With its membership decided, its chair and vice-chair chosen — Maureen Crick Owen and Herb Rosenthal, respectively — and a list of charges to consider, the Charter Revision Commission began to dig into its planning process at a meeting on April 22.

The commission has a long list of more than 20 charges, some of the more eye-catching of which include: Considering eliminating automatic budget referendums; referendum timeline changes to increase voter turnout; updating the charter to shift the town clerk from an elected role to an appointed one; considering merging duplicative appointed Town committees or dissolving appointed committees whose functions no longer meet the needs of the Town; updating the charter to clarify and strengthen the role of the Board of Ethics; and the threshold amount for special appropriations of $1.5M in the charter should be reconsidered with inflation in mind.

Crick Owen noted that the commission's timeline has been extended — originally they were looking to get possible charter changes onto the April 2027 budget referendum, but noted that low turnout might mean that a requirement that "yes" votes on each change require ten percent of the total registered voters in town could doom some changes. If the "yes" votes prevail over the "no's," but the number of "yes" votes doesn't exceed the ten percent threshold, it would not pass. Given an approximate number 18,300 registered voters, that would mean a minimum of 1830 "yes" votes to pass. For reference, neither the "yes" votes nor the "no" votes exceeded 1,750 in the most recent budget referendum.

This means that the voters will decide on the charter changes in November 2027 — giving the CRC several more months to work as well as the Legislative Council more time to decide on what to do with the CRC's recommendations.

"It happened in the 1980s," said Rosenthal of a charter change not reaching the ten percent threshold. "While voters approved the question overwhelmingly, it failed because it wasn't approved by ten percent of the voters.”

Crick Owen next discussed asking various town and elected officials to attend meetings so they could be asked relevant questions about potential changes, such as fire department officials over proposed Fire Commission membership changes. They would also be looking to talk to First Selectman Bruce Walczak as well as possibly some members of the Legislative Council's Charter Revision Charge Committee to get more clarity on some of the charges.

The commission also talked for a bit about adding some charges of their own to the long list they already have to consider. Rosenthal suggested the possibility of removing vote by district from the council and making the membership "at large."

Crick Owen agreed with that, saying "honestly, sometimes I'd rather vote for someone outside my district rather than anyone in my district."

Member Peter Schwarz recommended making the Plan of Conservation and Development a regularly amended "living document" instead of something that is only updated every five to eight years.

A perennial charter change candidate, Rosenthal also discussed possibly altering the role of the Board of Finance to make it a more long term financial planning board instead of needing to be involved in day-to-day expenses. It has long been noted that during budget time and for various appropriations, they need to go through three different boards — the Board of Selectmen, BOF, and LC — an arduous process for the department heads giving their presentations three times.

The Board of Ethics was brought up, with Rosenthal calling it a "toothless tiger" over the years.

Crick Owen then discussed breaking the commission down into smaller groups in an "informal process" that she said Town Attorney Jason Buchsbaum recommended. The goal would be to avoid quorum and to keep the membership informal so that extensive minutes taking does not have to happen for the brainstorming sessions.

"We'll try and makes things as simple as possible and not a lot of extra work," said Crick Owen. "We want no more than four per group or we'll have a quorum."

Editor Jim Taylor can be reached at jim@thebee.com.