Charter review may bump consolidation

Posted by WBTA News on July 10, 2009 - 5:17am
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At this point, all signs are go for the City of Batavia’s revised charter proposal to be on the voting ballot in November. And that means a vote on the consolidation of the city and town will have to wait.

The nine-member Charter Review Commission met last night at City Hall. The focus of the meeting was to vote on whether to put the charter proposal up for a popular vote in November. The commission did not officially move to do so; they’ll wait until Aug. 24 to decide. But Commission Chairman John Roach says they’ve already got a majority within the commission who want to move forward with the charter.

Besides, says Roach: “The consolidation people should have been aware that we have a charter commission that legally has precedence.”

One of the new additions to the charter is the ability of city council to appoint committees to work on issues outside of council meetings. Currently, every issue before the council must be debated in regular meetings. Roach says an approach-by-committee would streamline city operations.

“Most bigger governing bodies have sub-committees,” said Roach. “It makes things a little more efficient. Instead of nine people arguing over every little detail, you have a committee of three or four who work it out.”

Roach said he doesn’t believe a committee approach would stifle the public comments that have become a staple of regular city council meetings. He says citizens would simply have to attend more meetings, like the committee appointees, if they wanted to voice their opinions.

Posted by Peter O'Brien on July 10, 2009 - 6:18am
"He says citizens would simply have to attend more meetings, like the committee appointees, if they wanted to voice their opinions."

So basically were going to be making more of a burden to get the citizens involved in their government. Sounds to me like the exact opposite of what we should do. I understand the advantages of committees but lets say their are 4 committees and you still have the city council meeting. That's 5 meetings in place of the current one. People that have busy schedules for whatever reason but still want to be informed and contributing citizens are going to have a hard time changing their schedules to make all the new meetings.
Posted by John Roach on July 10, 2009 - 6:52am
Actually, you get more of a chance to voice your opinion. You can go to the committee meetings and speak and at the regular, traditional, meetings. It gives you more options. You can go to all, one or none. You decide.

Of course, sub committees are an option we want to allow. The decision to have them, or how many, would be up to the Council