I’ve avoided writing anything substantive about the Groton Charter Revision Commission, on which I’ve been serving for over a year, though I’ve mentioned the meetings in passing. I haven’t discussed it primarily because I think I would have been less effective as an advocate on the Commission if I had discussed our deliberations in this forum.
Now we’re finished, however, or nearly so. There will be a public hearing at 7:00 PM on Monday the 14th at the Town Hall Annex. If you’re a Groton resident consider attending.
The town of Groton website has information you can download, but I’m attaching the basic information to this post. I’ve attached a copy of the current charter, a copy of the proposed charter, a document prepared by Mick O’Beirne, the chairman, which lists the major substantive changes to the charter, and another document Mick just prepared consisting of a table that shows where various provisions from the old charter appear in the new charter.
We didn’t make any radical changes. For the most part we tried to modernize the Charter to bring it into line with current practice and current law. There are a number of anachronisms in the current charter. For instance, the town is required by the Charter to have a Fire Marshall. In fact, each of the Fire Districts has its own Fire Marshall, and there is no Town Fire Marshall. So we got rid of that requirement. The current charter has a very long list that grants various powers to the town. We have removed that and simply stated that the town has all the powers it can exercise pursuant to state law, etc.
There are only two proposed changes with which I’m not comfortable. The current charter provides that if neither the Town Council or the RTM passes a budget, then the town manager’s proposed budget is deemed adopted. We changed that to provide that, in such a case, the new budget would be identical to the old budget. I thought that was a bad idea because it seems unlikely this would happen except in a very difficult budgetary climate, and it seems unlikely that it would be responsible under those circumstances to go with a budget that is almost surely not going to be appropriate. Also, it’s not clear whether the specific line items would carry over from the previous budget, or only the bottom line figure.
The other problem I had was how we dealt with the library board. We deleted references to all boards and commissions in the charter. For the most part, that makes sense, because it leaves the Town Council free to create and abolish these entities (except those required by state law) without the necessity of a Charter Revision. At the moment we have commissions or boards required by the charter that have not functioned for decades. But I think the library board is a bit different, and I’m sorry we simply deleted all reference to it. The state statutes, and the current charter, envision a library board that manages its own budget and is largely independent of political interference. As a matter of fact, our library board has not functioned that way, because it has ceded its authority to the library director. That’s too bad, because a politically insulated library board could, in book burning times, serve as a bulwark against censorship more easily than a library board director who is ultimately answerable to the town council. I have a dim recollection of someone trying to ban a book at the library, and getting nowhere. We should maximize the chances that we will always have such an outcome.
But I can live with both of these changes. On balance, I think the proposed charter is a much needed modernization.
One thing we didn’t do was add a referendum to the budget process. Whether the charter is adopted or not, this will be our major gift to the town. This subject needs a post of its own, which I’ll probably write one of these days. I think it’s fair to say that, had we taken a vote at our first meeting, we would have voted to have one. The more any fair minded person looks at the structure of our town government, the more they realize that, even if a budget referendum were a good idea in the abstract, it doesn’t fit within our scheme of government. As time went on, and we discussed various proposals, the idea lost support, and when the time to vote came, the referendum garnered only two votes.
We are a disparate group, but we worked together well. This was my second commission. The first I was on literally dissolved around me, as a number of people quit due to their hostile feelings toward other commission members. (Mainly me, actually. And that’s yet another story) There was often disagreement on this commission, but it was always civil. I don’t think anyone ever came close to losing their temper and I think the quality of the debate was usually quite high.
We apparently finished just in time to get the measure on the November ballot, should all things go well from here. After the public hearing we will make whatever changes we feel appropriate based on the public comments. Then the council will make suggestions, and we will respond to those suggestions. After that, the council votes to accept or reject the proposed charter. If they vote to accept, it goes to a vote in November.
Click any link below to access a PDF of the described document.
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