On page 11 of the 12-page packet going before the Chelsea Charter Review Committee tonight, Sec. 10-1 of the city charter is printed as it reads today: “All ordinances, resolutions, rules, regulations, and votes of the city council and all administrative orders adopted by the receiver which are in force at the time this Charter is adopted, not inconsistent with the provisions of this Charter, shall continue in full force until amended or repealed.” Directly beneath it, under the word PROPOSAL, is a replacement paragraph with the receiver taken out.
The committee meets at 7:00 P.M. in City Council Committee Room #305 at City Hall, 500 Broadway. Councillor Roberto Jimenez-Rivera, the council president, chairs it, and item 2 on the four-item agenda is public comment.
The two sentences in question
Part X is headed Transition Provisions and Sec. 10-1 is its opening section. The receiver turns up twice. The first paragraph preserves “all administrative orders adopted by the receiver.” The second closes: “All provisions of city ordinances, rules, regulations, orders and administrative orders of the receiver not superseded by this Charter shall remain in force.”
The proposal that replaces both paragraphs begins: “All by-laws, resolutions, rules, regulations and votes of the city council which are in force at the time this charter is adopted, not inconsistent with this charter, shall continue in full force until amended or repealed.” It goes on to provide that where the charter is inconsistent with any general or special law, the charter prevails.
Two changes stand out. The receiver disappears from both paragraphs, and “ordinances” becomes “by-laws,” the term a town uses rather than a city.
The stated reason is four words
Tonight’s packet carries the proposal without comment. The August 31 packet, where the same Part X language first appeared under the heading “PROPOSED CHANGES – COMMITTEE CHAIR JIMENEZ-RIVERA,” gives a reason on the line above it: “RATIONALE: Remove references to receivership.”
Most of that packet’s 13 rationale lines are housekeeping: “Standardizing language” three times, “Clarifying language” twice. The three new Part X sections proposed alongside this edit each carry the note “New section, standard to other Charters.” Against that pattern, striking the receiver is one more move toward language other charters already use, and the orders being preserved date from a receivership that began in September 1991. Our history of the receivership sets out that record, and four city managers discussed it on stage last Wednesday.
What is lost if it goes
In all the charter material the committee has published this cycle, Sec. 10-1 is the only place the word “receiver” appears. Chelsea has no mayor and no board of aldermen because of what happened in the 1990s, and that clause is where the founding document records the fact. Delete it and the charter still works; it no longer says why it looks the way it does.
The rest of the packet
The packet opens with a Sec. 4-1 redline from committee member John Byrnes. Everything from page 2 on sits under a heading reading “Proposed Changes – Roberto Jimenez-Rivera.” Those proposals would:
- Sec. 4-1 set a manager’s term at up to five years, renewable, and bar anyone who sat on the council or school committee in the prior twelve months;
- Sec. 4-2 require council confirmation of the manager’s appointments to multi-member bodies;
- Sec. 4-3 rewrite the manager’s duties, adding a State of the City address, a communications mandate and a public performance initiative;
- Sec. 4-5 create a removal and suspension procedure: preliminary resolution by seven votes, hearing on request, final vote by seven;
- Sec. 4-6 extend an acting manager’s term from three months to four, renewable once;
- Sec. 9-5 let a board’s remaining members declare a seat vacant after three consecutive absences, on ten days’ notice;
- Sec. 9-6 disqualify anyone convicted of misconduct in public office and vacate a sitting official’s seat on conviction;
- Sec. 9-7 fix the review committee at nine members named by the council president, no more than three of them councillors;
- Secs. 10-3, 10-4, 10-5 add transition sections continuing agencies, protecting pay grades and seniority, and transferring records.
Agenda item 4 is a review of Part IV, which we covered in detail earlier this month.
How the room works
At its August 3 meeting, the committee set a two-thirds threshold, six of nine members, for any change to be recommended to the City Council; if six are not present, a change goes over to the next meeting. General public comment runs two minutes per speaker, and a resident who has filed a proposal gets three minutes when it is on the agenda. The nine members are Karla Alvarado, John Byrnes, Katherine Cabral, Lois Contreras Gutierrez, Norieliz DeJesus, Jen Hassell, Deron Hines, Kelly Zimmerhanzel and Jimenez-Rivera.
What we could not determine
The notice carries no remote participation line and no streaming link. Members discussed remote participation on August 3 and “determined the logistical limitations of the current video conferencing equipment made it too challenging at this time,” the minutes say. Whether that has changed is not in the record we have, and the city’s charter review page returned a bot check when we tried to read it.
No minutes of the August 31 meeting have been posted, so we cannot say what was said about the receivership language then or whether a vote was taken. The agenda lists Parts I, IX and X as outstanding from that meeting. If you have committee minutes, submissions or recordings we have not seen, send them to [email protected].