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04/05/2022 12:37 PMIn February, the Town Council announced that it would be appointing a new charter revision commission in the near future. While the commission hasn’t been appointed yet, the council had a workshop on March 16 where the members reviewed the current charter and discussed recommendations on what areas on which the committee should focus.
The purpose of the workshop was to discuss possible changes the council could instruct the commission to study once the commission is officially appointed. Many of the proposed changes were minor fixes such as correcting grammar mistakes or changing sections of the charter that reference the Board of Selectmen to “Town Council”.
While the council came up with a list of about 12 different possible changes, a handful of proposals were significant. The most significant proposed change the council is asking for is the ability to hire a town manager for a term of longer than three years. Currently, the charter states that town manager contracts cannot be longer than three years, which the council agreed might be appropriate for a first town manager contract. However, the council said that should the same manager wish to sign a second contract with a town, the council should have the ability to offer a term of longer than three years.
The second big change the council asked to considered is raising the amount of money the town can appropriate without holding a referendum. Currently, any appropriation over $300,000 requires the town to hold a referendum. The Town Council members said they believe that amount should be higher.
A third significant change proposed by the council is the cancellation of the required annual town meeting. The annual town meeting is held every January for the Town Council to accept an audit of the previous year’s finances and for representatives from the various boards and commissions to offer a summary of the previous year’s activity. However, not every board and commission attends and the council routinely hears annual check-ins by the boards and commissions, making the meeting largely unnecessary, council members said.
Other areas that the council will ask the commission to study include clarifying the qualifications for the town planner role, removing the requirement for the town to appoint search committees to fill vacancies, clarifying the role of the assessor, giving the town manager the ability to sign contracts instead of the Town Council chair, and clarifying the individual department review portion of the town manager constructing the town budget.
During the workshop, council member Dennis Donovan, who chaired the most recent charter revision commission in 2018, said that some of the proposed changes were ones the commission had identified as potentially needing to be changed back in 2018. Donovan said that the commission had opted to take a conservative route with some changes to the charter in 2018 in case the change from a board of selectman style of government to a town manager style of government proved didn’t go smoothly.
Town Manager Karl Kilduff told the Harbor News that while the next charter revision commission will need to comment specifically on the areas the council identified, that does not mean the members couldn’t propose further changes.
“By statute, the commission considers the recommendations provided by the Town Council. The commission can also consider other items for amendment or inclusion. In their report to the council, the commission must comment on the recommendations they were given by the Town Council,” said Kilduff.
“The council’s intent in this revision is to identify areas that need to be corrected. A mandatory charter revision process was included in the charter that was approved by the voters to change the form of government with that same intent of regularly looking at the charter to see what is working well and what needs to be improved,” Kilduff continued.
With the workshop done, the council will now need to appoint a commission to study the charges. In March, Kilduff said an appointed CRC would need no fewer than five members and no more than 15. Kilduff said that anyone who is “an elector” of Clinton is eligible and that the commission would have to have no more than “a bare majority” of its members from the same party.