EAST PROVIDENCE — As expected, the city council at its Tuesday, Feb. 7, meeting unanimously approved the formation of a charter review commission.

At its prior forum, the council engaged in a much more thorough conversation of the matter while also receiving the input of a few residents. It was agreed the most pressing need for the commission is to review the charter to make sure it corresponds with the change in the city’s form of governance from that of a manager-council to that of an elected mayor-council. Many were also in agreement that since the charter hasn’t been reviewed in some 25 years, the entire document should be studied to determine if and where it needed to be updated or amended as well.

“An initial objective will be to propose amendments to our Charter to conform to the new Article III which replaced our city manager model with an elected mayoral form of government,” council president/mayor Jim Briden, the At-Large member of the body, said after last week’s meeting. “This experience will also allow us to take an inventory of where we are as a city and to propose amendments that will promote our core objectives for the next decade.”

Last week, the discussion was very much to the point of the matter, most of the issues having been hashed out previously.

The council did make one significant change to the composition of the commission.

“The goal is to be done with this when the weather is good,” Mr. Briden during the meeting. “This is a good thing to do when the weather is cold. We don’t want to be in here when it’s 70 degrees and the weather is nice.”

Originally, the councilors worked off the premiss of having nine members on the review group. Four councilors would appoint two commission members while one would make one appointment and also serve as a non-voting member of the commission.

Last Tuesday, at the suggestion of Ward 3 councilor Joe Botelho, the make-up of the commission was tweaked to have four council members make two appointments each while allowing Mr. Briden to make three selections. That amendment, likewise, passed with unanimous consent.

In addition, the council agreed to hold a subsequent meeting to make the appointments official and also set a date for the review commission’s first official gathering. The meeting for the appointments and affiliated business is scheduled for Monday evening, Feb. 13, at 5:30 p.m. in the council chamber.

To date, according to a comment made last week by Ward 4 council Brian Faria, the city clerk’s office has received numerous resumes and letters from those wanting to serve on the commission.

“Many have expressed an interest in serving and in so doing have demonstrated a most sincere level of civic mindedness and genuine concern for our future,” Mr. Briden said later. “The contemplated schedule will be to have weekly meetings starting this month and ending in the early spring. A subsequent phase can occur which will focus on ordinances which can be amended without voter approval.”

The charter review commission is only an advisory group. Any suggestions or changes to the charter will be made through ordinances approved by the council or ballot referendums of the voting public.