Charter Panel Hears Suggestions

By John Voket

With a minimum quorum of four members still outnumbering the public in the meeting room, the Charter Revision Commission (CRC) nonetheless spent about 45 minutes Tuesday evening hearing ideas and discussing the future of Newtown’s constitutional policies.

Residents Ruby Johnson and Al Roznicky opted to prepare a document outlining proposed considerations Ms Johnson said represented the sentiments of “others” she has spoken with in the five years since the last charter revision. The pair then referenced certain key points and otherwise offered what they referred to as “points of history” to charter panelists Guy Howard, Carolyn Signorelli, Joan Plouffe, and Chairman Al Cramer.

Board of Education member Thomas Gissen was the only other resident in attendance, joining in throughout the course of the hearing with ideas more specifically related to his board as well as some general observations about local political and government processes.

Mr Gissen said he supported four-year terms for certain elected offices including the school board, echoing concerns that had already been voiced at previous Charter Commission meetings.

“Increasing the terms to four years is a very good idea, and there is a reason that is done at a federal level. When you have four-year terms, people aren’t running for office all the time,” Mr Gissen said.

The school board member said that two-year cycles may prevent hard decisions from being made by elected officials because unpopular decisions, especially those regarding spending money, might affect the political popularity of any officials making them.

“Some of the decisions that are good for the town long term are not popular in the moment they are made. Assuming you have elected the right person, someone with backbone who has the best interests of the town [in mind] will make those difficult actions,” Mr Gissen said. “Frankly it’s easier to take those actions when the election is three years away as compared to when they are about to start running [for office] again.”

He then suggested the CRC examine possible streamlining to the budget process saying the charter-mandated practice of carrying budget review through the Board of Finance, to the council’s finance subcommittee, to the full council, and then to referendum was too convoluted.

“In my experience, when everybody is responsible for something, nobody is responsible,” Mr Gissen said. “I think the process should be shortened and [the budget] should go right to the voters. If the voters don’t like what’s going on, they vote it down.”

Mr Gissen referenced smaller companies that sometimes gain the advantage over larger and more established businesses because the decisionmaking process is more streamlined, and fewer people are more accountable for the decisions they are making.

“I know that members of the Board of Education always hear from certain groups to run the town like a business, but [on the school board] you don’t get to choose your customers,” he said.

Mr Gissen then turned his attention to the makeup of the board, referring to one of the charter charges suggesting the possible expansion of the Board of Education to nine members. He countered that, instead, the CRC might consider making the school board smaller.

“It gets to that sense of responsibility. To ask busy people to sit on a very large group where they have no impact and everything becomes so diluted, I think you will lose the interest of [BOE] candidates you are trying to attract,” Mr Gissen said. “Keeping the numbers down increases participation and increases the likelihood of people running because they want to feel they are making a difference.”

Mr Roznicky said he agreed that in some cases four-year terms were justified, but other boards could remain two-year terms. He also suggested the elimination of minority representation on certain boards and commissions.

“Could you imagine what our Congress would be like if we had to have half Democrat and half Republican?” Mr Roznicky said.

Mr Cramer then suggested that the process gets interesting and complicated when considering both staggering elections to accommodate expanded terms with new requirements of minimal party representation. The CRC chairman said he would begin clarifying the possibility of adjusting party makeup and term expansions with the town attorney who is scheduled to appear before the commission next Tuesday, July 25.

Mr Roznicky then weighed in on splitting the budget referendum process to allow voters to endorse the municipal and school budgets separately.

“I also think if we go to a four-year term, we should go to a zero-based budget with the Board of Ed and the town,” he said. “Often times in a budget you put in a sum of money and the increase is justified because of inflation. But just like we have a charter revision every five years, there should be a zero-based budget function where we reestimate all the line items in the budget and justify them.”

Ms Johnson then asserted a “point of history,” recalling a situation some time ago when the Board of Finance was eliminated. She said in the early 1970s, the former Newtown League of Women Voters took up a yearlong study which determined the Board of Finance should be eliminated.

“The Board of Finance had become three men and the first selectman deciding everything,” Ms Johnson said. “In some ways, and I don’t mean this unkindly, we have the same situation as we did in the 1970s. We have six men and the first selectman sitting around a table deciding how much we can spend and what we could spend it on.”

Without specifically identifying who exactly she was representing in her written submission to the CRC, Ms Johnson told the CRC members that a group of people had met to formulate “objectives for good government,” which included replacing the first selectman with a town manager. That segment of Ms Johnson’s written submission also included expanding the Board of Selectmen to five members.

Providing clarification following the hearing, Ms Johnson and Mr Roznicky said they favored spending in excess of $200,000 a year to hire a town manager to perform the duties that were currently being handled by paid consultants working at the pleasure of the first selectman.

“We’ve paid a consultant $900,000 in [a single] year to tell us things we already knew about Fairfield Hills,” Mr Roznicky said after the hearing. “That’s the kind of work a qualified and experienced town manager could do himself.”

Ms Johnson also suggested a town manager would be interviewed and hired by the expanded Board of Selectmen in concert with the Legislative Council, completely bypassing the election process the first selectman currently faces to retain the position of top elected official.

Before the public hearing adjourned, Mr Gissen made a case for bringing in members of the Board of Education, especially if term and member expansion was on the table for consideration.

“I think the Board of Ed gets criticized for a lot of things from people who don’t attend [meetings] and who don’t know what is going on,” Mr Gissen said. “There is sometimes some tension between one or another of those [governmental] bodies. And I would urge you…to keep an open mind relative to what other people from another board may say about what is happening with the Board of Ed until you get an opportunity to hear from the people who are actually running it.”

Mr Cramer assured Mr Gissen that the school board would have an opportunity to appear when and if the CRC was considering action relative to that board.

After several more minutes of discussion on splitting the budget process, the public hearing adjourned. The next CRC meeting is scheduled for July 25 in the old courtroom at Edmond Town Hall from 7 to 9 pm.