HALLOWELL — The Hallowell Charter Commission, approved by voters last year to review and recommend changes to the city’s charter, held its first public meeting Wednesday night at City Hall. Nobody from the public showed up.

The commission had planned to discuss with the public issues including the number of city councilors, the terms of councilors, salaries of elected officials and the powers and responsibilities of the mayor and the council.

“We had an article in the (newspaper), we have a Facebook page and we were running public service announcements on the local TV,” Charter Commission Chairman Steve Langsdorf said.

The commission held a workshop that extended into the scheduled public meeting time with Mayor Mark Walker and councilors Diano Circo and Sophie Gabrion, who were elected to the council in November.

The nonpublic part of the commission meeting included a discussion about the city manager position and who would fill the slot that became open after the unexpected death of Stefan Pakulski on Saturday night.

“We had a very productive meeting with the mayor, a couple of councilors and others,” Langsdorf said. “The consensus is that we are a unique municipality that doesn’t need to make dramatic changes, but there are some things that need to be cleaned up.”

One of the subjects that got a lot of traction during the meeting, Langsdorf said, was switching council terms to three years and staggering them so that there would be less turnover each year. But there wasn’t a tremendous amount of support for changing the size of the council; the group discussed reducing the council from seven members to five, but that doesn’t appear to be a change that will end up being made.

“We had a very good discussion about what needs to be changed and what doesn’t need to be changed,” Walker said. “(The commission) has a good direction, and they’re going to clarify some of the poorly worded parts of the documents. I’m very confident.”

Another topic discussed was the much-maligned appointment process, and Langsdorf said there was a consensus among the group on what changes should be made.

“We are going to determine which positions should be appointed by the mayor and subjected to ratification by the council, and then the employee positions would be appointed one time by the city manager,” Langsdorf said.

The city’s charter, created more than 60 years ago, was last amended in 2006. Langsdorf said the group is considering changes to a number of the charter’s sections and hopes the revised charter will appear on the ballot in November.

In an interview with the Kennebec Journal in February, Langsdorf and Charter Commission Vice Chairman Scott Cowger said they expected people in the community to take an interest in the work of the commission. Langsdorf called the charter “Hallowell’s constitution” and an “important issue and very high priority” and said it was disappointing that nobody came to the meeting.

“I’m not sure what that means, but it would be great to get people out here to give their opinions,” Langsdorf said. “I know the government and city of Hallowell is very important to the people that live here, so it seems to me that people would want to come and give their opinions.”

Langsdorf hopes that the lack of public attendance at the Wednesday meeting isn’t because of indifference but rather that people trust and respect the members of the commission enough to do a good job and bring something back to the city that makes sense.

“I think people do care, and they probably trust we are doing good work,” Langsdorf said. “I’m very interested in hearing what people think.”

The commission is scheduled to meet in April to work on preliminary revisions to the charter before holding another workshop and public hearing in May. Additional meetings are planned for June and July before a public meeting Aug. 10 to review the draft of the charter.

“Ultimately this is something that is going to a vote, and so we’d really like to have people come in and give their views on things,” Langsdorf said.

Jason Pafundi — 621-5663

jpafundi@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @jasonpafundiKJ