Special Election November 7th

On Tuesday November 7, there will be a special election in East Providence. Voters will have an opportunity to approve or disapprove proposed amendments to the City Charter as passed by the East Providence Charter Review Commission and approved and/or amended by the City Council. Before discussing the actual amendments, a brief history of our Charter may be in order.

A city’s charter is to our city’s ordinances what the US Constitution is to the US Code or the RI Constitution is to the General Laws, namely a governing document and a framework within which ordinances and practices must comply with.

The current charter was signed by the original charter commission on September 21, 1954 and ratified at an election in 1955. It has been amended through the years but remained in largely the same form as it was when it was adopted until 2016 when the voters approved an amendment which provides for a mayor-council form of government to replace the current council-manager form.

Early in 2017 the City Council appointed a Charter Review Commission which consisted of 11 city residents. The commission met once a week from March 2nd to June 15th with one exception and had a final meeting on August 24th. We were given two charges. The first was to make the rest of the charter comply with the 2016 amendment. This was done by passing a “technical amendment” which is one which does not involve substantive changes. It also brought the charter up to date in areas such as election laws and gender language among other things. This amendment was largely completed and passed on April 6th and the Council subsequently approved it and three other technical changes as well.

Our second charge was to recommend any substantive amendments which we thought would improve the Charter. This phase continued until June 15. In all, the Commission recommended twenty-nine of this type of amendments and transmitted them to the City Council. Of these the council eventually adopted twenty-four of them either as is or with changes suggested by the law department, amended two of them themselves and passed them, and rejected three. The council-approved amendments were then grouped into six ballot questions by the law department and the council passed resolutions placing each of these on the ballot.

A brief discussion of each follows.
Question 1 proposes that the Mayor’s term be changed from two years to four. Most of the commission felt a two-year term is simply too short for various reasons; ability to implement an agenda, ability to impact the budget and having to campaign again so soon after taking office among others.

Question 2 asks if a recall provision should be included for all elected officials in the city. This proposal takes the state standard and adds to it. Thus, a recall cannot take place just because someone didn’t agree with the outcome of an election.

Question 3 involves various questions which will change the charter to reflect the new form of government including but not limited to veto procedure, vacancies, compensation, appointment of department heads, and the inauguration date.

Question 4 covers appointments of several boards and city courts providing the Mayor with appointment power subject to council approval and providing for ward representation on these boards.

Question 5 concerns the finance department and the city’s fund balance which would be changed from 10% to 12% with 5% unrestricted if this amendment were to pass. The threshold for which council approval on contracts is required would be lowered from $100,000.00 to $50,000.00.

Question 6 updates certain provisions of the Charter to comply with state law and current practices in the city.

Writing only for myself as chairman of the commission I strongly support each of these six amendments. The Commission worked extremely hard to craft our proposals and engaged in very productive discussions concerning them. I would like to thank every commissioner for the time, input, and diligence they put in to make sure the commission’s proposals were well thought out and appropriate for inclusion in the city charter. It was an honor to be chosen by them to lead this endeavor. In my opinion each of these amendments would go a long way in easing the transition from our current form of government to our new one and thus would urge passage of each one

James M. Russo
Chairman
East Providence Charter Review Commission

Note: The language of the amendments can be found on the Charter Review Commission’s page of the city’s website. The ballot questions can be found in several places including an East Providence Charter Review Commission Facebook page.