Norwich — The Norwich election ballot Nov. 3 needs to be two double-sided pages to accommodate 18 questions on proposed charter changes recommended by the Charter Revision Commission in spring.

The City Council Monday authorized City Clerk Betsy Barrett to print “concise explanatory text” to describe each charter revision ballot question, its purpose and a citation for the heading and chapter in the Charter Revision Commission final report.

Barrett said she plans to print the explanatory text documents — wording of which already has been approved by the state Elections Enforcement Commission — along with a separate list of the ballot questions voters can bring with them on Election Day to save time.

She also will create 25 posters with the explanatory text posted on them. State law requires three posters to be placed at each of the city's six polling places Nov. 3.

All of the information and the remaining posters will placed at several public places and will be posted on the city's website, www.norwichct.org.

Barrett said writing the proposed charter changes into ballot questions was a tedious task. She had hoped to combine issues into fewer questions, but was unable to do so.

She took special care to make sure a “yes” vote really meant approval of a proposed change, avoiding double negatives.

On Election Day, each Norwich voter will receive two ballot sheets. The first sheet will list the candidates running for the three Norwich elected offices: City Council, Board of Education and treasurer. The back of that sheet will give voting instructions.

The front of the second ballot page will list nine charter questions. At the bottom, the ballot will say: “Turn ballot over to continue voting.” The remaining nine charter questions will be on the back. At the bottom will be the statement: “You have now completed voting.”

In June, the City Council approved many of the recommended charter changes in the commission's final report, rejecting other proposals.

The council approved a recommended charter change to increase the amount of the annual budget that must be spent on capital improvements from 1 mill to 2 percent of the previous year’s annual budget.

Other changes would allow Norwich Public Utilities to enter into contracts of 25 years instead of 10 and would expand the utility’s bonding authority without requiring referendum if the bonds are to be paid by utility revenue instead of tax money.

Several other technical changes to the charter will be on the ballot.

c.bessette@theday.com

Twitter: @Bessettetheday