WINSLOW — The Town Council has postponed the formation of a committee to revise the town charter until after the November election because several residents who filed paperwork for the panel are also running for seats on the council.

A town charter is a guiding document that establishes the structure and procedures of a town’s government. The council was set to appoint seven residents to a town charter review committee at its meeting Monday evening, but decided instead to postpone.

Fran Hudson Courtesy photo

Councilor Fran Hudson began the meeting by making a motion to delay the committee’s creation, calling the process “rushed” and saying a conflict of interest may arise because of two applicants’ candidacy for the Town Council in November.

Thirteen people had applied for the seven seats on the committee by Monday’s council meeting, including residents Steve Soucy and Doris Labranche, who are both running for council seats in November.

Sitting councilor Lee Trahan had also taken out paperwork to run for the committee, as did former councilor Jerry Quirion and former chairman Peter Drapeau.

“I would rather this committee not be compiled of all councilors,” Hudson said. “It defeats the purpose of having one in the first place.”

Winslow’s charter mandates a review of its ordinances every five years and has not been updated since 2019. The council voted to convene the committee in July with the aim of recommend potential revisions to the town charter before the November 2025 elections.

Hudson’s motion to delay the committee formation passed by a 4-3 vote. Hudson, along with councilors Mike Joseph, Ray Caron and Adam Lint, voted in favor. Trahan voted against the motion, as did councilors Jeff West and Dale Macklin.

Town Manager Ella Bowman said she didn’t have an issue postponing action because Winslow’s current charter has “served us well over the last many years.”

Macklin spoke in opposition to delaying the committee, saying that convening it later will make it difficult for their recommendations to be made in time to be put on voters’ ballots next year.

“Why don’t we postpone everything? These decisions have to be made and we were elected to make decisions,” Macklin said. “We’re setting a very bad example if we postpone decisions we were elected to make solely because there is an election coming up.”

“If we end up with three councilors on the committee, so what? It’s not like three is an illegal meeting, right?” Macklin joked, in reference to claims last year about secret meetings between councilors.

Mike Joseph Courtesy photo

Joseph, who initially proposed convening the committee, agreed that the process of forming the committee had taken shape too quickly, adding that “there probably isn’t a whole lot we can change in the charter.”

“I think we’re rushing it, I had said that in the beginning,” Joseph said. “I asked to put it off because there’s a lot of other things that we need to take in for the information that we need to do to change small things in the charter.”

Joseph and the council voted unanimously to advance the committee at a meeting in July.

Though the committee will recommend changes it believes should be made to the charter, all recommendations must go before Winslow residents for approval, according to town attorney William. A. Lee III.

At least 30% of the people who voted in the last gubernatorial election must cast their ballots in order for the vote to be valid, per state statute. Some 3,900 Winslow residents voted in 2022’s gubernatorial election, meaning at least 1,170 people would have to vote on the charter revisions to make the decisions valid.