SEYMOUR – Officials are weighing whether to overhaul the annual town meeting, a step in the budget process that gives the public the power to cut proposed budgets, as long as certain criteria are met.
In Seymour, the board of finance preps a budget and hosts public hearings. The public gets the ultimate say in the form of an annual referendum.
However, Seymour has a quirk in the process called the annual town meeting.
If 50 people show up to the meeting, they have the ability to vote to change the budget’s proposed bottom line, under the existing town charter (a blueprint of local government).
Since 2009, the public has used its power just once – during the spring of 2025, when enough people showed up to make a significant cut to the proposed school budget.
During the April 2 annual town meeting, a resident made a motion to reduce the school budget by $750,000. The motion was approved by the people in attendance by a 129 – 80 vote.
A charter revision commission is currently meeting to review the charter and possibly recommend revisions. Those recommendations can come from the public, the commission, or the town’s legislative body.
Any suggestions from the commission that make it to the ballot would ultimately have to be approved by voters at the polls.
At a meeting Aug. 5, according to minutes and video of the meeting, members of the Seymour Board of Selectpersons voted to ask the charter revision commission to revise the charter “with regard to the language regarding the actions taken at the Annual Town Meeting so that anyone in attendance . . . will not have the ability to change any budgeted amount as approved by the Board of Finance.”
In addition to possibly taking away the public’s power at the annual town meeting, the Selectpersons also voted to ask the commission to consider removing “any mention of Annual Town Meeting” from the charter.
Those moves, if placed on a ballot and approved by voters, would take away the public’s ability to make changes to proposed budgets at annual town meetings.
After The Valley Indy published a story on the Aug. 5 meeting, John Lombardo, a member of the Seymour Charter Revision Commission, and Fred Stanek, a member of the Seymour Board of Selectpersons, posted to Facebook saying the vote was not to eliminate the annual town meeting.
However, the town attorney, in summarizing the motion for the Selectpersons Aug. 5, used the word eliminate.
A review of the video from the meeting shows it’s not 100 percent clear what the board’s exact motion was, as the conversation stopped abruptly. Stanek pointed out a town meeting would still be held, but his language did not make it into the motion.
Regardless, both motions passed 5-0.
The story continues after a video clip from the Aug. 5 meeting.
Historically, Seymour residents like their annual town meeting. The town, through charter revision, asked voters to eliminate it in 2018, but voters said leave it alone.
The Aug. 5 suggestion to overhaul the town meeting was met with some backlash on Facebook, in informal Seymour community groups.
The topic came up again on Aug. 19, during a meeting of the charter revision commission and the Selectpersons.
First Selectwoman Annmarie Drugonis said on Aug. 19 that her office had received phone calls about the Aug. 5 meeting. She said no decisions have been made.
“All that vote did was trigger a joint meeting to have a discussion. It was not to eliminate the annual town meeting, but to give it more input. We don’t want to eliminate the town meeting, we want to change it,” she said.
Opponents of the annual town meeting in its current form say it gives a small number of people the ability to undermine the work of the Seymour Board of Finance, an elected board who spend months reviewing budget requests, holding public hearings, and ultimately recommending a budget to all voters, who can then reject or approve it.
At the Aug. 19 joint meeting, several Selectpersons, including Trish Danka and Bob Findley, said the public shouldn’t be able to reduce the budget at the annual town meeting. But they said if that section must remain, they want language added so the public also has the ability to “increase” the budget.
“If you (the commission) insist on keeping it, you need to have the ability to both increase and decrease the budget,” Danka said. “But I suggest eliminating that part entirely. It takes away the knowledge of the people who work on the budget and come up with those figures.”
Findley said he wants the annual town meeting overhauled, too. The public’s ultimate say is during a townwide vote, he said.
“I’m not sure they (the public) should have the ability to reject the budget, that’s what you do at the referendum,” Findley said.
The Selectpersons suggested other tweaks to the annual town meeting, including: a question and answer period with representatives from the various departments, and increasing the number of people needed to propose budget changes at the meeting.
The board’s suggestions for charter changes will now go back to the commission for review.
The commission has a final meeting scheduled for 6 p.m. Aug. 27 at Seymour Town Hall to approve a final report of proposed charter changes.
From there, the final report goes to the Selectpersons on Sept. 2.
The Selectpersons can either accept or reject the report, or can approve or reject certain parts of the report.
They will then formulate any proposed changes in the form of questions that will appear on the November ballot.
It’ll then ultimately be up to voters to have the final say on the proposed changes.
The Valley Indy reached out to Jack Jurkowski, the resident who made the motion at the April 2 annual town meeting to reduce the school budget.
He said any charter changes geared to strip the public’s power is a bad thing.
“One of the wonderful things about living in Seymour is our ability to directly impact our budget,” Jurkowski said. “To eliminate that town meeting, which gives us the power to change an inflated budget, would be a terrible thing. As I have said at town meetings in the past, I would always support a budget that gives an inflationary increase, but budgets that come out of the Board of Finance with an excessive increase are just unrealistic and will cause additional referendum votes. It’s all about affordability, and the town departments have to live within their means just like private households must live within their means.”
Other proposed charter changes include the following:
*Adding the title of ‘First Selectperson’ in addition to the existing First Selectman and First Selectwoman references in the document
*Changing the date of the annual town budget referendum to the third Tuesday in April, and then every other Tuesday going forward if additional referendums are necessary (currently, the referendums are held on Thursdays)
*Increasing the amount of appropriations required by a special town meeting vote from $100,000 to $150,000
*Requiring the First Selectperson to be responsible for the development and implementation of a three-year strategic plan
*Requiring the town and the Board of Education to jointly plan, develop and implement a shared services relationship, that includes human resources, IT, financial management, facility operation and maintenance and any other administrative, operational or support services to promote efficiency, reduce costs and enhance delivery of public services to residents.
A draft of the proposed charter changes can be found online on the town website. These suggestions could change between now and Sept. 2.
Members of the charter revision commission include Kevin Atterberry (D), Tom Gardella, (I), Tara Miller (R), John Stelma (D), Richard Peck (R), Naveen Madivala (U) and John Lombardo (R).