Voters established the commission in 2009 to study how to make government run more efficiently.
A copy of Holyoke's 1896 Charter.HOLYOKE – Reducing the number of voting wards was a key part of the charter study commission’s recommended changes to modernize government, but that will have to wait.
Another 10 years.
The commission learned April 8 from state agencies that the deadline to redraw voting district, or ward, lines is June 15 – a deadline only weeks away – and not June 2012 as commission members had thought.
Cities and towns are redistricting based on population information from the federal 2010 Census.
But ward lines must be based on the existing charter, and that means the city’s seven ward system must remain.
Voters established the nine-member commission in 2009 to recommend ways to make government more efficient by changing the 115-year-old charter. The charter is a 20-page document that details the parts of government.
The commission is close to submitting its final report for recommended changes. But the charter couldn’t be changed until voters determine its fate on the Nov. 8 election ballot. That means redistricting probably must wait for the next census in 10 years.
And members at the commission’s meeting last week were not pleased, blaming what they said was an at-times impenetrably vague state bureaucracy.
Carl Eger Jr.“This is hurting so badly, there aren’t enough negative adjectives,” Chairman Carl Eger Jr. said.
“What is being thrown in our face at the last minute is so terribly disheartening,” member Sheryl Y. Quinn said.
“We wasted our time,” member John G. Whelihan said.
The commission had proposed reducing the City Council from the current 15 members, consisting of eight elected at large and seven elected from the wards, to 11, consisting of six elected at large and five by ward.
Under the commission’s desired plan, the School Committee would shrink from the current nine members, with seven ward members and two at large, to a seven-member board, with five ward members and two at large.
But notifications from the office of Secretary of State William F. Galvin and the office of Attorney General Martha M. Coakley about the redistricting deadline forced the commission to revisit its work.
The commission voted 6-3 last week to reduce the City Council, but to an 11-member format, consisting of 7 ward councilors and four at large.
The commission voted 9-0 to keep the current School Committee format.
Some commission members welcomed the redistricting deadline because they had opposed changing the ward total from seven, believing voters want to avoid losing any representation.
“I believe this is a good thing,” commission member Andrew L. Melendez said.
Eger said commission consultant Stephen McGoldrick learned of the redistricting deadline from the secretary of state’s office on April 8 and commission members learned the details on April 11.
McGoldrick is deputy director of the Edward J. Collins Jr. Center for Public Management at the McCormack Graduate School at the University of Massachusetts, in Boston.
Also, the June 15 redistrict´ing deadline was mentioned in a recent letter to the commission from Assistant Attorney General Kelli E. Gunagan.
An option exists that commission members rejected as being the opposite of efficient, related to an issue the city of Lawrence deals with.
McGoldrick said Lawrence now has a set-up in which voting ward lines are determined one way for city elections, and another way for state and federal elections. That forces the city to mail notices informing voters about different voting places every time there’s an election, he said.
“It’s a nightmare,” McGoldrick said.
Eger was asked later about the likelihood that critics of the charter review process might question how the commission was unaware until only recently of such an important redistricting deadline.
“That’s why you have a consultant,” said Eger, praising McGoldrick for learning the deadline.
Still, as commission member Daniel B. Bresnahan said during the meeting, “I just can’t believe this late in the game, nobody knew this was going to happen?”