Charter Commissioner Wants

Internet Access For Panel

By John Voket

Charter Revision Commissioner Guy Howard believes the six volunteers working on updating Newtown’s constitutional document can expedite some of their decisionmaking by getting access to local and state statutes via the Internet. During the panel’s Tuesday night meeting, Mr Howard initiated discussion on the matter after one of many questions about statutory guidelines arose.

Much of the meeting, which was attended by Chairman Al Cramer, Mr Howard, and commissioners Joan Plouffe and LeReine Frampton, centered around term limits, at-large representation on the Legislative Council, and party representation on various boards and commissions.

At one point late in the meeting, the group was discussing alternatives to require seats for unaffiliated residents to run for and be appointed to municipal panels. Ms Frampton said that while opening up political races to more unaffiliated petitioning candidates would likely increase voter turnout, she suggested that unless the sheer number of names on each year’s ballot was somewhat limited by increasing certain elected terms to four years, the move might not benefit petitioners.

“If you give voters an overwhelming number of candidates, people will tend to vote the party line, or for incumbents,” she said. Ms Frampton said one way to keep ballots uncluttered was to increase term limits to four years so candidates’ elections could be split and staggered.

Ms Frampton previously suggested providing for single member minimum party representation for certain boards to force both major parties to put up candidates for all available openings during each election process. While the panel has yet to qualify if that suggestion is legally permitted, the commissioners have been discussing the merits of expanding certain elected terms to four years, and to try and find ways to provide for unaffiliated voters seeking to serve in elected or appointed capacities.

This led to a question from Ms Plouffe about putting a mechanism in the Charter to guarantee unaffiliated seats on elected boards and commissions.

Ms Frampton responded that, according to legal sources working with elections officials, the commissioners could not mandate unaffiliated seats for elected offices in the Charter.

Mr Howard then suggested the statutory implications needed to be clarified and supplied before the next meeting.

“It’s not that I don’t trust LeReine, but I don’t trust my mother unless I have time to read and understand the statutes,” Mr Howard said. At that point he asked if there was a means to have Internet access available so commissioners could instantly access statutes that had direct bearing on their conversations.

While it was determined that there was wired Internet service in the Edmond Town Hall building, no immediate connections are available where the Charter Commission has been meeting. Mr Howard said there were several ways to get Internet service to either the Mary Hawley room or the lower meeting room.

He suggested either providing hard-wired access, running a connecting wire from an adjacent Internet capable computer, or installing a wireless hub on an adjacent terminal. Mr Cramer then asked Mr Howard to follow up on the idea with First Selectman Herb Rosenthal and the town hall management office.

While the Edmond Town Hall houses numerous town government offices, it is operated by an elected board of managers and is subject to the administration of that board, not directly by the First Selectman.

In other business this week, several members of the CRC revisited the subject of eliminating or reducing district representation by members of the Legislative Council. One of the charges to the Charter Commission is to consider whether or not the council should be elected at large.

Several visitors to the CRC in recent weeks have suggested that voters have an affinity to district representation. Others, including Ms Frampton, a town registrar of voters, previously said creating an at-large council would make it easier for the local town committees to locate qualified candidates to put up for election.

On Tuesday, Ms Frampton suggested a compromise which would split the town into just two districts, one voting at Reed School and the second voting at the middle school. She said the move would save taxpayers money by reducing staff and expenses at two of the four current voting districts, and would increase security for the children at elementary schools that are currently used for polling locations.

While none of the commissioners objected to the two-district suggestion, Ms Plouffe said she was still very much in favor of electing council members at-large instead of by district.

In other business, Ms Frampton reported that Town Attorney David Grogins was prepared to begin writing suggested Charter changes as the concepts were approved by the commission. This news appeared to come as a relief to Mr Cramer who asked Ms Frampton to clarify the stage at which Mr Grogins wanted to receive input on proposed changes.

During the meeting, Mr Cramer said several local citizens asked to be invited to talk with commissioners about concerns they had with possible CRC actions. Mr Cramer said former elected officials including Ruby Johnson, Frank DeLucia, and William Sheluck, Jr, had all approached or contacted him expressing an interest in making presentations to the current Charter panel.

Ms Johnson is a former Legislative Council member, Mr DeLucia previously served as a selectman, and Mr Sheluck was the chair of the previous Charter Commission.

After some discussion the commissioners agreed that it would be appropriate to hear the residents’ concerns during the public portion of a future meeting, versus formally inviting any of them to speak as part of the CRC’s agenda.

Before adjourning, Mr Cramer asked that commissioners return next week to entertain the charge of eliminating the Town Meeting form of government.