N.S. Town Council putting off Town Administrator question, for now

NORTH SMITHFIELD — The Town Council has backed off plans to pursue changing the local Town Administrator position from an elected to an appointed post but whether that action will be pursued under a future local charter change remains to be seen.

Town Clerk Debra Todd said the Council’s unanimous decision last week to put off action on a possible Town Administrator question for the April state primary election appears to have avoided what could have been a complicated voting process during the April 26 Presidential Primary election.

The election will require voters to pick a political party for voting and then fill out a party disaffiliation form if they do not wish to remain registered under that preference.

“There is no referendum question at the moment,”

Todd said while noting the Council’s decision not to purse that course of action and to instead weigh the creation of a new Charter Review Commission.

The appointment of a commission is expected to be discussed by the Council at its March 7 meeting, Todd said.

A Charter Commission could study proposed changes in the make-up of local government as well as and related changes in legislative and executive authority under other provisions of the town’s charter that might be created by the administrative restructure.

That process has taken a number of months in the past if not a full year to complete and Todd said she could not predict if it could be completed in time for a November ballot question to be submitted to local voters.

“I’m not going to say `no it can’t be done’, but it might take longer than six months,” she said.

Town Councilman Paul Zwolenski, at least, is happy his peers on the panel have decided to take more time in deciding the next step on the Town Administrator change from an elected to an appointed position.

Zwolenski said he was never a fan of moving away from the town’s currently elected form of executive administration and noted that also seemed to be the feeling of most the town residents he spoke to on the topic.

“We could have moved ahead with it but the decision was unanimous to put it off and develop a Charter Commission instead,” he said.

That process will be aired at the upcoming March 7 Council meeting, but Zwolenski said he would not mind if no action were to be taken on the proposal.

“I want this whole thing to go away and I want the voters to vote for a Town Administrator,” he said.

Council President Robert Boucher could not be reached for comment on the panel’s plans to weigh a charter commission, but Town Administrator Paulette Hamilton said on Monday that she believes the panel will seek to open a Charter Commission to look at the larger picture of what the governmental change could mean to other aspects of the town charter.

“The suggestion is that a charter commission could look at other areas of the charter, not just the form of the town’s government,” Hamilton said.

Making a change from an elected and independent Town Administrator to an appointed official could create a ripple effect in charter mandated responsibilities that should also be weighed, according to Hamilton.

As for herself, Hamilton, now in her fourth two-year term as Town Administrator, is not considering a re-election run in the upcoming November town election.

“That’s enough,” Hamilton said of her four terms. “I’m not getting very much cooperation from the Town Council so I feel I’m not accomplishing the things that I need to be doing for the town,” she said of her decision not to pursue a new term.

With the election calendar about to begin, Hamilton said there will be an opportunity in the near future for prospective Town Administrator candidates to step forward and pursue taking her place. The next elected administrator will take office on Dec. 1, 2016, and at that point “it will be their chance to run the town,” she said.