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Date: 2/16/2022
CHICOPEE – Assigned to provide an overdue rework of Chicopee’s charter, the recently-established Charter Commission continues to make progress during their regular meetings.
The Charter Commission is an entity created out of necessity by the city. Concerns about the charter arose when former Ward 3 Councilor Lucjan Galecki created a social media scandal during the end of 2020. As many called for his resignation, Ward 2 Councilor and former City Council President Shane Brooks explained that the dated charter did not permit a significant response from the council.
“We still don’t have a mechanism to remove an elected official from the board and the city’s history has led by example on this. We had a city mayor who was federally indicted and later convicted and served jail time and there was no mechanism 12 years ago to remove him. So to suggest somehow that now we have a method or a way to get Lucjan to resign is just not based on fact,” said Brooks to Reminder Publishing in a 2020 interview. “A charter change isn’t originated just with the city. We’ll have to work with our state delegation.”
The council collaborated during the beginning of 2021 to agree on terms for a new commission that would review the city’s entire charter. After deliberation, they created a 13-person commission, with each member of the council appointing one person from the community to be a member. The commission hosted their first meeting in June 2021 and continue to meet consistently.
Chairperson of the Charter Commission and former Mayor Joseph Chessey shared that Councilor At-Large Frank Laflamme approached him about joining the commission. After becoming a member, the commission voted him as the group’s chairperson. He shared that taking on a leadership role felt like a seamless transition for him.
“Because of previous positions I’ve held, it was really nothing new for me to assume the position. I had extensive experience and handling a situation like this,” said Chessey in an interview with Reminder Publishing.
Chessey explained that he and the commission utilize their meetings to update the century-old document’s language. Some of the verbiage contains archaic terminology that requires extensive review. “We’re looking at the language and trying to get it into a language we understand now opposed to 120 years ago,” said Chessey.
One of the components the commission continues to update is gender-neutral terminology. Chessey shared that Commission member Al Picard played a crucial part in modernizing the language of the entire document. Another aspect of the review includes removing sections that are no longer applicable, with Chessey explaining that some of the elements are now superseded by state laws.
According to Chessey, the Charter Commission completed their first round of review for the charter. He revealed that the commission is now performing a second review to further scrutinize the document before presenting a finalized report of the charter to the City Council.
“The hard part has already been done by the commission. There were some parts of the charter that took some extensive debate…Within the next couple of months, we will finish up with the report and present it to the City Council and the mayor,” said Chessey.