New Canaan is engaged in a consequential exercise: examining the document that orders its civic life. Charter revision lacks glamour, which is precisely why it deserves attention. The charter is the town’s operating manual, not a slogan sheet. It allocates authority, defines accountability, and determines how power is restrained, delegated, and renewed. Communities neglect such documents at their peril.
The Charter Revision Commission’s recent work, including its Jan. 14 subcommittee meeting with Superintendent of Schools Dr. Bryan Luizzi, illustrates how institutional design shapes outcomes. Luizzi’s testimony was notable for its sobriety. He described a Board of Education structure that functions effectively because responsibilities are distinct and respected. Education policy, fiscal review, legislative judgment, and capital planning each reside where they belong. That separation is charter architecture at work.
Charters are often invisible when they function well. Their success is measured in the absence of friction rather than the presence of drama. New Canaan’s current Board of Education model—nine members, four-year terms, elected by voters—has produced continuity, institutional knowledge, and predictable governance. Luizzi’s caution against blurring roles during budget review was not bureaucratic defensiveness. It was a defense of clarity.
The commission’s attention to technical inconsistencies, such as aligning vacancy provisions with state statute, further demonstrates why revision cannot be casual. A charter that conflicts with state law invites confusion and legal challenge. Cleaning such seams is not glamorous work. It is necessary work.
The larger question animating the commission’s deliberations—the balance between elected and appointed boards—requires similar restraint. Elections confer direct accountability. Appointments emphasize expertise and insulation from transient pressures. Neither model is inherently virtuous. Each must be judged in context, board by board, function by function. The commission’s insistence on neutral language and qualitative description reflects an understanding that charters should illuminate choices rather than predetermine them.
This deliberation benefits from public participation not as a courtesy, but as a requirement. A charter is a community’s extended conversation with itself. Residents need not master parliamentary law to contribute meaningfully. They need only attend meetings, read materials, listen carefully, and speak plainly. The commission’s interviews, surveys, and public comment periods exist for that purpose.
Public engagement is especially important when institutions appear to function smoothly. Stability can breed complacency. New Canaan’s governance has avoided scandal and paralysis, which makes revision easier to dismiss as optional. It is not. Structures that work today may fail tomorrow if demographics shift, technology advances, or legal standards evolve. Anticipation is a civic virtue.
James Madison warned that “if men were angels, no government would be necessary.” The corollary is that governments must be designed with human limitations in mind. Charters encode that realism. They assume ambition, error, and disagreement. They channel those forces rather than pretending they do not exist.
The commission’s discussion of artificial intelligence offers a useful example of disciplined governance. Luizzi declined to recommend charter language on AI, noting that operational issues belong in policy and administration rather than foundational law. That distinction reflects constitutional judgment. Not every emerging issue belongs in a charter. Revision requires restraint as much as initiative.
What the commission is doing now—drafting frameworks, weighing words, resisting advocacy—is the slow work of self-government. It deserves attention precisely because it resists urgency theater. Residents who wait until a charter appears on a referendum ballot have waited too long to shape it.
New Canaan has long benefited from institutions that prize competence over spectacle. Charter revision is the mechanism by which that preference is renewed.
