hope will improve the overall workings of the town government.

The creation of a Board of Finance is the centerpiece of that plan. The members believe a Board of Finance will help the first selectman and Legislative Council in the long-range financial planning of the town. Seven of the 12 council members saw the Board of Finance as just another layer of government and voted the idea down. They did, however, agree to eliminate the Board of Selectmen in favor of a somewhat stronger first selectman position.

Charter Revision Commission members, in order to override the council’s rejections, need to collect the signatures of 10 percent of the town’s electorate.

Commission Chairman Bill Sheluck and the 10 other members are determined to get it done. The group, which ceased to exist following the council’s vote, had already collected nearly 1,000 signatures by mid-week.

 “We’re getting a clear message that there’s support to put this on the ballot,” noted former commission member Jane Sharpe.

Of course, signing the petition does not necessarily mean a resident favors the plan. It simply means that they favor allowing the people of Newtown to have the final say, according to Mr Sheluck.

Council members opposed to the Board of Finance plan held just a simple majority and the charter panel had hoped this would prompt the council to put the decision in the voters’ hands.

It didn’t happen.

The former Charter Revision Commission members are conducting the petition drive as private citizens, and they are getting some help from others, including Legislative Council member Joe Borst, who was one of the council members who voted in favor of the Board of Finance.

“I think it sends a message when we get support from Legislative Council members,” Mrs Sharpe said.

The charter panel is seeking to reinstate the Board of Finance plan, as well as a proposal to force a second budget referendum if the first one is rejected. Under the current charter, a revised budget goes directly to a town meeting, which, in the past, some say, often got stacked by special interest groups wishing to ensure the budget easily passes or fails.

The former Charter Revision Commission members are collecting nearly 200 signatures per day.

“There’s more awareness out there than we realized,” Mrs Sharpe said.

Others helping out are residents K. Michael Snyder and Dennis Dougherty, who have been supporters of the Charter Revision Commission all along.

 

Was The Petition Drive Inevitable?

Ten months ago, the Charter Revision Commission met for the first time in the basement of the Cyrenius H. Booth Library. Most of the members did not know each other and there had been no discussion on what types of changes the group would propose.

The commission had been created by the Legislative Council, which gave the panel a long list of suggested changes or charges.

The first question asked that day came from member George Caracciolo, who wanted to know if the commission was willing to take its recommendations all the way to the people, even if it meant going against the wishes of the Legislative Council.

“If the public says ‘no,’ I’d feel better, but I don’t want to work on this for more than a year and then have it rejected by the council,” Mr Caracciolo said last October.

Other members suggested the commission simply set a goal that the commission work together to gain consensus on each issue. If we do that, noted Kevin O’Neil, the council will have a hard time turning any of our recommendations down.

That turned out to be false.

Council members Melissa Pilchard, Pierre Rochman, Ruby Johnson, John Kortze, Will Rodgers, and Tim Holian all took a different stance, choosing to make the decision themselves. Their position was that they deal with these town issues everyday – some of them for many years – and are better suited to makes these types of tough decisions.

The council did approve the majority of changes proposed by the Charter Revision Commission.

The proposed six-member Board of Finance would take part in the year-long planning of the town’s financial picture, and, at budget time, would make recommendations to the Legislative Council. The council, in turn, would make the final decisions before financial matters go to the public for a vote.

The charter panel has suggested that under the current system, there is little planning or forward thinking, which has created an environment in which boards and commissions are forced to be reactive rather than “pro-active.”