Charter Panel Decides On Some Recommendations

By John Voket

In roughly half a year since its members were seated, the Newtown Charter Revision Commission has met almost every week, gathering the information it requires to move forward addressing the more than two dozen elements of the charge initiated by the Legislative Council. Armed with the necessary information culled from hours of interviews with municipal officials and hundreds of pages of statutory data, the charter panel recently endorse decisions on five of those charge elements.

According to the commission’s chairman Al Cramer, he and his fellow commissioners have tackled decisions involving the Legislative Council’s voting procedures, the makeup of Newtown’s Board of Selectmen, the town budget, town meetings, and began recommending term limits for certain elected officials.

The Charter Revision Commission has even voted on business related to its own handling of recommendations, Mr Cramer said, agreeing that any recommendation coming from any or all of its six members pass by at least four votes, or what has been referred to as a “super majority,” of the commissioners.

“We really did a lot of background work since June,” Mr Cramer said. “We made up our minds about how we are going to proceed with our recommendations, so the momentum should be picking up.”

Between meetings on November 21 and 28, Mr Cramer said the commissioners acted on charge number 17, deciding to eliminate the Annual Town Meeting. He said the that action may begin the process of significantly reducing the centuries-old practice as means of voting on municipal business.

“While this is a first step toward the elimination of some town meetings, I feel that we will end up minimizing the practice, not doing away with it completely,” Mr Cramer said.

The decision that was unanimously endorsed by the commission involves publishing annual town reports for the public’s review, instead of just asking qualified taxpayers to accept them during what has recently amounted to a ten-minute annual town meeting, typically attended by fewer than a dozen residents speaking for the entire town.

“The decision would involve replacing the annual town meeting with a new section in the charter entitled ‘Annual Town Reports.’ It would require those reports be made available to the Legislative Council by the first Monday in October,” Mr Cramer said.

The next decision to make is how long the council would have to review those reports before publishing them for public scrutiny. Mr Cramer said he is leaning toward recommending a 30-day review period, although that timeframe is still under consideration by the entire panel, and subject to further discussion.

The panel began acting on charge 11 by voting to keep the Legislative Council terms at two years, while extending the term of Newtown’s town clerk to four years.

“LeReine Frampton championed this move,” Mr Cramer said referring to his fellow commissioner, who also is one of Newtown’s two registrars of voters. “According to her research, a vast number of towns across the state already have this term in place. We feel extending the term is important to ensure continuity in the town’s busiest office.”

On the other hand, the charter panel agreed that since the Legislative Council members are charged with the handling of, and decision making regarding taxpayers money, their terms should be up for public review every two years. He added that by the time the panel breaks for the holidays on December 19, Charter commissioners should finalize term limits for the boards of finance and selectmen.

In related news, the charter panel unanimously endorsed keeping a three-member Board of Selectmen, after seriously considering reducing the executive branch to a single mayor/selectman official. Mr Cramer said recent perspectives presented by Newtown selectmen William Brimmer, Jr, and Joseph Bojnowski impressed the charter commissioners.

“We appreciated the fact that with a three-member Board of Selectmen, there is two-party representation at the executive level,” he said. “It also provides greater resources if any research is required on certain subjects.”

Mr Cramer mentioned that the commission also considered that the Board of Selectmen’s biweekly meetings provide a forum for any resident to speak directly and candidly to the town’s top executive officials. The Board of Selectmen is currently the only elected board that does not restrict public comment exclusively to agenda items.

“This was a very, very important point to the commissioners,” Mr Cramer said.

Among other discussions in recent weeks, was a proposal researched by Commissioner Joan Plouffe regarding the possible need to create a position of town planner, possibly splitting off the current planning official to handle economic development duties and support the Economic Development Commission exclusively. Mr Cramer said in his opinion, however, he was not certain that creating a charter stipulation was the appropriate way to handle the matter.

“Currently the charter only stipulates the hiring and review of the town finance director by the executive [first selectman], and any hiring and firing of municipal employees,” he said. “Adding a charter item referring to any other specific town employee would be historic, and would open up a whole new area that would have to be researched thoroughly. I’m not sure we’re ready to go in that direction at this time.”

In relation to its own practices, the Charter Revision Commission voted on two items. The first was to establish a guideline by which any recommendation to the council would be required to pass by a super majority of its six members, which is a consensus of at least four Yes votes on any measure.

“Originally, the council’s ruling was that recommendations pass by a simple majority, but I think that was when they were looking at seating a larger panel,” Mr Cramer speculated. “With only six members, a simple majority of a quorum meant that recommendations could be passed by as few as three votes, and we weren’t comfortable with that.”

The second matter was to set a biweekly meeting schedule for 2007, a reduction from the sometimes-grueling weekly schedule the panel has followed since being seated last June.

“Beginning in January, we’ll be meeting on the second and fourth Tuesday of each month,” he said.

Mr Cramer added that he expected to pass a full draft of recommendations on to the panel’s attorney for first review by late April or early May, and then present a first working draft of recommendations to the council by the end of next June. If he is not called to do so sooner, Mr Cramer said he would ask to make a progress report to the council sometime early next year.