April 27 – POA By-Laws Meeting Minutes

Minutes of a Special Meeting of the
Pine Orchard Association
By-laws Committee

April 27, 2022,   7:00 PM

The meeting was conducted using the Zoom application.

Agenda Item 1. Call to order:  .  The meeting was called to order by John Grathwol at 7:00p.m. 

Agenda Item 2. Roll call of members:—Members present were John Grathwol, David Scheer, Peggy Haering, Al DeFilippo, Peter Hugret.  Bob Buckholz was absent for the meeting.

Agenda Item 3. Special Meeting restrictions:  John Grathwol announced that as this is a special meeting of the committee, we are required by law to follow the published agenda without variation.

Agenda Item 4. Public Comment Rules: John announced that 15 minutes at the end of the meeting was reserved for public comment and explained the rules for public comment

Agenda Item 5:  John provided some introductory comments, indicating that certain members of the Committee were to provide reports of their efforts in support of the Committee’s mission to investigate whether and how the Executive Board may elect to convene a Charter Revision Commission.  Notes from each member are attached as well.

• The first report was from Allan DeFilippo.  Allan reported on a conversation with his brother-in-law, Michael Malone, who had been the Town Manager of Cheshire, and had pursued Charter Revision for his town. 
  • One of the suggestions that Mr. Malone made was to ensure that were would be authorities and process in place which could facilitate certain changes to the Charter and By-laws in the future, as the need may arise, with such functionality reducing the administrative burden of going through a new Charter Revision process. With such authorities and process, it would be feasible to pursue incremental review and amendment, via the By-laws. The Charter should be relevant to the current circumstances for the municipality, conforming to those activities which are necessary.
  • Wherever possible, there should be relevant citations of underlying municipal and/or state laws.
  • Ensure that there is a broad representation from the community reflecting the variety of districts, demographics, etc.
  • He suggested to invite an RTM member to sit on the Commission.
  • If Charter Revision Commission is formed, it is useful to solicit people with legal expertise from within the community.
• The second report was from Peter Hugret.  He participated in two conversations
  • The first was a conversation with Ted Els to discuss how the process of Charter Revision had been progressing for the Stony Creek Association.  For this conversation, Bob Buckholz joined in the conversation. Several observations were made:
    • It was recommended that the State Representative be involved in the process, since any changes would require approval by the Secretary of State and the legislature.  It was mentioned that our State Representative, Sean Scanlon has been nominated for the State Treasurer position and thus, may cease to serve as a representative if elected in November.  Peggy suggested that reach out to Christine Cohen, our State Senator in addition to or in place of Mr. Scanlon.
    • The Stony Creek Association worked with Attorney Steven Mednick of New Haven, who was well versed in charter revision, working with governments in this area, and proved to be a great help in their process. There was discussion of establishing a budget for legal services.
    • It was suggested to not take items out of the Charter which may be needed in the future.  One example cited was the requirements for posting signage.
    • The experience of the Stony Creek Association Charter Revision Commission was that the public meetings were poorly attended, as there were no significant issues in changes that were considered.
    • The new Stony Creek Charter is to be voted by the authorized voters this July, and then go for approval by the Secretary of State.
  • The second meeting was with Christine Collins, who is Vice-President of the Short Beach Civic Association.  This meeting was attended by Peter alone.  Some observations were as follows:
    • The process took a fair amount of time.  Barry Baletsky was their President, and Doug Hamlin is the current President of the Association.
    • The Association contracted with Peter Cooper, who is an attorney in New Haven.
    • They did the work mostly on their own, working with the Secretary of State’s office
    • They went through the process of the review of the Charter and By-laws, identifying issues, which were presented as a report to the Board, to trigger a determination of whether to proceed.

Following the reports and discussion related thereto, John discussed a proposed process for advancing the Committee’s investigative work via a review of the Charter and By-laws.  A discussion ensued with a proposal that the Committee meet successively to go through approximately 10 items per meeting, working directly with the relevant documents and using a Word version, provide real-time annotations which can be conveniently reviewed internally by the Committee, as well as by the Board and the public. There was agreement on this path forward.

 Agenda Item 6. Public comment:  At 7:45, John called for any comments from the public who were in attendance. While there were several members of the POA present, There were no public comments.

Agenda Item 7.Adjournment. Upon motion and second, the meeting was adjourned at 7:50 p.m.

Minutes prepared by Committee Member, David Scheer

Next Meeting of the Committee:  May 11, 2022 @ 7:00 p.m.  To be posted as a Zoom subject to advice from attorney Berdon on the expected  extension of the Virtual Public Meeting Law.