The CH Booth Library Board is requesting that the current Charter Revision Commission consider several changes that will give trustees greater flexibility to adjust their by-laws. Board President Robert Geckle outlined the specifics during an October 29 charter commission meeting.

One of the other changes being requested, is to increase the number of trustees appointed by the Board of Selectmen from as many as six to eight of its current 18 members.

Along with that request, the library panel would like the total number of board members reduced from 18 to 16. Currently, three sets of six members serve up to three, staggered three year terms.

Mr Geckle told The Bee following the meeting, that since taxpayers currently underwrite 80 percent of the library's operating expense through the municipal budget, the board feels it should have greater representation from the public at large.

To some degree, Mr Geckle explained that the current board is held prisoner by the charter, because of several of its by-laws. He said during the summer, the trustees decided to perform a thorough review of their by-laws.

In doing so, the board chairman said an ad-hoc by-laws committee determined that it could not adjust several of the key by-laws because they are overlayed in the charter.

Since the local constitutional document supercedes the library by-laws, those by-laws can't be addressed unless they are either eliminated during a charter revision, or made more flexible through that exercise. "In order to change the by-laws, we basically need to have a charter change," Mr Geckle said. "Or we need the charter to give the trustees more flexibility."

Some of the points of flexibility the board would enjoy, he told the Charter Commissioners, would be on term limits and the total number of board members required to do the board's business. "We were asking for a 16 member board. Eighteen can get a little unwieldy," Mr Geckle said. "Also, its very hard to get 18 members together for a meeting."

In a canvass of about a dozen other libraries similar to the Booth facility, the ad-hoc committee found the average board is 12 to 16 members. "Although we did find one that had 22," Mr Geckle said.

Regarding term limits, he said, the board would ultimately ask that the charter revision removes them.

"There's nothing nefarious about that request," the chairman said. "We would just like the flexibility to create term limits under the by-laws. So if we ever did want to adjust them, we wouldn't be bound to waiting for the next charter revision, which could be years away."

He said what is more important, is the effort to infuse the board with more appointed taxpayers, who ultimately fund most of the beloved institutions operations.

Mr Geckle said the board unanimously approved making these charter change requests.

He added that the board will complete its by-laws review in the coming months, and await the final recommendations of the commission and possible eventual passage of requested changes before the library board revisits changing its by-laws.