N.S. Town Council axes Question 10

NORTH SMITHFIELD – Members of the Town Council admitted an oversight on what voters should be asked under detailed charter changes on the Nov. 6 election ballot and moved Monday night to rescind one question containing four-and-a-half pages of wording, Question 10, from their consideration.

The change, made under a 4-1 reversal of a prior vote by the panel on Monday, came after its members discussed what has become a confusing and somewhat unfocused charter review process this year.

There are still nine charter questions before the voters, including whether the town should change its current elected town administrator to a council-appointed town administrator employee, a reduction of the seven-member, elected and appointed School Committee to just five elected members, and a change creating a new town asset review commission. From the discussion on Monday, who supports the charter change package appears up for debate.

Local resident Michael Clifford told the council during public comment that its members should not be afraid to take a stand on the issues they placed on the ballot with an intent to let the voters decide and suggested they even include a council recommendation on the matters as part of the ballot literature.

Clifford’s proposal came after he chastised the council to a degree for including measures on the ballot that have put prior recent charter changes on a roundabout tour to reversal.

The reversals include a requirement for the existing budget committee to review all negotiated contracts and verify the town administrator’s or school department’s calculations and the addition of two appointed members to the five-member elected School Committee which were approved overwhelmingly on the 2014 election ballot.

He also opposed one of the changes in Question 10 that would have removed the charter requirement that the town solicitor submitted copies of his written decisions, not pertained to executive sessions, to the town clerk for public review.

“It is a safeguard to have that language in there,” Clifford said.

Had the council wanted to specifically remove that requirement for legal representation for town government, Clifford said it should have posed it as a separate question on the ballot.

Clifford maintained that even though some members have stated that they do not personally support all the questions that were put on the ballot, just the process of taking that action gives them a council endorsement to a degree.

“When they see changes on the ballot, voters assume the council and the charter revision commission are in a consensus and that the changes are good and should be accepted by the residents of the town,” Clifford said.

Town Council President John Beauregard countered that it had not been the council’s intent to bury any item in a larger question but offered that “a lot of changes had been presented by the charter review commission and we tried to organize them.”

The charter commission had submitted 1,900 proposed charter changes between wording updates, major revisions and technical changes this year and presenting those on a ballot became a difficult task, according to Beauregard.

The council approved the changes that were to go on the ballot during its recent meetings, he explained and Town Solicitor David Iglozzi put them into ballot form.

Iglozzi had cautioned the council during that process that some of the questions containing the posed changes might be lengthy but the only alternative was to have a far greater number, 30 or more, that voters would be hard pressed to consider on an election ballot.

As a the council took up Beauregard’s request to reconsider Question 10, Councilwoman Terri Bartomioli, who had served on the charter review commission, argued to keep Question 10 while suggesting voters would determine its merits for approval.

The problem, Bartomioli suggested, was that the council started to address “the whole situation way too late.”

The charter review commission had presented changes that were intended to update the charter and fix many issues, such as a provision allowing a patrolman with the three years’ experience on the police department to be eligible to seek appointment as chief of the department.

The question may be long, she noted, but it could also be explained on the ballot. “If we can get verbiage with an explanation, people can do their homework, they can do their homework at home and then make their decision, but let the voters decide,” she said.

Beauregard, however, maintained that council had simply put a question on the ballot that was too long for proper consideration and recommended that it be removed.

“Not to take away the hard work of the charter commission, they worked hard on this, but we made a mistake, maybe we should have had 41 questions and we didn’t,” he said. “I supported it and we are just trying to undo the mistake we made,” he added.

Councilman Thomas McGee IV offered a similar view of the lengthy question and said he would support Beauregard’s move to remove it.

The voters, he said, were unlikely to spend the time Bartomioli suggested would be needed to review the question, and as a result it should be removed. “I just happen not to like a lot of this but that is just me,” McGee said while adding the council should support the move to remove Question 10.

Members Claire O’Hara and Paul Zwolenski joined their two peers in voting to remove Question 10, and Bartomioli cast the sole opposing vote.