Mayoral, alderman 4-year terms; 4th ward may be Derby’s future

DERBY — Increasing the number of aldermen and doubling the mayor’s term to four years are among the items the Board of Alderman have asked the Charter Revision Commission to consider.

The Aldermen took the action during their threehour digital platform meeting Thursday night.

The 10-member Charter Revision Commission created in February has yet to have a meeting, said Rob Hyder, a member and third ward alderman.

“I anticipate the first meeting will be held in the next couple of weeks,” he said. “When the commission was selected, I was hoping we’d have recommendations completed by July. Since we haven’t met yet, we have a lot of ground to make up.”

The commission could be up against a deadline: to get referendum questions on the November ballot, recommendations need to be completed by Labor Day, Town/City Clerk Marc Garofalo has said.

Hyder said the commission first needs to elect a chairman and conduct a public hearing which he expects will be done through a virtual platform.

“We need to hear from the taxpayers themselves,” he said. “While we received solid recommendations from the Board of Aldermen, we do not necessarily have to submit those recommendation but at least review and consider them.”

Ron Sill, a longtime second ward alderman, said he was worried about the timeline since the group’s first meeting will not be public gatherings and “public input is important.”

“I’m a little disappointed the commission has not yet met,” Sill said. “Chances are, their work might not be completed in time for November.”

Camille Grande Kurtyka, a first term second ward alderman, suggested creating a fourth voting ward.

Grande said the third ward has by far the largest number of registered voters and that redistricting the city into four wards would equalize numbers.

“Redistricting has to be done every 10 years and it was not done after the 2010 Census,” said Garofalo. “The charter required it be

done after each census.”

Garofalo said while there are 1,765 registered voters in the first ward, 2,190 in the second and 2,616 in the third, redistricting is based on the number of residents, not voters.

A redistricting committee will need to be appointed and use the new census data to “redraw the lines so that each ward has approximately the same number of people living in it . ... If it stays at three wards, then each ward would have approximately 4,166 people. If the charter is changed to four wards, then each would be approximately 3,125,” he said.

Sill recommended adding a fourth alderman in each of the three wards and increasing both their terms and the mayor’s to four years.

He also suggested doing away with the current 10member Board of Apportionment and Taxation and replace it by an Aldermanic Finance Committee consisting of five to seven members who would compose a budget. Their budget would then be voted on by the full Board of Aldermen.

“Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against the Tax Board. But it’s getting harder and harder to find people to run for office,” Sill said. “We scrambled to get people to run last year.”

He said he anticipated that, under his proposal, some current BOAT members would run for Aldermen.

Charles Sampson, who presided over the Alderman during Mayor Richard Dziekan’s first term, proposed several changes to both the mayor’s term and salary and changes to the qualifications for police chief and the method of selecting new police officers.

Sampson, a Westport police officer, said he wants to increase the mayor’s first term from two years to four and then return to two-year terms for succeeding terms. He also said he wants to change the position from part-time to fulltime.

“Unfortunately, the incoming mayor must now inherit the last administration’ s ... budget and does not have a full accounting of the budget until the second year,” Sampson wrote his fellow Aldermen. “This leaves many issues to resolve and, as recently seen, could cause animosity to the first-year incumbent based on the last administration’s actions.”

Several years ago, a budget mistake that doublebooked a $1,241,154 state education Alliance grant in the city’s budget created a shortfall that led to a tax increase.

It also nearly cost Dziekan a second term as m ayor.

Sampson also said he wants the Charter Revision Commission to consider making the city treasurer’s position an appointed, rather than an elected, position.

He also recommended requiring qualifications for police chief include a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, business administration or other public service degree. He said the Deputy Chief should be next in line and if that person does not meet the qualifications, then the test should be open to sergeants and above.

If none of those qualify, then the search should go outside the department, he wrote.

As for new police officers, he recommended hiring a vetted agency to conduct written and oral tests from which they would create a list of qualified candidates. He also suggested giving the police chief the authority to hire lateral transfers from other departments as long as they meet minimum qualifications and pass psychological and polygraph tests.

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