LEWISTON — With almost seven months of work under their belts, members of the Lewiston-Auburn Charter Commission are about halfway through the first stage of their work.
“We may not have moved as fast as might be desirable,” Chairman Gene Geiger said. “We will probably have to find ways to accelerate our progress. Having said that, we have a group that seems to work well together.”
The group was elected last summer and began working in July to draft a foundation document combining Lewiston and Auburn into one city.
Geiger said he would still like to see the group finish drafting a new charter in about a year.
“And then we’ll have time for tweaking and fine-tuning before going out to the voters to say, ‘Here is what we are proposing, get ready,'” he said.
The plan is to put the matter before voters in November 2016.
Work continues at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday in Auburn Hall. The charter group is hosting Lewiston and Auburn’s school superintendents.
“I’d like to talk big-picture stuff with the school people,” Geiger said. “If we have a singular system, how might education be made substantially better? That’s my desire, to spend the night kicking that around.”
The group has started with a model charter created by the National Civic League. That charter covers basic rules for cities, including how councilors and mayors are elected, how voting districts are determined and how ordinances are created and approved.
Next, they matched the relevant parts of the model charter with those in the current city charters for Lewiston and Auburn. They’ve been working their way through that combined document.
“We are about halfway through that first grind,” he said. “We still have financial management sections to go, the election process and a few other things.”
They have also identified 15 areas that deserve deeper discussion.
“For example, what should the length of the term of the mayor be?” he said. “Should the mayor have a term limit? When can the mayor vote? And should there be staggered terms for councilors?”
The group will begin tackling those tough issues once they’ve worked through the model charter.
“When we get past that first grind, then we have to go back and polish it and spend a lot of time,” he said. “And then we have to push it out to the public and let everyone take shots at it.”
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