Ledyard — A charter revision commission soon could be in the works after the Town Council’s Finance and Administration subcommittees moved to draft a resolution establishing one and funding it. 

After the Finance Committee’s funding approval on Wednesday, the resolution will come before the full Town Council in the coming weeks.

Town Council Chairwoman Linda Davis said she has kept a file of suggestions she’s come across since the last commission. Highest on her list is remedying the town’s convoluted timeline for voting on the referendum. 

The budget timeline was discussed several times during the work done by the Committee To Transform the Budget Process, which issued its report in October, and Davis said that sparked interest in potentially establishing the charter revision commission.

Under the charter, last revised in 2009, the Town Council must hold a town meeting on the budget on the third Monday of May and vote on it the next day. The charter instructs the town to hold three referendums in May and June if residents vote against the budget.

In recent years, cuts to state aid have come late in the legislative session, and Davis said it would be useful to get even a week of more information to prepare the budget.

In addition, the state laws that require voting machines to be locked down after a vote make holding a referendum in that timeframe very tricky.

“We don't know that, if our budgets were defeated, we'd actually have time to have two additional referendums,” Davis said.

The charter also dictates that if the referendum fails three times, the Town Council must vote to adopt a budget. If it fails to do that, the last budget the Town Council has adopted will stand as the town budget.

Another idea Davis has discussed, though doesn’t necessarily support, is to take the budget proposal — which residents vote on all together — and split it into two separate budget referendum questions, one for the general government and one for the Board of Education, at referendum.

Other ideas are mostly to clarify or fix mistakes in the charter.

“The ability to make small changes without (going) to a full charter revision commission ... would be so nice,” she said.

Charter revision commissions typically take 14 months to get revisions to the charter approved. The revision commissions require a two-thirds vote of the Town Council to establish, and include between five and 15 members, of which two-thirds must not hold a political office.

n.lynch@theday.com