Dorchester County Council votes to add ballot measures for November election

CAMBRIDGE — Come November, Dorchester County residents will decide whether or not to make changes to the county charter, including clarifying the county manager’s responsibilities, adding language to ensure transparency and adjusting budget due dates.

At a Dorchester County Council meeting on July 16, the council voted to approve six separate resolutions — which will be made into referendums on the November ballot. The council voted against approving one resolution that could have created a term limit for county council members.

The six resolutions, which were based on March recommendations by the Dorchester County Charter Review Committee, include:

Add language that solidifies the differences between the county manager’s responsibilities and the council’s responsibilities.Remove the residency requirement for the county manager.Remove the residency requirement for the director of finance.Require an administrative review to take place the first fiscal year of each new council.Change the due date for the proposed county budget from May 1 to May 15 and the due date for the adoption of the county budget from June 1 to June 15.Add language to ensure transparency.

Residents will not be able to vote on whether county council members should be limited to three consecutive four-year terms in November.

At the July 16 meeting, Council President Larry Pfeffer was the only council member to vote in favor of the resolution. He said he voted this way because the county charter says that the charter should be reviewed every decade by a commission, and this was one of the modifications to the charter that the commission recommended.

“So I felt it would be best to leave it up to the voters themselves to see if they felt the term limits were something that should be modified in the charter,” he said.

Council Vice President Mike Detmer said he was voting against the resolution because he “philosophically opposes” these term limits. He said that every election is a term limit. Detmer also said that being a districted county rather than an at-large county limits the candidate pool.

“We want the best player available,” he said. “And if that person should sit there for four terms or five terms, that should be the decision of the people.”

Before voting to approve the resolution regarding county manager responsibilities, the council amended its language.

One amendment clarifies that the council has a right to direct the county manager. Another makes it clear that individual council members cannot give orders to employees.

Regarding the second amendment, Detmer said he took issue with phrasing in the resolution that says, “council shall deal with administrative and departmental and departmental services solely through the county manager.”

”Does this mean I cannot even send an email to them?” he asked. “That’s how it could be construed.”

This part of the resolution goes on to say, “and neither the council nor any member thereof shall give orders to any subordinate employee, either publicly or privately.”

Susan Dukes, who was on the County Charter Review Committee and is the mayor of Secretary, said the intention of this particular change to the charter was to make it clear that no one council member should be able to make requests to department heads or employees on their own.

”You’re hiring a county manager to do that job,” she said. “And that’s what we felt like it should be because there has been past issues where that has become a problem. And we wanted to firm it up to make sure that you would act as a body and not as individuals.”

The council voted to change the wording to make it clear that no individual council member should give orders to county staff.

Though the majority of the resolutions passed unanimously, council member William Nichols voted against the resolutions regarding county manager responsibilities and governmental transparency.

He said he voted against the resolution for county manager responsibilities because he doesn’t think that an appointed individual should have more authority than five people who were elected. He said he voted against the transparency resolution “because it’s already here now.”