By Jesse Williams/Zip06.com • 08/03/2021 02:45 p.m. EST
Launched early this year, the long-awaited Charter Review Commission has quietly ground through Madison’s founding document over the last six months or so, and is now looking forward to a new phase of its work as its members consider a handful of substantial changes to local government structure, including increasing selectmen terms.
With a deadline for the end of this year, all changes recommended by the commission will be reviewed by the Board of Selectmen (BOS) and through a public hearing process, and will need eventual approval by the voters at referendum.
Joe MacDougald, a UConn law professor and former Madison selectman, has led the effort, joined by other long-time local leaders including Noreen Kokoruda, another former selectman who is seeking a return to the BOS, and Joan Walker, who served on the BOS and currently chairs the Democratic Town Committee.
With dozens of much more minor but still important changes, MacDougald said he is hoping over the next couple to get more input on things like the term lengths, first selectman powers, and the responsibilities of the various boards.
“My feeling is between now and the first meeting in September, we want to finish this go-round through the charter,” he said. “I’m hoping that when we now come through sort of our next round where we have some specific recommendations in areas, I’d love to hear from the public.”
Along with potentially raising all selectmen terms from two to four years, including the first selectmen, the Charter Revision Commission has discussed whether or not the first selectman can employ or appoint a “chief executive” or “chief administrative” officer, something that is mentioned but not defined in the current charter.
Other smaller but still important tweaks include raising the value of property the BOS can purchase without town meeting approval, clarifying the capital planning process between the BOS and Board of Finance (BOF), and allowing the first selectman to declare emergencies if the BOS cannot meet in a timely manner.
“A lot of it really is substantive, it’s stuff we’re going to need to spend a lot of time communicating about,” MacDougald said. “We want to be sure we even understand all the implications. And it’s not that there’s a right answer...it’s not arithmetic, it’s a policy decision and it’s one that we’ll need to talk about as a town.
Other elements have been simply about clarifying things. Kokoruda, MacDougald, and Walker at a meeting last month spent more than 15 minutes simply working down into the weeds on specifics and semantics of the BOS in regards to reviewing town budgets, mostly focused on a single, 36-word paragraph.
MacDougald acknowledged the pandemic has definitely molded some of their approach, and that he expects the public input to possibly focus on some of those specific issues, though most of those things aren’t really charter issues. One idea was to require more reporting or review of emergency plans at the State of the Town address every year, and another was to provide more flexibility on budget dates, both things that will be important during “times of crisis,” he said.
A large change between this commission and previous charter reviews is how the potential changes will be presented to voters. MacDougald said the legal counsel has clarified that the commission actually has the authority to separate the potential questions that go before a referendum, allowing voters to approve some of the more obvious, housekeeping changes while maybe vetoing bigger, structural modifications to the charter, which is something that previous commissions never did.
“The prior votes have all been either all up or all down,” MacDougald said. “In reality, towns all across the state can separate the issues out a little, but I’ll yield to the town clerk to tell us how and when.”
One thing MacDougald said he wanted to really emphasize was public participation. All the commission’s meetings have been live-streamed, with time for public comment, but as the members have coalesced around certain issues, the hope is to bring more people in to provide their input.
The commission is open to having specific groups or organizations present to them, and MacDougald urged any group that wants to bring their ideas to reach out and potentially have extra time at a meeting to speak.
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Charter Review Moving Forward in Madison - Zip06.com
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