Public Hearing On Changes To Town Charter

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Proposed Charter changes would concentrate power in the Town Council while taking it away from the voters.

When: Tuesday, July 9 at 7 pm
Where: Charlestown Town Hall, 4540 South County Trail, Charlestown
Why: Public Hearing to discuss proposed Charter changes to be placed on November ballot

Charlestown’s Home Rule Charter, essentially the town’s Constitution, is the most important legal document of the Town. The Charter defines the organization, powers, functions, and essential procedures of the Town government. The Charter can be amended only by the voters.

The Town Council has decided to go forward to public hearing with 11 proposed amendments to our Charter. After the hearing, the Town Council will determine the proposed amendments and will determine the wording of the questions that will appear on the November general election ballot.

Some are merely administrative changes, but others reduce the Town Council’s accountability to voters and reduce the effectiveness and perhaps even legitimacy of the Planning Commission. Another creates a new Town Department without any analysis of long-term cost.

The questions that will appear on the ballot are simple, stated positively, and give little clue to the impact of the amendments to the Charter.

Question 1 makes the Town Council less accountable to voters and much harder to replace.

Question 1. Shall the Town Charter be amended at Part 2, Town Council, Article VI, Organization and Election, § C-19 Number; Elections, to provide that a Town Council member’s term of office shall be four (4) years with staggered terms of two (2) members in one election cycle and three (3) members in the next election cycle?

Even though elections would be held every 2 years, the number of positions on the ballot would vary in each election. The effect of this Charter change would be to prevent voters from ever replacing the entire five members of the Town Council at once and would require that voters wait at least 4 years to even vote on a majority of three members.

This slow turnover of the Town Council would make the Council much less accountable to voters, and elections with only two open positions on the ballot would reduce political interest and activity. Effecting change on the Town Council would require two full election cycles.

Question 9 will trick the voters into giving up their right to vote for an elected Planning Commission.

Question 9. Shall the Town Charter be amended at Part 14, Commissions and Boards, Article LIII, Planning Commission, § C-172 Establishment and organization; compensation, be amended to provide for a four (4) year term of office for full members with staggered terms of two (2) members in one election cycle and three (3) members in the next election cycle?

Elections would be held every 2 years, but the length of terms of voting members would change from that followed for the 41 years since the Planning Commission was first created. The effect of these proposed amendments would bring the Town’s Planning Commission out of alignment with State law that requires that no more than a minority of the Commission be replaced in any one year.

Members of the current Town Council and the land use attorneys and developers with whom they are closely associated have long wanted to remove the voters’ power to appoint the Planning Commission and give the power to appoint the Commission to the Town Council. In July 2023 they put going to court to overturn 41 years of elected Planning Commissions on a Town Council agenda, but the town’s own attorney cautioned that the Planning Commission is legally constituted, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island warned that such an action by the Town Council would be a “divisive and unnecessary undercutting of the Town Charter’s explicit and more democratically oriented decision to allow voters, not a public body, to determine the makeup of the town’s Planning Commission.”

The legality of allowing the voters to appoint the Planning Commission is based on the voters’ approval in 1980 of our first Home Rule Charter; the Charter was ratified by the General Assembly and signed into law by the Governor in 1981. The 1981 ratification of the Charlestown Town Charter is a specific statute entitled the “Charlestown Charter Ratification Act.”

If voters approve these proposed 2024 Charter changes, the changes will not have been ratified by the General Assembly or be part of a specific state law. This coupled with shortening the term length to less than five years will result in a Planning Commission that would be out of compliance with state law relative to term length and turnover and that would no longer be protected by the Charlestown Charter Ratification Act.

If this question receives voter approval, the land-use attorneys who asked for this Charter change will then once again go to court to challenge the voters’ right to elect the Planning Commission.

Question 8 asks the voters to create a new Town department without any estimate of long-term cost.

Question 8. Shall the Town Charter be amended at Part 13, Officer and Departments, XLIII, Department of Emergency Management, § C-153 Establishment and appointment to require the Town to provide emergency medical services either by a town department or by an appropriately licensed third-party vendor?

This will likely result in creating a new town department with, potentially, 14 employees or full-time equivalents. The cost of this many new employees and potential long-term pension costs has never been publicly discussed. This does not need to be in the Charter, the Town Council can do this by ordinance. Putting it in the Charter is meant to bind future town governments from finding less expensive solutions.

Other Charter questions:

  • Question 3 would eliminate the requirement to publish proposed ordinance changes in a newspaper and allow the Town Council to decide, by ordinance, where to publish proposed changes.
  • Question 4 would eliminate the requirement for a search committee when a new Town Administrator is hired.
  • Question 11 would allow the Town Council to appoint the same person to more than one board or commission.

Read the proposed Charter ballot questions with explanations. The explanations would not appear on the ballot.

Read the proposed Charter changes within the text of the existing Charter.