A member of the city’s Charter Review Commission offers an overview of what residents can expect and encourages robust public participation in the process
By SAM PECOR | Biddeford
At our organizational meeting in July, a colleague on the Charter Revision Commission said out loud what more than a few people were probably thinking: that we might be the only nine people in the city really interested in what happens here, and that we weren’t going to get public input. All nine of us ran unopposed. It was a fair worry.
Then people showed up to our August 10 public hearing, and they came with specifics.
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A resident from Ward 6 came with a list: three-year staggered terms for councilors so the whole body doesn’t turn over at once, a three-year mayoral term, compensation amounts taken out of the charter so they can be adjusted more regularly, and the superintendent’s residency requirement dropped. Practical, given that ours serves more than one community.
Councilor Abigail Woods, joining the meeting remotely as a resident, backed the staggered terms idea and named the problem behind them: when six new councilors start together, everyone is learning the job at once and nobody in the room was there for the last round of decisions.
Others wanted public comment guaranteed at special meetings and workshops, not only regular ones.
Kathryn Crowley of Ward 4 said the city manager’s role is confusing enough that residents can’t tell where accountability sits.
Ben Neveux, who served on an earlier commission, sent us written comments that I read into the record. He listed spending, limits on tax increases, and term limits as legitimate local issues, then warned against a review that codifies today’s politics.
A charter, Neveux wrote, should be “a durable framework for governing” that adapts as the community changes, and Biddeford’s, he noted, dates to 1859.
Crowley asked that diversity and inclusion sit at the center of the work.
That’s a real evening of substance from a body that was supposedly going to talk to an empty room.
The comment that stayed with me was not a proposal at all.
Crowley told us plainly that she hadn’t read the whole charter and didn’t understand all of what she had read. She said it evenly, as a fact about her situation.
Woods had come at it from the other direction in the same remarks. Most people haven’t read it, and we should take it a couple of articles at a time so the public can follow.
I’ve spent a lot of time in this document this year, and they’re right. Biddeford’s charter is dense, in places archaic, and written in a way that doesn’t invite a resident to pick it up. That sits underneath everything else on the list. A charter nobody can read is a charter nobody can hold anyone to.
The first speaker of the night had served on a charter commission in another city, and she described a problem that charter ran into. It kept listing school committee duties that state law had changed in 1993, so candidates for that office were reading an inaccurate description of the job.
Her commission’s answer was a 10-year review written into the document, so it could be brought back in line with state law without standing up a whole new commission every decade. She suggested we consider the same.
Paul Therrien, who chaired Biddeford’s 2016 Charter Revision Commission, brought copies of what that commission produced and handed them around. Item four concerns how much the city can raise for capital improvements. His commission changed that number once and he thinks we should look at it again.
Therrien brought advice along with the brochure. That commission put 19 questions on the ballot and 17 passed; the two that failed had to do with money. They finished in August with three months left before the vote, and spent them explaining the work to voters.
A charter revision nobody understands fails at the ballot box, not at the drafting stage.
A charter revision that nobody
understands fails at the ballot box,
not at the drafting stage.
We have not decided how big this gets. There’s a real range in the room, from targeted fixes to a comprehensive review, and honest arguments across it.
Mr. Therrien raised one during the hearing: he understood voters to have elected us to review the charter, and was surprised that replacing it was on the table at all.
He deserves a straight answer on that. Norman Belanger — our chair –said that if there’s genuine interest in a new charter instead of amendments to the current one, that discussion should come first at the next meeting — and when he ran through what August 27 would cover, it was the first thing he named.
I have my own views and I’ll argue them in that room.
Wherever we land, a resident has to be able to read the result and understand what it does. If we can’t clear that hurdle, the size of the revision won’t matter much.
This hearing was the statutory one, and it’s closed now. We’re still listening.
Future meetings, in person and online, will include a public comment period and you can reach all nine of us at CharterRevision@biddefordmaine.org.
We’re also working out which online tools the city can host, including a comment form and a searchable version of the charter. Those are still being sorted with staff. I’m not going to announce something we haven’t finished.
We got a better turnout than some of us expected. Prove to us that wasn’t a fluke.
These are my own views, not positions of the Charter Revision Commission.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR | Sam Pecor is a Biddeford resident and vice chair of Biddeford’s Charter Review Commission.
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