The Board of Mayor and Burgesses has 15 days from today to accept or reject a series of proposed changes to Naugatuck’s Charter.

Charter Revision Commission Chairman Andrew Bottnick said after a meeting on Monday the borough board will have to act on whether it wants to recommend the changes for a possible referendum. He said the 15-day time limit is part of state statute, which sets timetables based on municipalities making changes to their charters.

The Charter Revision Commission has convened a number of times over the past year, debating whether or not Naugatuck should adopt a number of changes to its top legislative document. By approving the finalized list of proposals — and submitting it to the borough board — it effectively completed its job that it was tasked to do last year.

Bottnick noted that the borough board could choose to accept the list or send it back to the commission.

Some of the proposals included changing the term limits from two to four years for the mayor, getting rid of the town clerk as an elected position and altering the borough’s municipal election date from May to November.

Another proposal, which was explained during the Monday meeting, was to alter the percentage of signatures required to force a referendum. Currently, borough residents that want to petition a referendum on the municipal budget can do so if they gather signatures from 8 percent of Naugatuck residents.

If the referendum fails, then residents can force another referendum after getting another 8 percent of signatures.

Under this new proposal, the number of signatures would be 8 percent the first time, but would then drop down to 4 percent on both the second and third times a referendum is forced, Bottnick said.

One of the most contested concepts — whether Naugatuck should change from a mayoral system to a town manager system — was dropped after it garnered mixed reactions from both commission members and burgesses.

“It was more than we wanted to bit off at this point,” said Bottnick, a supporter of the town manager concept.

If the borough board adopts the Charter Revision Commission’s proposed changes, then it will draft up a series of questions that would then be placed on a voter ballot.

If Naugatuck succeeds in going to referendum on these proposals, Bottnick said it could possibly be by the November 2012 election. Part of the borough board's job will be wording the questions properly for voters, he said.

The commission also recommended that the borough create a new Charter Revision Commission that would be dedicated solely to dealing with languages changes in the ancient document.

As commission member Chris Herb noted, there are certain terms that the Charter contains certain archaic words that have fallen out of use, such as the word “Freeman.”

“It’d be good to have a group of professors and teachers who like doing that kind of stuff to get together and re-write the charter,” Herb said. “Not from a policy standpoint, but strictly from a literary point of view.”