Listen to the Informal Meeting on any device. CLICK PLAY
Gardner MA City Council Informal Meeting on August 7, 2023
The item was given more time at a July 3rd meeting. Very few major changes were recommended and a letter the Committee sent to the City Council stated, “…took a most conservative approach to its charge and made suggestions that it deemed necessary rather than desired.” Agenda and Packet for meeting describing proposed changes.
However, it recommends the complete deletion of sections 34, 35, and 51. Section 34 deals with contracts for construction work and appears to be not needed due to its language having been modified by law. Section 35 deals with the amount of transactions requiring contracts and may not be needed due to Massachusetts law on the subject. Mayor Nicholson had pointed to this section as one reason for modifying the Charter as some vendors won’t deal with the City because signatures have been required for relatively small purchases. Section 51 deals with voting and states that “no measure shall go into effect unless the affirmative votes of at least a third of the whole number of registered voters. This section is a problem as sometimes not even a third of the voters show up at the polls. View the entire current City Charter here.
The Charter Committee proposes mostly minor language changes. The proposed change to section 32 would allow an Acting Mayor to serve for the last 12 months of an unexpired term instead of just 6 months without requiring a special election to fill the remaining term. The change to section 12 would hold preliminary elections 3 weeks earlier. In addition, a proposed change would provide for the City Council President to actually get paid for the duties of Mayor with 75% of the Mayor’s compensation in addition to pay as Council President. In 2020, James Walsh and Elizabeth Kazinskas got paid nothing extra for those duties as Acting Mayor.
In the complete packet for the regular meeting, there is communication from the Law Department in which it gives its opinion on the proposed changes. The City Council discussed the proposed changes and a vote on how to proceed is in the Regular City Council Meeting.