This is a pretty interesting story:
… the [Portsmouth] City Council has selected a panel to review the document and recommend noncontroversial edits.
I think that’s a bold move, even though they are not allowing the panel to recommend changes to certain areas.
The panel members said they want to make Portsmouth’s charter, which numbers more than 30 pages, easier for the average person to understand.
What a novel idea! Plain language and not lawyerly gobblygook? Wow.
Kudos to Portsmouth for taking this on. Um, how about it, Norfolk?
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
Yes, but what I find interesting is that the group met Wednesday despite the representation in the “Executive Brief and Summary” accompanying the September 28 council agenda that “all meetings of the commission will be public”. Does a meeting for which no public notice of date, time, and location qualify as “public”? I did not see anything on the city web site, in the Sunday Currents, or in my eMail inbox (which is subscribed to notices about council meetings) relative to the kick-off gathering of the commission. That does not bespeak transparency in revising the foundational legal document of our city. My former neighbor, Senator Spong, may be looking askance from “up yonder” on a commission bearing his name and yet conducting business in such an undemocratic manner.
Mark Geduldig-Yatrofsky, Portsmouth Mayoral Candidate
Authorized by Friends of Mark Geduldig-Yatrofsky