Press Release
On June 12th, 2020, Town Meeting convened to vote on a total of 60 articles, one of these items included action on Article 48, citizens petition calling for the creation of a nine-member Charter Committee. By 139-32 votes, your representatives at Town Meeting overwhelmingly approved this article.
This group’s charge is reviewing all aspects of local government organization and structure, including, without limitation, regional relationships and the operation of all Town departments, boards, committees and commissions, elected and appointed, and make a report or recommendations to the 2022 Annual Town Meeting, or such later town meeting as the Moderator may approve, with the goal of presenting a proposed charter at the 2022 Annual Town Meeting, which special legislation would be forwarded to the General Court for review and approval, in accordance with the Home Rule Amendment, Section 8, and further to raise and appropriate or transfer from available funds a sum of $10,000.00 to pay for the expenses of such Committee, or take any other action relative thereto.
Members of the Fairhaven Charter Committee convened its first reorganization meeting on Thursday, September 9th and have been meeting remotely over Zoom biweekly on Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. due to the pandemic. Our meetings are also broadcasted on the local all access cable channel 9 and live on Facebook via Fairhaven TV.
Since our first meeting, we have been researching and discussing as a group various town reports and charter related documents. Specifically, these documents consist of historical information on town and city charters across Massachusetts, the DOR Report from 2012, Bennett & Shaw report from the late 1980s, and recommendations from the Government Study Committee.
We also had guest speakers such as Michael Dutton, Town Manager for the Town of Bridgewater and Chair of the Massachusetts Municipal Association Form of Governance Committee speak with us about processes towns and cities created to adopt charters in their communities and the benefits associated with these documents.
In conclusion, we have determined the creation of a living and breathing town organizational chart is the first step to help us understand which of these recommendations from these reports have already been implemented and which need further discussions to make our municipality work in a more efficient and streamlined approach for you, the taxpayer.
We want to encourage anyone interested in our committee to watch our meetings and get involved by joining or offering feedback or suggestions.
More information, including our documents and contact information, are available on the town’s website https://www.fairhaven-ma.gov/charter-committee or visit our Facebook page Fairhaven Forward to learn more.
Submitted,
Kyle Bueno, Chairman
Cathy Melanson, Vice Chairwoman
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