Charter Panel May Make Monday’s Annual Town Meeting Newtown’s Last

By John Voket

Depending on the outcome of the current charter review, Monday’s annual town meeting might be Newtown’s last. But don’t bet the farm on it just yet.

Among the issues the Newtown Charter Revision Commission (CRC) is expected to rule on is the future of the community’s town meeting form of government. But based on discussions held this week, the final recommendation may not reflect an all or nothing decision.

While most of the commissioners have agreed, in theory, that certain items of municipal business can be removed from town meeting rule by providing greater authority to elected bodies, none of the six appointed volunteers have gone on the record definitively rejecting the continued use of town meetings comprehensively.

According to Section 7-70 of the current charter, “An Annual Town Meeting must be held the first Monday in October to hear and discuss the annual reports of the boards, commissions, departments and officers for the preceding fiscal year.” In recent years, however, the annual town meeting has only served as an opportunity for the first selectman to accept the reports without much discussion or participation.

The average contemporary annual town meeting takes as little as two to ten minutes, and is typically attended by just a few local taxpayers or qualified voters.

“Technically, the town clerk reports to the townspeople that the reports have been received,” Ms Simon said. “Historically, decades ago, these meetings would pack the town hall gym and report on aspects like how many cows a certain farmer was keeping.”

Town Historian Dan Cruson said since one had to be a landowner to attend, it was regarded as a privilege for one to attend the annual town meeting. “What has happened recently, since the 1990s, is town meetings are called to handle budgetary concerns,” he said

But today residents apparently prefer these decisions to be made in the privacy of the voting booth at referendums.

Remembering back to the early 1980s, Mr Cruson recalls a spirited town meeting in the high school gym to bond $1 million to double the size of the library.

“There was staunch opposition by certain people who felt all of the existing space in the library was not being used,” Mr Cruson said. But today, the town meeting activity is a mere formality.

“Since many people moved to town from outside the region, there is dwindling appreciation for the New England tradition of a town meeting. It could get acrimonious on occasion, but everyone got to hear all sides of the issue at hand,” he said “You might not agree but you got a chance to hear it.”

“Today, people are lazy,” Mr Cruson added. “They just want to drive up, run in, pull down a lever in the voting booth and head off to do something else.”

During Tuesday’s CRC meeting, Chairman Al Cramer reviewed some of the issues that would require a town meeting, including the cap on municipal expenditures the Legislative Council is authorized to pass. By the current charter, except for appropriations of up to $150,000, all expenditures above that amount must be authorized by property owners in a town meeting. Today, even the annual town budget could be decided by property owners in a public town meeting format, if a qualified referendum is not petitioned.

Town meetings must also be called to authorize the sale, lease, or disposition of town-owned property.

As Mr Cruson mentioned, the current charter provides that any action taken by town meeting may be subject to a referendum, except in the case where an annual budget is already adopted by town meeting. During the charter panel’s discussion Tuesday, commissioner Joan Plouffe noted that the state statutes require every town in Connecticut to hold an annual town meeting, except in cases “where it is otherwise provided by law.”

The panel decided to put the question to Town Attorney David Grogins to clarify whether there is a conflict resulting from the statutes.

Mr Cramer said the town would still be functioning legally by eliminating the town meeting, provided it retains the Legislative Council.

“The question before us is, should we eliminate the town meeting, keep parts of it, or what?” Mr Cramer said, noting that an issue like the $47 million high school expansion proposal could go before a town meeting to take action if the decision isn’t forced to referendum.

Mr Cramer said it was important for the charter commissioners to follow through the entire document when considering actions regarding town meetings. He suggested that certain town meetings could be avoided if the council is given more authority to authorize spending.

“Say they had $300,000 to work with,” Mr Cramer suggested. “I don’t know what dollar amount, maybe $500,000. That would cut out some town meetings.”

Minority Representation

The CRC also heard from Ms Plouffe about her research on state statutes governing minority representation.

“[The statute] provides for a maximum of one political party, but there’s no mention of any minority representation,” Ms Plouffe explained. “There’s no apportionment in the statute — it doesn’t say the maximum is two-thirds of one therefore it has to be one-third of the other. Maybe we should be talking about what the statute means.”

The panel discussed whether the statutory stipulation would accommodate one-third of any other party as long as one major party is making up two-thirds of any elected board or commission.

Mr Cramer said the current charter has specific language on minority representation.

“In a district with four to be elected, the maximum from any political party would be three. That leaves one member to be elected. Can it be an unaffiliated voter? I would say yes, it could be — the language in the charter says that,” Mr Cramer said.

Commissioner Guy Howard said his interpretation of the statute does not account for any specific party membership

“If the top vote getters are all unaffiliated, as I read the statute, the council would all be unaffiliated,” Mr Howard said. “There’s no requirement that there be a Democrat or a Republican anywhere.”

Ms Plouffe then asked whether a passage could be written into the charter explaining the process for unaffiliated voters to petition for political office.

Commissioner LeReine Frampton, who is also a town Registrar of Voters, said that provision could be included in the forward portion of the charter document.