Senate committee hears sharply divided testimony on Arden charter replacement bill SB 220

The Senate Elections and Government Affairs Committee on Monday considered Senate Substitute 1 for Senate Bill 220, a measure to replace the Charter of the Village of Arden. Senator Siegfried, the bill sponsor, described a multi-year local review and said an overwhelming majority of those who voted supported the changes, while multiple residents told the committee the neighborhood process was irregular and left most eligible voters effectively uncounted.

Siegfried told the committee the proposal stems from a governance task force formed in September 2021 that met monthly for about 2½ years and held public educational sessions before forwarding 22 proposed charter changes to the town assembly. "Twenty-one out of the 22 changes were approved by the majority," she said, and the draft updates add a preamble, define ordinances and resolutions, codify meeting notice and quorum rules, remove outdated references to county-managed codes, and make the language gender-neutral.

Opponents at the hearing concentrated on how Arden conducted the vote on the proposals. Deborah Ricard, cochair of Arden's budget committee, said the method used a motion at a town meeting and narrow in-person voting windows that excluded absentee ballots. "Those yes votes are less than 10% of Arden's 356 total eligible voters," Ricard said, and she urged senators to vote no. Michael Hooks, who identified himself as a longtime village official, said Arden's direct-democracy traditions count nonvoters as a default "no" and that some items in the package would shift the village away from supermajority protections: "Direct democracy is set up in a way that we need to have at least 51% of all the eligible voters vote on an issue," Hooks said.

Several speakers echoed concerns that the local voting process was nonstandard and that some changes passed with low participation. Commenters noted examples provided to the committee, including one item with 29.5% participation of eligible voters. Warren Rosencrantz cited advice he attributed to the Delaware Supreme Court advising that wholesale charter changes be handled "slowly and sparingly," and urged the committee to return the measure for incremental amendment and broader townwide consideration.

Village leaders who supported the bill told a different story. Simon Hiramesh, chair of Arden's town assembly, said roughly 200–220 residents took part in the special voting session and described the changes as the product of years of research, discussion and polling. "The prevailing theme of the proposals is to update outdated language, remove unnecessary components and reserve governance for village institutions," Hiramesh said, arguing that moving some items to ordinances would require more formal review in future town assembly sessions.

Other opponents who testified—both in person and virtually—said replacing the charter in its entirety risks centralizing power, removing legal protections and ignoring a century of direct-democracy practice in Arden. Carol DiGiovanni, testifying remotely, called the bill "ill conceived" and "potentially dangerous," and Robert Heerenberg warned that eliminating the charter could leave the village without established procedural rules such as Robert’s Rules of Order.

The committee heard the testimony but did not take a committee vote on SB 220 at this meeting. Chair adjourned the hearing after concluding public comment and brief questions; senators did not announce a future committee action on the bill during the session.

What happens next: SB 220 was presented and heard in committee but the transcript shows no recorded committee vote; further action, if any, was not stated on the record at this hearing.