GOL Recommends Reducing Size of Charter Review Committee

Report on the Meeting of the Governance, Organization, and Legislation Committee, March 21, 2024

This meeting was held over Zoom and was recorded. It can be viewed here.

Present
Ana Devlin Gauthier (Chair, District 5), Pat DeAngelis and Lynn Griesemer (District 2), Freke Ette (District 1), and George Ryan (District 3).

Staff: Athena O’Keeffe (Clerk of the Council)

With 14 applicants for the nine-member Charter Review Committee, the Governance, Organization, and Legislation (GOL) committee recommended to the Town Council that the size of the committee be reduced to seven and to declare the pool adequate. Due to council policy, the names of the applicants were not made public, but the joint interview will be open to the public.

The reduction in the size of the committee was suggested by George Ryan (District 3), saying, “with double the number we need, I would feel more comfortable going ahead.” The councilors worried that the workload on the seven would be greater, but then decided that the committee’s charge is to review the Home Rule Charter regardless, so there would not be more work with a smaller committee. Chair Ana Devlin Gauthier (District 5) asked if, “Nine is a really unwieldy number?”

Lynn Griesemer (District 2) worried that after a year’s work, a seven-member committee could be down to five. However, she said, “The irony is the number of people who are clamoring to be heard, and the number of people who are clamoring to be part of decision making and part of discussions, who are wanting to be engaged, but when we put out the call for ways to be engaged, we don’t get any answers. It’s troubling to me.”

Pat DeAngelis (District 2) wanted more diversity in the applicants, and Freke Ette (District 1) thought that a nine-member committee would “provide an opportunity to have a broader swath of people in town that could apply.” DeAngelis said that, “The thing I’m concerned with is when I’m talking about diversity, I would like to see racial and age diversity, but also, I’m talking about people who aren’t a conglomerate of the same ideas. I think nine is a better number.”

GOL then voted 4-1, with Griesemer voting no, to recommend that the council reduce the number of residents on the Charter Review Committee from nine to seven. For the change to occur, the full council must approve it. The discussion will be placed on a future council agenda.

Applicant Pool for Nonvoting Member of the Finance Committee Deemed Insufficient
There are two applicants for the vacancy for a nonvoting member of the Finance Committee that occurred when Bob Hegner was elected to the council. DeAngelis wanted to declare the applicant pool sufficient, because four months have passed since the election. However, Ryan objected that no new applications have been received since the last GOL meeting when the committee decided there were not enough applicants. The rest of the committee agreed to leave the search open.

GOL discussed the difficulty of recruiting residents to serve on committees. Devlin Gauthier said she reached out to the League of Women Voters of Amherst, which is conducting a series on the charter, to see if any of those participating in those discussions would be interested in serving on a formal committee, but no new applications came in.  She agreed to contact the chairs of the other two council committees about doing outreach to encourage more applicants. In July, there will be another opening on the Finance Committee, two openings on the Planning Board, and several on the Zoning Board of Appeals,