Staggered Terms for Selectmen, Additional Emergency Authority Recommended by Charter Commission

The Charter Revision Commission recommended staggered terms and the ability for a third selectman to declare a temporary state of emergency after the close of a public hearing Tuesday night. 

The decision is contingent on the chairman seeing no need to convene another meeting for further revisions. 

With the exception of Town Clerk Linda Smith speaking about  the differentiation between a special meeting and an emergency meeting, no member of the public spoke about the proposed revisions. 

After the public hearing was closed, commission members deliberated for roughly two hours on further revisions to sections 5.03 regarding emergency authority and 6.01, which specifies the composition of the Board of Selectmen. 

The commission’s draft of section 6.01 of the charter states that at the next regular town election, the first selectman and two members of the board would be elected for a four-year term. The remaining two board members would be elected for a two-year term. At any elections in the future, the members of the Board of Selectman would be elected for four-year terms. 

The current charter, which was adopted in 2009 and put into place in 2010, states that the Board of Selectman consist of a first selectman and four selectmen, each with concurrent four-year terms.  

The charter currently also reads, “A political party may nominate and an elector may vote for one (1) candidate for First Selectman and not more than two (2) other candidates for the Board of Selectmen.”

That phrase was selectmen’s motivation for appointing the latest commission. If the charter were to remain unrevised, there would be a potential for nominees to be automatically elected, since there are a total of five members on the board, including the first selectman. 

For example, if a candidate for first selectman ran unopposed and there were no third-party candidates for the board, all those nominated would be automatically elected. 

The proposed revision would also allow a political party to nominate and an elector to vote for the same number of candidates as there are members to be elected. The votes for candidates for first selectmen who are unsuccessful can still be counted as votes for a position on the Board of Selectmen. Also, no more than three selectmen, not including the first selectman, can be of the same party. 

The other proposed change includes section 5.03 of the charter, which would allow the Board of Selectmen to appoint another selectman to declare a temporary state of emergency if the first selectman or the deputy first selectman is absent for a period not to exceed 120 hours. Currently, that power in invested in the latter two positions. 

The draft brought to Tuesday night’s meeting originally stated the period was not to exceed 72 hours. Additionally, at the request of commission member Peter Reynolds, the commission voted to remove part of a sentence that would have suspended quorum provisions normally applicable to Board of Selectmen meetings. 

“I don’t think we need to suspend the quorum provisions,” Reynolds said. “Obviously we can look at what’s happening in Japan - unimaginable difficulties can arise. Setting that aside, we ought to have three selectman be able to speak together and agree which one of the members will exercise the second deputy authority.”

Suspending the quorum provision in the way the draft read, he said, is “sort of a wild card.”

Commission members also added an additional line that clarified the powers that the appointed selectman, in the absence of the first selectman or deputy first selectman, has in the event of an emergency. 

“Somebody’s got to be empowered in the absence of the two people,” said commission chairman Arthur Fournier Jr. 

In addition to declaring the state of emergency, the third selectman has and may exercise the powers and authority of the first selectman, in the absence of the first selectman and deputy first selectman. 

With the commission’s vote of approval on the charter revisions, the Board of Selectmen will now review and hold a public hearing on April 6 to gather comments from the public on the proposed revisions.

Any proposed changes would eventually have to be approved at referendum.