Town Charter: If it Ain't Broke...?

A preliminary report by the Government Study Task Force (available on Town website), recommends the town charter be changed through a home rule petition but without changes to the number of selectmen, timing of town meeting, or limitations on terms of office. I blogged about the public hearing on related petition articles in February. Wicked Local ran a story last month on the reappointment of the task force and Patch reported on the preliminary report last week.

Sunday's Boston.com Your Town Westwood goes into greater depth, but I wanted to highlight a couple of key points from the report and see if anyone has any feedback here.

• A home rule petition will continue the inclusive process of discussion, leading up to a proposed warrant article for consideration by the Board of Selectmen and Town Meeting. A charter commission would require electing representatives which I think would insulate the discussion, overly formalize input, and delay everything to an eventual up-or-down vote.
• Regarding increasing the number of selectmen from 3 to 5, I'm disappointed the task force "did not find any persuasive rationale to support an increase in the Board’s size." Mike Walsh presented an argument back at a FinCom meeting in February 2009 in favor of some means to achieve greater representation and participation. It seems we agree that precinct representation would be a bad idea, but having more selectmen could be beneficial in many ways that deserve more discussion.

The Task Force has made a great effort to seek out and include opinions and suggestions. The report is preliminary. It does not report the pros and cons of any issues but simply lays out the next steps along with the initial recommendations--which establish a valid need to move forward and consider changes.