Charter Revision Commission

CHARTER REVISION COMMISSION ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING MIDDLETOWN CONNECTICUT WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2020 7:00 PM Present: Councilman Eugene Nocera, Ex Officio Commissioner Selena Rivera Commissioner Robert Blanchard Commissioner David Roane Commissioner Tawana Bourne Commissioner Linda Salafia Commissioner David Greaves Commissioner Molly Salafia Commissioner Edward McKeon Commissioner Kelly Sweeney Commissioner David Ribnicky Commissioner William Wilson Also Present: Steven Mednick, Esq. – Consulting Legal Counsel Hon. Benjamin Florsheim - Mayor Brig Smith, Esq. - General Counsel Barbara Knoll Peterson - Mayor’s Administrative Assistant Linda SK Reed, Clerk of the Common Council Members of the Public: WebEx (unknown) and Facebook livestream (unknown number of viewers) 1. Call of the Meeting by Councilman Eugene Nocera, Council Majority Leader Majority Leader, Councilman Eugene Nocera, calls the meeting to order at 7:06 PM. He welcomes everyone to the organizational meeting of the City’s Charter Revision Commission. This meeting is livestreaming on WebEx and on the City’s Facebook page. 2. Roll call Councilman Nocera welcomes everyone to the meeting and thanks the new members for their service on this very important Commission. Councilman Nocera calls the roll: Robert Blanchard; Tawana Bourne; David Greaves; Edward McKeon; David Ribnicky; Selena Rivera; David Roane; Linda Salafia; Molly Salafia; Kelly Sweeney; and William Wilson. All designated Commissioners are present. Councilman Nocera invites Mayor Florsheim to say a few works to the Commission. Mayor Florsheim thanks the Committee for having him. He appreciates everyone’s willingness to step up and take on a really serious, monumental task, doing so in an open-ended work with partnership with the public and City Departments. It will be a process led by this Commission and the Common Council. The Mayor will be here, doing whatever he can to advise. He thanks them again for stepping up to serve. There is a lot to accomplish in this process that is unfolding. He is excited to be an observer and a partner. Thank you. Councilman Nocera, as a housekeeping explanation, explains that he is chairing at the moment, but that the Commission will elect officers, including a Chair. Once the Chair is designated, he will step aside, allowing the Chair to assume work. He thanks everyone, including Steven Mednick, the Commission’s attorney consultant. Attorney Mednick will be working with the Commission on this Charter revision process. He thanks Attorney Medick for his work. He adds that the contract for the consultant has been approved through the Common Council. He thanks Attorney Brig Smith, who is also advising from the City’s General Counsel Office. 3. Charge to the Commission by the Middletown Common Council Councilman Nocera explains that these are very important matters. He understands from review of the Charter that it has been revised. It is well put together, but does need attention in some areas. The good news is that we do not need to rip it up and start over. There is a conceptual framework that we can use to make changes. Councilman Nocera calls on Commissioner Robert Blanchard, noting that he served on the previous Charter Revision Commission. He asks Commissioner Blanchard to recount the history, as he remembers it such as the things that they worked on and the process that was used. Commissioner Robert Blanchard explains that the last Charter revision occurred in 2014. It was a good group that came together and, essentially, worked to improve the Charter and streamline some antiquated parts of the Charter. It brought a lot good ideas, a lot to the community as the governing body document. What ended up happening, we had a lot of good ideas, but voters chose only to pursue a few of them. One of the biggest takeaways was the 4-year term. There are a lot of good ideas from the last Charter as well as some others that he has heard since this process came along again. It is an opportunity for people with good ideas, to fix certain aspects of the Charter. As Councilman Nocera said, we don’t want to rip it up as we have a really good  OCTOBER 21, 2020 CHARTER REVISION COMISSION – ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING Page 2 document to start from. There are some things that we can tweak, especially for Covid and other aspects of the Charter that are challenging like getting meetings such as this off the group. He looks forward to working with everyone. He reminds them that there is no such thing as a bad idea and everyone’s heart is in the right place trying to modernize the Charter and get out the antiquated parts or gray areas that lead to some confusion. He looks forward to hearing everyone’s ideas. Councilman Nocera states that the Commission knows that the Common Council has graciously gotten Commissioner Robert Blanchard to agree to char this commission. We thank him. We are looking for a Vice- Chair and Secretary. 4. Introduction of commission members and counsel Councilman Nocera asks that everyone go around and that each Commissioner introduce himself. Commissioner Robert Blanchard: He states that Councilman Nocera should thank his girlfriend, who allowed him to come back to Middletown politics. He is a former Council member and also served on the Planning & Zoning Commission. He enjoys working with the public at large. This is how he will be spending his evenings, adding that his work with Covid and the Governor’s Office must not be exciting enough. He looks forward to working with everyone and getting to know everyone. Commission William Wilson: He has been on a number of Commission, including having been elected to the Planning & Zoning Commission. He has lived in Middletown for 57 years. He wants to do what is best for the City and seethe City go forward. Commission David Greaves: he has lived in Middletown for 20 years. He has kept and eye and ear on Middletown politics. He sees this as a great opportunity to jump in the poll and join the Commission and add his 2 cents. Commissioner David Ribnicky: He has lived in Middletown for 15 years having moved to the City from Massachusetts. They have two (2) daughters. As he said in his application, he believes that it is everyone’s responsibility when they live in a city to do what they can and to pitch in where they think their skill sets may help He looks forward to working with everyone and hearing all of the various ideas. Commissioner David Roane: He has been a Middletown and Portland resident since 1946. He has been involved in politics since the 1980s He looks forward to working with everyone on this Commission, doing the best that he can. He hopes that they will develop a good Charter revision package to offer to the City. Commissioner Edward McKeon: He is a Councilmember and has also served on the Board of Education. He has lived in Middletown for 20 year. He is a founder of the Middletown Eye. He is film producer. His wife was born and raised in Middletown. He has two (2) boys, who are seniors in high school. Commissioner Kelly Sweeney: She moved away from Middletown and moved back about five (5) years ago. She joined the Board of Ethics and is now looking to offer more of her service to the City. Commissioner Linda Salafia: She is currently a Councilmember and has served in this capacity for a few years. She is a retired city employee, having worked in various departments, mostly in Finance and the Tax Collector, but also did City payroll for 14 years. She was an active union officer and has a lot of history of the City. She believes that she can offer a lot of insight into several issues that are going on. Commissioner Molly Salafia: She served on Design Review Commission, Historic Preservation Committee, and Citizen Advisory Commission, and was elected to serve on the Planning & Zoning Commission. She took a break from politics as they have a one year old and four year old. They are doing double meetings tonight. You get out of politics and it pulls you back in. An aspect of Covid is the virtual meetings, but this is actually what is allowing her to get involved again because she can do the meeting from home. She wanted to get involved with Charter revision, adding that there are some things that are good and some things that need revision. She is happy to be a part of this and looks forward to working with everyone. Commission Selena Rivera: She has been a Middletown resident for 22 years. She is grateful to serve on this commission. She looks forward to providing input on the various issues that impact our community. Commissioner Tawana Bourne: She was born and raised in Middletown. She has two (2) sons, who attend Middletown public schools. She is a business owner and entrepreneur, a real estate broker. She enjoys Middletown and looks forward to serving the community in making the lives of the citizens better, making Middletown, a better place to live. Councilman Nocera asks consulting legal counsel, Attorney Steven Medick, to introduce himself. Attorney Steven Mednick: He is an attorney based in New Haven. His background in municipal work includes having served for 10 years on the New Haven Board of Alderman where he had to deal with working with ancient Charter provisions and the impact that it has on the legislative process. He was later Corporation Counsel for New Haven during the tenure of Mayor John DeStefano. He was, the Mayor’s first Corporation Counsel. He worked on charter revision over the past 25 years, including major structural reform in New Britain (3 Charters), Hartford (2 Charters, and embarking on the 3rd next year); Waterbury (2 Charters), Hamden (working on his 2nd simultaneous with this project). He has worked on Bridgeport, East Windsor, and Portland,  OCTOBER 21, 2020 CHARTER REVISION COMISSION – ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING Page 3 which did not pass. The closest he had been to Middletown were two (2) failed Charters in Portland. He has also done one in Darien. He has also been involved in more piecemeal projects in New Haven, Bridgeport, and West Haven. He has a background in government structure, adding that he worked on restructuring the personnel systems in Hartford, Waterbury, as well as the procurement system in Hartford and Waterbury. He has done personnel reform in Stamford. As Corporation Counsel, he led the restoration negotiations in New Haven in 1994 where they negotiated with 14 unions simultaneously to try to restructure the City of New Haven under the Mayor DeStefano administration. About two years ago, he was part of the Hartford treasurer’s team with discussion that led away from bankruptcy. As part of that team, they went through that process as a government structure expert. This is his background and he looks forward to working with the Commission. Councilman Nocera explains that, after the election of officers, Attorney Mednick will provide a min-workshop on the Charter revision process. It is important to have a proper paradigm. For those who wonder why the Council hired a consult, who across the river had the Charter fail, that outcome is usually a money issue, not a reflection of the attorney’s work. It was more likely something that they could not afford or did not think that they could afford. There are those issues, too. 5. Election of officers: Councilman Nocera calls on Commissioner Blanchard, asking him what he recalls of the process used in the last Charter Revision Commission. He asks if Commissioner Blanchard recalls how the vice-chair and secretary were elected. Was it by consensus? Commissioner Blanchard replies, “Yes,” noting it is similar to the normal process for election of officers that may take place. Names are placed in nomination and seconded. If there are multiple names, a vote is taken. a. Chair Councilman Nocera asks for Commissioner Blanchard to guide him, adding that, when the Council put this together, they selected him as the Chair. He asks if the Commission needs to endorse this appointment or if it is taken care of. Commissioner Blanchard asks Attorney Mednick, if it is correct and clean, or more of just a formality, perhaps they should hold an election for Chair. Attorney Mednick concurs, indicating that he would do that; he would move to approve and have a second and vote. Councilman Nocera asks for a motion. Commissioner Roane moves to elect Robert Blanchard as Chair of the Charter Revision Commission. Commissioner McKeon seconds the motion. Councilman Nocera asks if there is any discussion. There being none, nominations are closed. Councilman Nocera calls for a voice vote. The motion is approved unanimously with 11 aye votes (Commissioners Blanchard, Bourne, Greaves, McKeon, Ribnicky, Rivera, Roane, L. Salafia, M. Salafia, Sweeney, and Wilson). The matter is approved. b. Vice-Chair Councilman Nocera asks for nominations for Vice-Chair. Commissioner Molly Salafia moves to elect David Greaves as Vice-Chair. Commissioner Linda Salafia seconds the motion. Councilman Nocera asks if there any further nominations. There being, none, Councilman Nocera calls for a voice vote. The motion is approved unanimously with 11 aye votes (Commissioners Blanchard, Bourne, Greaves, McKeon, Ribnicky, Rivera, Roane, L. Salafia, M. Salafia, Sweeney, and Wilson). The matter is approved. c. Secretary Councilman Nocera asks for nominations for Secretary. Commissioner McKeon asks about the role of the secretary. He asks if the Town Clerk will attend these meetings or, alternatively, if the Council Clerk, Linda Reed, will serve as the Commission’s staff. Councilman Nocera explains that the Council Clerk will be running the meetings via WebEx. Commissioner McKeon asks what duties are assigned to the Secretary. Obviously the secretary has to keep the minutes. Commission Blanchard replies that the traditional role is that, if something were to happen to the Council Clerk, then the Secretary would fill in and take the minutes or recap previous minutes should the Council Clerk not be available.  OCTOBER 21, 2020 CHARTER REVISION COMISSION – ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING Page 4 Commissioner McKeon asks if there are any volunteers. Commissioner Blanchard nominates Commissioner David Roane. Commission Linda Salafia asks if they need a secretary since the Council Clerk serves as the secretary, adding that if the Council Clerk is not able to attend, then her replacement – the City employee – would be staff to the Commission. She asks does the Commission need a secretary. Councilman Nocera replies that it seems that the question is – he doesn’t have the Charter in front of him – but it is his understanding that the Charter Revision Commission has a Chair Vice-Chair, and Secretary. Commissioner McKeon suggests that s something that needs to be changed. Commissioner Blanchard asks that the Commission elect a Secretary just in the event that the Council Clerk is not available. Commissioner McKeon seconds the nomination of Commissioner David Roane as Secretary Councilman Nocera asks if there any further nominations. There being, none, Councilman Nocera calls for a voice vote. The motion is approved unanimously with 11 aye votes (Commissioners Blanchard, Bourne, Greaves, McKeon, Ribnicky, Rivera, Roane, L. Salafia, M. Salafia, Sweeney, and Wilson). The matter is approved. 6. Overview by Attorney Steven Mednick, Counsel to Commission Councilman Nocera turns the meeting over to Attorney Mednick for a brief workshop, describing the process that will be used. Commissioner McKeon asks if the meeting should be turned over to the Chair. Councilman Nocera replies, “Yes,’ adding that Commission Chair Blanchard will now run the meeting from this point forward. Attorney Mednick begins his presentation, asking if everyone can see the PowerPoint on the screen. This will be a walkthrough of the process. He will discuss the background and legal philosophy of Charter revision as well as the mechanics towards the end of the presentation. a. Role of the commission: The Law of Home Rule and Municipal Charters The Charter revision process is an extraordinary opportunity to bring change and create flexible structures to allow for greater accountability and effectiveness in government. The Home Rule Act was adopted in 1957. This Act has been interpreted by the courts as having a two-fold reason. First, it was to relieve the General Assembly of the burden of special legislation of local municipal concerns. Prior to 1957, Charters were granted to municipalities by the General Assembly so the local legislators would go to Hartford and say, “This is what we want to govern the City of Middletown.” The General Assembly would then amend the Charter. It was also provided to enable municipalities to enact their own Charters with Home Rule, which under the State Supreme Court, constitutes the organic law of the City, superseding the existing Charter and any other inconsistent special acts. He does not think that this comes into play in Middletown, but larger cities that have provision of special act charters – for example New Haven’s zoning is done entirely by special act. It is not governed by Title 8, but by special act. This means that if they want to make changes, they have to modify the special act  OCTOBER 21, 2020 CHARTER REVISION COMISSION – ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING Page 5 in the context of the act. They cannot go far from that language that was given. The idea is to commit to local government the tools needed to address matters of local concern; that is, the organization of your local government, the powers, functions, and procedures. The goals of a Charter Commission is to create a document or blueprint for the governance of your community. Optimally, a community deserves a Charter that allows the Mayor to govern, to administer the laws, and to manage the government and allows the legislative body -- the Common Council – to adopt ordinances, finance the government, oversee the executive, and set the policies of the City in the context of accountability. A good Charter revision should aim towards clarity, flexibility of administration, accountability, and avoiding what he calls the “culture of disregard” where you have Charter provisions that are so arcane that they are simply ignored or a “culture of paralysis” where a provision is otherwise reasonable, but its behavior makes no sense. These are the goals that all member of Charter revision should pay attention to as you go through the process. Then the question becomes “What is the scope of the process?’ This is the first question you need to grapple with. How far do you want to go in reforming the Charter? The first thing that you do is review the resolution adopted by the legislative body, creating the Commission. In this case, you were given fairly broad scope by the Common Council to consider changes and such other items and matters as it deems desirable or necessary to improve the governance of the town. You have been granted broad scope an, but that does not mean that you should go as far as you can, adding that they do not have that much time to do whatever it is that they want to do. One question that Charter members ask; we are independent body and we can do anything that we want. That is true, but if you at to get a Charter passed, if you want to get the provisions adopted by first the Council and secondly by the electors – the residents of the community – you need to focus to establish the scope and the way you do this is to have two (2) statutorily required public hearings,. This Commission’s very next meeting should be the public hearing. At that public hearing, the Commission will have the opportunity to hear from the public, see what priorities they have for Charter revision, and begin to get a sense of what your responsibilities will be. OCTOBER 21, 2020 CHARTER REVISION COMISSION – ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING Page 6 One of the things that he recommends to commissions is, at the meeting immediately following the public hearing, try to meet with the Mayor, member of the Council, with former members of the Council, with former Mayors, with others who have been involved in the local government to get the sense. He would probably include the General Counsel in that meeting -- noting that he went through this with the Town of Hamden and it was very productive – to get a sense from them as to what their priorities are during this process. It is very important to do that. The third thing that he recommends, which takes place after the meetings with the officials, is to start small, what he calls the “redline exercises.” What he tries to do is have someone from the General Counsel’s Office, himself, and perhaps the Corporation Counsel go through the Charter page by page, chapter by chapter, to really try to get a sense of what is in the document, They can all do that individually, but has found, for example, he used the Town Attorney in the community to give her testimony as they gave the redline. They went through and determined that they needed to look at those definitions, that process, this has been a problem for the Council, this has been a problem for the Mayor, and this has been a problem for the Planning & Zoning Commission. This is what he means by “starting small,” taking a look at the document, the words in the document. Another thing he asks them to look at is the structure of the document to make sure that you are comfortable with the way the document looks, the way the document reads, and whether or not they need to be reformatted. One anecdote that he tells: he was looking at a Charter early in this work with major Charter restructure, he had a real problem with the document, and he could not figure it out because something just didn’t make sense. It was clearly not functions. His daughter, who was then about 8 or 9 years old, looked at with him. She looked at the Table of Contents and said, “Well, dad, the Table of Contents looks like the index.” What did that mean: the Charter was organized alphabetically. It was not organized functionally and it ended up being a major project just to set it up so that you had the chapter on the Council, on the budget, so it was set up in a way that made sense. That is critical. What you want to do is to organize the functions of government. You need to make sure that the functions are organized neatly, cleanly as he just described. You have the executive powers and the legislative powers and you want to be sure that there is a clear line of demarcation between those functions. The mayor should not be doing what legislative bodies do and the legislative body should not be a bunch of OCTOBER 21, 2020 CHARTER REVISION COMISSION – ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING Page 7 small mayors. You have one mayor and you have one legislative body. This functions need to be very, very clear. You should be sure that the Charter has the structure or identity of the necessary commissions and departments and be sure that it clearly delineates the critical fiscal and lawmaking processes governing the adoption of ordinance development of capital and general budgets, the issuance of bond debt, planning & zoning, civil service, and the relationship between the board of education and general government. That becomes a very important approach to be sure that the document is set up in a functional way. One of the other issues that we look at with Charters – adding one thing that he is pleased about in his initial review of the Middleton Charter – is what kind of Charter do you want. He notes that Stamford has one of the most difficult Charters in the State because they have created a Charter that is micro-managing Charter. What they have done is define every process down to a T. From his perspective, if you want to do that, we can do that. Your Charter does not do that. You take the constitutional approach. You have what he considers the constitutional approach to lay out he structure, the broad structure of your government, but leave the day to day governance and day to day refinements to the ordinances and the budget, that is the way it should be. There should be enough in the Charter to mandate certain behaviors activities, and requirements, but you don’t have so much if you want to go back and change the salary of the police chief, for example. There are Charters hat have salaries in there or job descriptions. The New Haven Charter, which was adopted in 1957, has the job description of the police chief. It is very different than the job description of a police chief in 2020. Over the years, he has been eliminating a lot of those things from charters to try to make sure that you have a document that is basically a constitutional document. He tries to do that. The Charter revision is also tricky in another way, unlike the federal government and state government where you have constitutional authority, there are some inherent powers available to those levels of government. At the local level, we do not have inherent or implied powers. That is question on the power point right now: What does home rule really mean? Under Connecticut law, the only two requirements that you need to have in your Charter are executive function and legislative function. There is a whole laundry list of what you want to put in your Charter, but these are the only two mandatory provisions. Otherwise, municipal power in Connecticut is distilled from the State Constitution, which is set under Article X as a legislative home rule statute -- remember that term: legislative home rule statute -- as well as Title 7, which is the legislature’s articulation of the expressed grants of authority thither give us to govern ourselves. So he has always argued that home rule” is more of a misnomer than a descriptive term because home rule is only what the legislature says it can be. So Middletown does not have its own right to create its own form of government. You have the right to adopt forms of government that are formulated and allowed by the General Statutes. So the sources are Article X and Title 7 of the General Statutes. Another point that needs to be made, noting that in his meeting with the Council, they were quite knowledgeable of this: that is, collective bargaining agreements. The average voter probably does not think of a collective bargaining agreement as anything more than a document that governs work rules, compensation, and the benefits for employees in the municipality. That is true, but what they don’t realize is that here is a statute that says that, if a provision is adopted in a collective bargaining agreement, that provision, if it is in conflict with the charter or ordinance, trumps your Charter, and trumps your ordinances. One of the first examples that he experiences is as a young councilmember or Alderman was, the Charter had two times a week garbage collection, adding that he doesn’t now what that was doing in the Charter. People were entitled to have their trash picked up twice a week. During his term, the City cut it back to once a week. People would get up on the floor and scream about the Charter mandate as a requirements being violated. That is where he learned about the Municipal Employee Relations Act and the provisions OCTOBER 21, 2020 CHARTER REVISION COMISSION – ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING Page 8 that give collective barraging agreements basically authority over your charter and your ordinances. The real question is: Is your Charter a fundamental and essential document or is it superfluous? You do not want a document that is superfluous. You do not want a document that is to be ignored. You want a document that is flexible, that can deal with modern technologies, which is one of the things that he is looking at in all of the Charters. He has been part of the Executive Order that the Governor issued earlier today. He has been working with the Governor’s Office on a lot of the remote meeting orders. He has been part of this process, including having several meetings with FOI. What it has done is made them think about the world we are living in now: he is attending a meeting in Middletown now at his desk in Hamden. It is the world we live in today and Charter needs to recognize that, there needs to be flexibility to address that. The question needs to be: Is your Charter a fundamental document or superfluous? We will find out during this process. He believes that it is a fairly cohesive and useful document, but we will go through that and figure things out. One of his first observations in looking at the Charter, he knows that that the City Attorney is the General Counsel, not the Corporation Counsel. If you look at the Charter, that title doesn’t show up anywhere in the Charter. You have a town or city attorney and a Corporation Counsel. That is a little thing that he picked up on. Perhaps that is an issue that we need to look at in this process, starting small, but it was picked up without a lot of day to day knowledge about Middletown. Let’s go through the process. Step back: Creating this Commission was a two-step process. They created this commission in September. The second step is that within 30 days they names the Commission. They have given you a mandate in resolution that gives you the time frame for completion, which is the ballot in November 2021 that is about a year from now. The work of this Commission will be coinciding with, filing a repot around the time that the Council is finishing the budget process in May or June 2021 as it takes several weeks and months to go back and forth between the Council and the Commission. He also indicated the Commission has a required public hearing at the beginning of the process and another at the end of the process. The dates in the PowerPoint document are speculative. We will sit down and lay out the time frame for this Commission, depending on work to be done. Sometime in May, the Commission will be submitting a draft report to the Common Council. They will hold a public hearing during the 45 day review period when they ca act on that document. One thing he has worked on in the past 15 years or so, he initially looked at it as being very independent in as the Commission did its work and the Council did its work. He strongly recommends to this Commission and to the Council that they maintain a dialogue, noting that there are two (2) Councilmembers on this Commission. This dialogue is need throughout the process so you can let the Council know where you are heading., what you are thinking, what issues you think you need to tackle The more warning that the Council has, the more you have a chance to persuade them, if there is any disinclination to consider it, to start thinking about the idea. By doing so, when you come to the Council in May or June, it won’t be a surprise. They will have the document, he also recommends that they try to work everything out during that process because the more questions they raise will construct the work that this Commission does in the second phase. What happens if the Council has no questions and no recommendations, they can vote this up or down in June and it’s done. If they vote it up, it’s done. If they vote it down, it ends and it does not go on the ballot at that stage. If the Council does have questions, the document comes back to the Commission for a 30 day period, but with the restriction that you can only deal with the questions they have raised. If a remarkable idea comes up, this Commission is constrained only with the questions that the Council that the OCTOBER 21, 2020 CHARTER REVISION COMISSION – ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING Page 9 Council has raised. The report is then returned to the Council and they have a short period of time to approve or disapprove the document. After approval, assuming it is approved, it has to be published in the newspaper. It is an archaic requirement and the newspapers oppose changing it because they still make money in publishing these big documents. The Commission’s question then becomes: “How many questions do we put on the ballot?” A lot depends on how much you do, hot how controversial anything is. The real deadline is to get it to the Secretary of State’s Office by a set date in early September, 60 days prior to the November election the questions have to be submitted in final form to the Secretary of State. The next task is that it goes to the voters for approval. b. Time-line The work plan shows that things that happen from October 2020 through April 2021. Again there is the organizational meeting the 1st statutory public hearing, and the workings of the Commission and all that he has described. In May and June 2021, these are made up dates, but pretty close based on his plan for another community with similar dates to those in Middletown.  OCTOBER 21, 2020 CHARTER REVISION COMISSION – ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING Page 10 This brings the Commission up to the work plan at the end of the process As for the role of the Council, he won’t discuss, but offers that, it is his job to provide legal advice, to do research and prepare for the workshops, and to facilitate the Commission/Council interface as best he can. It is a limited retainer with the City so we will have to figure out an allocation of his ability between himself the General Counsel. That will come after the public hears and meetings with the officials and we begin to wend down the list of issues that come from those meetings, At that point, we will have a pretty good sense of where we want to go and he will have a feel for his scope of responsibilities and services to this Commission. The Attorney Medick advises that the Commission’s next meeting should be the public hearing.  OCTOBER 21, 2020 CHARTER REVISION COMISSION – ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING Page 11 Commissioner McKeon states that he has some questions. He knows that one of the issues will be the relationship between the Board of Education and the City. He asks if the Board of Education should be part of that additional meeting with the City officials, Mayor, and Councilmembers. Attorney Mednick relies, “Absolutely,” noting that if they anticipate issues, he would invite the Superintendent or members of the Board of Education to the meeting. The Commission needs to decide how long they want the meeting to be, noting that they may need to do a couple of meetings. He described it as one meeting, but they can divide it into more than one session. Commission McKeon asks how important it is for each member of the Commission to read the Charter. Attorney Mednick replies, “Absolutely.” The redline is not a substitution for reading the document. The redline is an opportunity, a useful function. He has not yet spoken with the City Attorney Brig Smith; however if someone from his office, someone who knows that document, it is a useful function to walk through that document, Chapter by Chapter. He has read it, adding that he is in the process of reformatting it, including a Table of Contents. It is useful for him and a terrific process for the Commissioners. Commissioner McKeon asks, for people who are not familiar with where to find the Charter, it is on the City website. Attorey Mednick replies that he is ending that document out to all of the Commissioners. He reformatted it into a Word document so all can work with it. He also has the City Attorney’s Office looking at the document he is looking to confirm that it is the most current Charter document, so there is a solid foundation for this work. Commissioner McKeon asks, when they bring the proposed changes to the Council, do they have the ability to modify. Attorney Mednick replies that they have the ability to make modifications, if the Commission decides it wants to eliminate the Board of Education, the Council may ask why. Alternatively, the Council may recommend that the elected Board of Education be put back into the document, which would be their way of dealing with it. He is not offering this as a proposal; rather as an example. Commissioner McKeon asks if the Commission can break into subcommittees to do some of the legwork rather than as one large body. Attorney Mednick replies, “Yes,” the Commission and break into groups. Now we have the scope of services, there are things that the Commission can do without an attorney in the room. If hey are doing fact finding, we can give the subcommittee structure and they can bring the information back to the full Commission. It doesn’t make sense to pay someone to sit through a 3 to 4 hour fact-finding session if the facts need to be found out. Commission Chair Blanchard states that it is important over the next few weeks to sit down, get familiar with the Charter, understand its purposes, and highlight points that may not make sense or sound right, or may be said in an easier way. Either use Google Doc to make edits or make note son the physical document so the Commissioners all come together with different ideas. He also suggest that they discuss how often they should meet. Some committees with a lot of work to do meet twice a month. We can discuss frequency and set up a rough calendar to stay on pace. We will have a lot of ideas, noting that he former Charter Revision Commission started with 60 ideas and narrowed it down to three (3). In his opinion the last Charter revision was left largely incomplete. There are a lot of ideas that never made it to the ballot, adding that this Council is a lot more interested in larger changes that can increase flexibility and clarity. If the Commission can set a time as well that would be great. In addition, a roster will be circulated with contact information. Commissioner McKeon states that he has another organizational question. They are a public committee and have all been sworn in. Is there any restriction on them meeting without noticing the public that they are meeting? Attorney Mednick replies that any meeting of the body has to be noticed. You cannot have private sessions. Commission Chair Blanchard states that is why he cautions against the subcommittees. He believes the group is small enough so that subcommittees are not needed. Everyone is working together, looking at the same document, sharing ideas how to do this work. The Commission can certainly meet more frequently and bring in more ideas rather than concepts they are not sure will finally be brought forward to the Council. It would be a great checkpoint to have along the way with these ideas. Attorey Medick recommends that, if they can, set up meeting every other week.in this way the Commission’s Clerk can post them as regular meetings as opposed ad hoc special meetings. Meetings can always be cancelled, if needed. It is better for people to understand that they have a fairly intense period of time between now and next May. For his purposes, he asks the Commission consider meeting on Wednesday evenings, which works in his schedule. This gives more flexibility with the agenda if the meetings are posted as regular meetings. Commission Chair Blanchard states that he thinks that . . . The Clerk states that Commissioner Molly Salafia has her hand raised.  OCTOBER 21, 2020 CHARTER REVISION COMISSION – ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING Page 12 Commissioner Molly Salafia asks, if we are marking up the Charter with questions or suggestions, will the attorney advise us if something is illegal or not possible because of a statute. Will we have that back checking as a service? Attorney Mednick replies that the core answer is “Yes.” He is now working with other town, going through the process of analyzing every issue that has come up in public hearing, in meetings with elected officials, and he has created a grid of all of those. An example is the several people have stated that they want to have recall of elected officials. He argued that case in the Connecticut Supreme Court that killed recall. The answer is that it cannot be done There are some definitive questions like that, rather than waste time, it simply cannot be done. Another example is civilian review boards. Public Act 17-01 passed police reform that passed this summer included a section that allows municipalities to create civilian review boards with subpoena authority. It is done by ordinance, not Charter. That is why he is here, adding that the City Attorney will do the same thing. They need to allocate these responsivities. Commissioner Molly Salafia asks if it is official to get a “cheat sheet’ of frequently asked questions that are a dean end or should we just review the charter document and then just ask? Attorney Mednick replies that they will be better off. He has given a couple of example. Before the next meeting, he will get the specific sections of Title 7 that say precisely what they can have in a Charter. If it is on the list, it can be put into the Charter. If it’s not on the list, then it cannot. Another example is gun control. If there is a gun problem in Middletown, you do not have the authority to adopt an ordinance or Charter provision that bans guns, limits guns, requires that everyone have a gun. It is under State control. He reiterates that he will get them the language from Title 7 that addresses what they can include in the local Charter. Commission Chair Blanchard adds that the City Attorney was helpful during the last Charter revision. One thing that always comes up is recall. Thebes way to look at this process is what we are doing is procedural rather than policy. We cannot use the Charter to create environmental policy or gun reform or removal of official through recall. What we need to stick to are clarity, accountability, and flexibility. ensuring that we are not adding more paralysis , but breaking up log jams as we see fit. Also, looking at the time line, it would be good to meet every other week. We will discuss so we stick to an aggressive schedule to get work done and have a bit of a cushion at the end. If anything gets kicked back to us, we don’t want to be rushing or scrambling so that we have time for sufficient debate with the public and within our own body. We had a good heath back and forth with the Council on some items towards the end of the last revision. It is important that we allow time at the back end, so we need to stick with a schedule at the front end. He suggests that the Commission move to meet every other week, meeting on Wednesdays beginning on November 4th, the day after Election Day. That would be the public hearing. He encourages everyone to dream big as to what we would like to see in this Charter, allowing us to start with a good number of ideas. Some good ideas have already come his way and he knows that there will be more at the public hearing. Beginning November 4th, followed by November 18th. He asks if there are any concerns about this schedule, including the public hearing on November 4th. The Council Clerk asks if they are looking to meet at 7:00 PM. Commission Chair states that, yes, meeting will be held at 7:00 PM ad will be held virtually Commission William Wilson states that there has been discussion about having this first meetings as the public hearing. He agrees that November 4th must be the public hearing right out the gate. 7. Selection of public hearing date The Chair asks for a motion on meeting every other Wednesday through early May 2021 with the November 4th public hearing. Commission Molly Salafia moves this proposed schedule. Commissioner Wilson seconds the motion. There being no discussion, the Chair calls for a voice vote. The motion is unanimously approved with 11 aye votes. The matter is approved. Attorney Mednick states that, in terms of interfacing with the pubic, which is a result of the pandemic and remote meeting protocols, it would make sense to have a dedicated email receptacle for the public to submit ideas in writing prior to, not in lieu of, the public hearing. This would allow people to send comments in writing as well as speak at the public hearing. These emails become art of the public record. Commission Chair Blanchard concurs, adding that is also done with the public hearings at the State Capitol. If there is an opportunity to have this email box set up, the suggestions will be forwarded as they come in to the members of the Commission. This would allow Commissioners to have these comments going into the public hearing. He suggests that this information be included on the City website. The Council Clerk states that she will contact technology Services to have the email address set up In addition, on the City website home page, there’s a “News” announcement section and we can ask to have an announcement posted, especially highlighting he public hearing on November 4th. Commission Chair Blanchard notes that they definitely want it to be advertised. He asks Attorney Mednick if the second hearing date needs to be set at this time. Attorney Medick explains that the second date does not need to be selected at his time. He also asks that they keep in mind that there are two (2) required public hearing; however, the Commission can have as many public  OCTOBER 21, 2020 CHARTER REVISION COMISSION – ORGANIZATIONAL MEETING Page 13 hearings as they may desire doing the process. Sometime in January or February, the Commission may want to ask the public to come back into the process to comment. Commission Chair Blanchard recommends that there are different phases. They started out with 100 ideas and it was narrowed down to 5 or 6 or 7 that had merit. There is a public hearing at the end. It may not be a bad idea to do a second public hearing to ensure that the public is involved, a so-called midway checkpoint. They can discuss options for that additional hearing as they move forward. Commissioner Wilson asks is it possible to get these meetings on public access. Many people do not have computers and cannot get on the City website, noting that they may be older residents who do not have the ability to be online and do not want to listen on the phone. Can it be on public access? The Council Clerk states that the meetings may be livestreamed on the City website, but special software needs to be purchased to do a hybrid broadcast between having it on Channel 19 and WebEx. Would it be acceptable to have it run live on the City website? Commissioner Wilson said that is the issue. People, who are asking, don’t use computers. They cannot watch on their phones. We need to get out there to as many people as possible so we not accused of limiting their ability to see what is going on. That is a complaint that he hears and continues to hear about City meetings. Commissioner McKeon states that, for those who are not computer literate, a file can be sent over to Channel 19 as with other meetings. It could be shown and rebroadcast, but minus the live interactive process. Commission Chair Blanchard states that people can also dial in. We may want to announce that, even without a laptop or iPhone, they can dial in and listen. They can access even at the library by email to submit comments. Commissioner McKeon states that Commissioner Wilson’s suggestion is a worthy one. Getting a file to Channel 19 and have it rebroadcast. The Council Clerk explains, that even in calling by land line, callers can activate he hand raise function by pressing *3 and speak by land line, participating in the public hearing process. Commission Chair Blanchard asks that this information be included in the notice. He urges the other Commissioners not to hesitate to call, text, or email him. He wants everyone to participate to help shape the Charter for the next decade. He will be sure everyone gets the information. 8. Adjournment There being no further discussion Commission Chair Blanchard asks for a motion to adjourn. Commissioner Molly Salafia moves to adjourn. Commission Wilson seconds the motion. There being no discussion, the Chair calls for a voice vote. The motion is unanimously approved with 11 aye votes. The matter is approved. The meeting is adjourned at 8:20 PM ATTEST: LINDA S.K. REED, COMMON COUNCIL CLERK K: review/ minutes/ Charter Revision – 21 October 2020