“All in good time;” “Slow and steady wins the race;” “They stumble that run fast.”

All are potent and practical adages that can be applied to the 2021 Charter revision process that Charter Commission Chairman Andrew Buzzi had hoped would be completed in time to get public authorization questions on the November 2021 ballot.

But following the commission’s first in-person meeting June 9, Buzzi told The Newtown Bee he arrived at the conclusion that there is too much thoughtful work to do to try and push the process into a compressed timeline for completion by fall.

The chairman also said he was very happy to see all his fellow appointees — Prerna Rao, Elias Petersen, James Gaston, Anthony Filiato, Dennis Brestovansky, and Scott Davidow in person for the first time on June 9.

“It was lovely, everybody attended and the meeting was great,” he said. “I think you get so much more energy from everyone when you’re meeting in person. And I think we all enjoyed meeting each other, including Prerna and Elias, who I had never met in person.”

Following the meeting, Buzzi said the panel discussed several charges along with format guides the panel was going to use to progress toward the full review and applicable revisions that emerge as they move forward with input from the commissions three working groups.

As the commission was seated, and with an eye toward expediting the process in time for one or more fall ballot measures, Buzzi initiated the work groups of two commissioners each. Now that the timeline has been extended, Buzzi feels the workgroups can also apply the necessary due diligence to nearly two dozen suggested charges and any others that may come into scope among the commissioners through the process.

The workgroups, with Buzzi serving as an ex-officio member of each, include one with Gaston and Filiato — whose focus will be on the charge of evaluating whether the town’s Board of Finance should be eliminated.

A workgroup with Rao and Brestovansky will be dedicated to reviewing and recommending how to proceed with charges involving the Board of Education, and a third, a so-called “various items” group with Davidow and Petersen, will consider any remaining charges already assigned by the council.

“At our meeting, we really talked about using this format going forward to create the document we plan to turn over to the Legislative Council,” he said. By Charter, it is the council that seats and charges a charter revision commission to review the community’s constitutional document, ideally, every five years.

On June 9, discussion centered around the various items duo and their examination of four items in Charter Section 2:

*General provisions and the creation or maintenance of rules of conduct for local boards and commissions;

*Whether elected and appointed officials may refrain from voting on motions because of a conflict of interest or other issue;

*Whether to extend beyond 45 days, the filling of vacancies on Newtown boards and commissions that are submitted by the first selectman; and

*The status, responsibilities, and other matters involving the currently elected Town Clerk.

Buzzi said he planned to continue with discussions on those points when the commissioners met June 16, as well as three of the numerous issues under review by the education work group:

*Whether the Board of Education should be formally labeled as a “town department;”

*Procedures for filling vacancies on elected town boards; and

*Requests for Special or Emergency Appropriations.

Buzzi said he was pleased to learn that the original format document he conceived had a couple of points that were refined through discussions with the rest of the commissioners.

“So we’re honing in a procedure for every one of these charges,” he said.

“But to be honest, we had some in-depth discussion on some of these charges that went beyond what we expected,” Buzzi said. “We started off dealing with what you might call low hanging fruit. But there were deeper issues in some of those, so to do our job well, we’re going to need more time that what we might have had if we were pushing to get done in time for the November ballot.”

Reach Associate Editor John Voket at john@thebee.com.