New London — A proposal to create a permanent Charter Review Board to evaluate the city charter and make recommendations for future changes is working its way through the City Council.

"Our city charter is a living, breathing document. We run with it every single day we're in existence," Councilor Michael J. Tranchida said. "A lot of people disregard the charter until something comes up, but I want our founding document to always be the best it can be."

The City Council last week sent the proposal for a permanent review board, which councilors said has been discussed for a number of years, to its Administration Committee for further review. Tranchida, who chairs the Administration Committee, said he plans to hold a committee meeting on the topic in early January.

"This is a way to take some of the proposals for changes to our charter that are constantly floating around blogs or coffee shop political discussions, get some serious research done on the proposals and see if there is any consensus on them," Councilor Michael Passero said. "A Charter Review Board would not be under the time constraints or political pressures that an official Charter Revision Commission would be."

Once the City Council votes to establish a Charter Revision Commission, the commission has only 16 months to return a draft charter to the council, according to state law.

The last Charter Revision Commissions established by the City Council in 2009 eventually led to the new mayor/council form of government. Though anything in the charter can be changed once a revision commission is formed, Tranchida said it is too early to ponder another governmental shift.

"We don't even have a full mayor's term under our most recent charter change, I think we have to give it at least three mayors and then go from there," he said. "We can't predict who runs for office or who gets elected, we have to give the new form of government some time. Two years into a new form of government is way too soon to think about changing again."

The proposal that will be debated by the council's Administration Committee calls for a Charter Review Board to comb through the existing charter, study charters of similar cities, conduct interviews with city officials and hold public hearings on proposed changes to the charter.

"We would have a body that meets on a regular basis, you get people who will take the entire charter and start reading through it to see what is good, what needs to be changed and what can absolutely be deleted because it's been superseded by greater authority," Tranchida said. "This way if, down the road, a Charter Revision Commission is established by the council, they will have a working document to start with and can concentrate on what needs to be corrected, not going off in different directions. The Charter Review Board will have given them a foundation to work with."

A standing Charter Review Board would be able to complete much of the administrative work and research that can eat into a formal revision commission's lifespan.

"It is a pressure release mechanism that allows these issues to be fully vetted without the pressure of being an official commission," Passero said. "A review board could generate the agenda that any future Charter Revision Commission would follow, with the backup and research already done and a sense of where the community is on certain issues."

Though the proposal before the council calls for a seven-member Charter Review Board to comprise city residents appointed by the City Council to serve staggered three-year terms, Tranchida said his committee will try to hammer out some of those details.

Tranchida and Passero said they would want a Charter Review Board to study specific changes to the charter, like eliminating sections that relate to the now-defunct city health officer and changing the city's referendum process to avoid having a potentially meaningless vote on a budget five months into the fiscal year.

Another change, one that has been pushed by local and state leaders, would be to do away with the present constitution of the Board of Education. Under the current system, all seven Board of Education seats can change hands in the same election, stifling continuity in the city's education system.

"All professionals in education say that is not the way a board of education should be established," Passero said. "That seems to me a perfect example of the type of proposal that a Charter Review Board could research and get done some consensus building in the community so a later Charter Revision Commission could look everything over and not have to waste a lot of time on."

c.young@theday.com

Twitter: @ColinAYoung