Amherst council carving out time to discuss charter recommendations

AMHERST — Around half of the 22 recommendations included in the Charter Review Committee’s final report, such as allowing non-management town staff to run for election to the Town Council and adding resident representatives to council subcommittees, will be discussed in-depth at a work session next month.

The Town Council on Monday, in its first action on the committee report delivered on Jan. 5, agreed to have a Feb. 9 meeting to begin making its way through the contents of the report, with a vote possible on the ideas by mid-March. Councilors have to act on these recommendations by April 5.

Councilors will use the meeting next month to meet with an attorney from KP Law, Town Manager Paul Bockelman, Clerk of the Council Athena O’Keeffe and others to determine what to do with the recommendations.

Council President Mandi Jo Hanneke said the meeting, which is expected to last three to four hours, will start with recommendations likely to yield the most conversation and debate.

Those might include proposals for adjusting the internal workings of the Town Council, such as establishing term limits for the president and vice president, clarity on how many votes are needed to pass measures and giving power for the council to hire its own attorney for secondary opinions.

Other ideas to be discussed include those affecting the public, like whether remote participants have the option to turn their videos on, holding a second public forum on the budget and extending voter veto provisions from 14 days to 21 days.

Other recommendations are not expected to be the focus of that night because they are viewed as simpler changes, such as increasing district meetings for councilors to three per year, requiring at-large councilors to attend five of these district meetings over a two-year period, clarifying the definition for budget and master plan public forums and requiring the Finance Committee have resident members.

Before establishing that the meeting on the report would take place Feb. 9, At Large Councilor Ellisha Walker made an amendment to the motion to have the session take up so-called “beyond the charter” items that would require special legislation or a new Charter Commission, like adding a mayor to town government, as well as to go over an in-depth League of Women Voters report that was given to the review committee.

Walker said this would broaden the discussion.

“I find this to be an extremely consequential action of the council, it’s our governing document, I just want to ensure the council can be as thorough as possible, that’s my intention,” Walker said.

But District 1 Councilor Cathy Schoen said she worried about having enough time just to get through the 22 recommendations.

“I’m worried if we broaden it too much the 3½ hours won’t be enough to do it,” Schoen said.

District 4 Councilor Ana Devlin Gauthier said broadening the scope of the meeting would be redoing the work of the Charter Review Committee, which already looked at the League of Women Voters’ report.

“I’m struggling to see why we don’t trust a committee that we approved to do this work,” Devlin Gauthier said. “If we wanted to do this work ourselves we should have done this work ourselves.”

District 2 Councilor Amber Cano-Martin said this is the first and only chance as a council to have any conversation on the report.

“I think having this work session be more open to include these other categories of recommendations and ideas can allow us as a council to collectively decide what we want to do with them,” Cano-Martin said.

District 4 Councilor Jennifer Taub, too, said the League of Women Voters’ report is important because it had input from more than 200 residents.

District 1 Councilor Jill Brevik said the council needs to have a holistic discussion. “I think the essence of this is not to redo or rehash the great work of the (committee), but to really think of it as more air traffic control, almost,” Brevik said.

Meanwhile, other parts of the Charter Review Committee’s report could be referred to council subcommittees or the town manager for “study, recommendation and/or implementation as appropriate,” according to a memo from Hanneke.

“Since there is no specific timeframe for acting, this would enable the council to delve deeper into the recommendations and make changes in a less pressured amount of time,” Hanneke wrote.

The council may also establish a Transparency and Public Engagement Group to have a more extended period to look at the report.

Brevik held off on making a motion that would have provided the council an avenue for pursuing major structural changes that would require special acts of the Legislature. Brevik said the spirit behind this action would be to take seriously the recommendations of the report.

“I think it would really signal to the public that we are continuing to listen as we move through this process,” Brevik said, adding that it is “important trust-rebuilding work” to do.

Councilors offered praise for the final report.

“I thought it was an amazing report,” Schoen said, noting the level of detail in recommendations. “A major thank you for the amount of work that went into this.”

The council also accepted the report and dissolved the committee. “Your service is officially over,” Hanneke said.

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