Should Derby throw out the rule forcing city employees doubling as elected officials to get an OK from the Board of Aldermen?
Should the phrasing in the Derby rulebook be gender neutral, so that phrases such as “Alderman” becomes “Alder?”
Don’t tell us, tell the people making the suggestions during a public hearing in Derby City Hall at 7 p.m. TONIGHT (Wednesday, July 27, 2016).
The Charter Revision Commission has been working all summer on making changes to the Derby Charter, the set of rules governing Derby government.
The Charter Revision Commission doesn’t actually have the power to change the charter. The commission makes suggestions to the Board of Aldermen, who don’t have the power to actually make changes, either.
Ultimately, it’s up to Derby voters — assuming the suggested changes make it to the ballot in November.
Click here to read the minutes from the commission’s meetings.
The Changes
The commission is suggesting making a number of changes that essentially modernizes or corrects language and city titles in the charter.
For example, the charter currently uses “he” for every third-person personal pronoun. The commission recommends making that “he (or) she” throughout.
Then there are other, relatively minor changes — the “street commissioner” title gets modernized as “director of public works.”
Derby gets referred to as a “city” instead of a “town.”
The commission is also considering tightening the rules over government purchasing, specifically to get more City Hall eyeballs on spending between $2,500 and $15,000.
And the commission is recommending the city update its public notice requirement. The current wording in the charter forces Derby to publish notices in a newspaper in New Haven County with circulation in New Haven County. The charter was created prior to the Internet.
Statistics show print newspaper readership is dying.
HIT DELETE?
There are also more substantial changes — specifically one involving involving “dual office holding” in the city.
For generations, city employees needed unanimous approval from the Board of Aldermen before taking elected office or appointed positions.
The rule has been around since the early 1950s. It ended the practice of allowing elected and appointed officials to profit from public service, and has since been absorbed as an internal check and balance within Derby government.
But the majority of the members of the Charter Revision Commission and several members of the Board of Aldermen want to see the requirement deleted.
Joseph DiMartino, an Aldermen who works for the Department of Public Works, and Carmen DiCenso, president of the Board of Aldermen, have said the rule has the potential to derail the will of Derby voters.
The Valley Indy has published several prior articles on the issue.
Click here and here for past Indy stories, and click here for a letter to the editor on the waiver requirement.
In addition to those posts, Alderman Art Gerckens talked about charter revision last month during an interview on “Navel Gazing,” the Valley Indy podcast. Gerckens is also a member of the Charter Revision Commission.
The full interview with Gerckens is posted below. Click play to listen.
The 49-page Derby City Charter, with the proposed changes, is embedded below.
Any text struck through means the commission is suggesting it be deleted.
Underlined items are new additions to the charter.
