The Charter Review Committee has met for the first time. I'll look for the minutes of the meeting to be available after they are approved.
My hope in writing this blog is to invite discussions on the Charter by residents and interested people. If you have an idea that you'd like to share, please post it here. I'm not on the Charter Review Committee, but as an elected town councilor, I wanted to add another channel for online discussion. The more discussions that take place on this topic, the better.
Feel free to chime in, but my goal is to look at ideas that can benefit the charter and the town and not to get into personalities or characterizations of individuals. In addition, I hope to post various parts of the Charter so discusssion can take place on the Charter as it currently exists. Of course, I have some ideas about these and areas that may be ripe for change, but in the end, I'm only one resident with some ideas.
In many ways this blog is an experiment and your comments will tell if was a useful one. I welcome and invite your ideas...
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3 comments:
I took some time and looked over the Town Charter. It's appears to be a fairly straight forward document, which is a good thing. I don't see too much that needs to be changed other than the items you have previously mentioned. I wanted to comment on the previous entries.
I think the preliminary elections could be done away with. Sadly, the general public seems to prefer remaining uninformed and disinterested in town politics. Evidence of this, is this blog you have put together. A great idea that would afford people the opportunity to have a say in their government, yet no one takes advantage of it. The same is true of the prelims, nobody wants to get involve, so doing away with them would save money.
I think the "leave of absence" section needs to be made clear, but not changed. Maybe additional wording so that it clear that those that have served cannot return to their old jobs for at least a year.
2 year term limits are okay although perhaps offsetting them, like the school committee might be good.
The only other thought I have is whether there is wording that requires candidates for town office to be residents of the town. I did not see any requirement for that in the charter. Is it legal to require our mayor, council members and school committee to be residents?
Stan raises some good points. Sections 2-1 (council) and 4-1 (school committee) attempt to deal with the residency issue, but perhaps the definition section, (Section 1-7) could be tightened up, too. "Voters" is defined there, but not "Voter."
While the school committee section clearly deals with moving out of town, the mayor section, to my recollection, doesn't have the same language. While there are some arguments that could be made, these are great issues for further review. In the end, the more clarity we can bring to the charter, the better it becomes. Note, there may be some state laws that are involved here, too, but there's nothing wrong with more clarity in our local charter, too.
Also, perhaps the leave of absences language might benefit from a procedural element. Defining a process may help, but I know others have different views on this topic.
In reviewing the terms of office and elections, might four year terms all-around make more sense? The mayoral elections seem to generate the most interest and those are held every four years.
These days, I'm personally leaning toward keeping the preliminary elections, but only have then every four years (and making all terms four years). If we had greater interest in elections, I might reconsider. But take this year as an example: there's no race in any of the six districts. Although the school committee race is active this year, the last two elections (to my memory) have been won by the only candidates running for school committee.
Given the costs savings involved in avoiding the two-year preliminary elections (note, not needed this year as there was not enough interest) and the two-year town election (the off years where the mayor does not run), perhaps four year terms might make more sense until, if ever, we have greater interest by candidates in elections. Remember, the school committee and mayor currently serve for four years already (the school committee is staggered, however.)
Ideally, I might suggest we could have these four year elections coincide with our state elections or presidential elections, too (if allowed.) This would lead to even greater savings (over $100,000) and likely increase voter turnout for local elections, too.
I realize this may be a bit too spread out, however, as every four years might not align with more regular participatory considerations. While in theory, I like having more elections and shorter terms, the data so far and costs involved have the realist in me thinking every four years makes more sense.
It's my hope that these are all points worth debating by our community as we look to improve our charter and local governance. While some of these issues might arguably fall outside the charter review committees areas of focus (as some of these might be the areas of an elected charter commission), I'm still hopeful we review the options as there are other avenues available to make changes to the charter if we agree those changes are best for our community. For instance, a home rule petition to the legislature which requires voter approval might be used instead of electing a formal commission after the committee has completed its work in the next year. Just my two cents on some of these issues...
I agree to the 4 year terms. The disruption to the school year is another reason to consider this.
The schools had planned on having a Day off on September 15th for the Prelimary. Just 2weeks after starting. They rescheduled the day off to accomodate the Kennedy election in January.
Overall I commend the writers of the original charter, I feel the Town of Weymouth has functioned very well as a City government the past 10 years.
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