Preliminary discussions over the role of a budget committee under any new form of town government have several members of the Charter Commission questioning the direction the panel has taken.

With the commission mulling the idea of putting an official ballot, town council style government before voters in March, a nonbinding motion to remove the institution of the budget committee from any future town charter passed on Thursday, Aug. 27. Though the motion will be revisited at the panel’s next meeting, commission member Stephen Campbell – who also holds a seat on the town’s Budget Committee – said he will not support a charter that does away with the committee.

One of the two members of the commission casting dissenting votes, Campbell said the move to relegate the committee to the trash bin did not come as a surprise to him.

“The majority of (the commission) wants to give more power to the Town Council than the selectmen currently have, and certainly not have to answer questions from a budget committee is one way of giving them more power,” Campbell said. “It’s part of what the majority wants. They’re taking power away from the voters. Whether you agree with it or disagree with it, the Budget Committee generates discussions. It brings out the information that wouldn’t come out in a selectmen’s meeting. It’s just one more way of giving the town council more power.”

According to Campbell, the town had been moving in the direction of giving more authority to the voters in recent years, opening up the seats on the planning and zoning boards as elected rather than appointed positions. Proposing and potentially adopting an official ballot, town council form of government flies in the face of that trend, Campbell said.

“When they took the vote to go forward with town council, official ballot idea, I told them I couldn’t support that. It’s just one aspect of taking power away from people. The whole town council takes power away from the people,” he said. “I’m campaigning against it.”

Selectman and commission member Patrick Hargreaves said he will be joining Campbell in writing a minority report when the panel puts its final recommendations before voters in March if the proposed charter embraces the town council idea.

“If they want to add more seats to the board of selectmen that’s OK, but not to go to a town council,” Hargreaves said. “I like my opinions. I like being able to stand in front of the boards and I like going to the town meeting. I like voicing my opinions.”

Commission Chairman Bob Campbell stressed that the vote to remove the budget committee was not final and that the issue would be revisited at the next meeting of the nine-member board on Sept. 17. Whether to include a budget committee or not in any proposed form of government for the town of Salem was just one in a list of questions the commission needs to answer, he said.

“It has to do with a lot of issues of how we are going to deal with the budget,” Campbell said. “We felt that those were related to a large degree and we needed to discuss them as a package ... I think the reason that we decided to put it off was because people felt there were other considerations that had to be linked with it. Whatever it was, it was not decisive and I wouldn’t want to convey the idea that it was decisive.”