This story was produced by the Berks County bureau of Spotlight PA, an independent, nonpartisan newsroom. Sign up for Good Day, Berks, a daily dose of essential local stories at spotlightpa.org/newsletters/gooddayberks.
READING — This November, Reading voters were supposed to have the opportunity to consider major changes to the way their government runs.
Through the Charter Review Commission, convened every three to five years, regular city residents can propose ballot questions with policy goals that elected officials may not choose to enact themselves. Previous commissions’ work led to influential voter referendums that instituted term limits for municipal leaders and allowed City Council to hire its own solicitor.
From the beginning of this commission’s tenure last year, things were chaotic. Confusion over who exactly was responsible for convening the group led to delays. Once the commission was in place, members say they wasted weeks discussing budgets and a survey that wasn’t finalized in time to inform the group’s work.
In the end, the commission advanced 13 proposals, including ones that would have let voters decide if the city should open a public health department, change resident eligibility for local boards, and limit the number of terms a volunteer could serve on a municipal board.
City Council publicly balked at some of the proposals when they were brought to its agenda in June, concerned about the number, as well as their constitutionality or legality. The night of the vote two weeks later — after a closed-door meeting with their attorney — council members newly claimed the commission had missed a February deadline to submit a report and killed the proposals.
Now, the dispute has moved to court. The commission’s chair, Evelyn Morrison, is asking a Berks County judge to provide emergency relief to get the questions on the November ballot. In her personal capacity, Morrison argued in a legal filing that the commission met the deadline by submitting a letter within the correct frame, even if the report came later.
Other members are less certain and blamed the commission itself.
“Did we, as a body, give council the perfect out? Of course we did,” said Tanya Melendez, a commission member. “That’s just the reality. On accident, absolutely, but the accident was a lot of ego on the inside.”
A combative commission
The 11-member commission was created by the charter, which contains eight sentences that primarily outline eligibility to serve on the board. How the commission operates during its six-month timeline is largely at the discretion of the group itself.
The latest commission met weekly beginning in August 2025, with members cycling in and out — some quit, one had a medical emergency, and not everyone was replaced.
Members frequently lamented their slow start during public meetings. They took more than a month to go over the existing charter, discuss the need for translators and interpreters, and request that elected officials speak at their meetings.
The interpreters were never hired, and only one elected official spoke in six months of meetings.
“We spent at least three days talking about a budget that never proceeded because we never did anything,” Melendez said. “They were asking for like $20,000 when before $1,500 was enough.”
Some commissioners came to the group with ideas, but members also wanted questions from average residents. They spent over a month working on a public survey that Morrison, the chair, said she would forward to a professor at Alvernia University for analysis. (Neither the professor nor the university responded to questions from Spotlight PA about whether the survey analysis took place.)
“I will say we spent eight weeks, 10 weeks, only talking about a survey,” member Virna Quinones said at a November meeting. “It’s time. We’ve just been postponing here longer and longer.”
The survey took weeks to develop. The official results were not finalized until February — after the commissioners had already decided which questions would go to City Council to be placed on the ballot.
Commission member Dave Myers told Spotlight PA it may have been helpful to have the answers earlier, but he also recognized that many of the questions ended up being vague and prompted unclear answers.
Over time, the sessions became more combative: Members yelled at each other and threatened to leave meetings. Melendez argued many of the problems, including the survey not serving its intended purpose, stemmed from Morrison not delegating tasks or allowing members to do individual work.
“Our inability to work was the fact that we were treated like children who were not allowed to do our own jobs, and then report to the group,” Melendez said. “Everything had to be a group project where most of the group didn’t do their part or didn’t show up.”
Morrison declined an interview with Spotlight PA about the workings of the commission and her lawsuit. She referred instead to a news release, published by her, that says she wants the court to proceed with any referendums that do not pose legal issues.
Melendez said future commissions would benefit from a dedicated city staff person, an organizational structure, and a thorough onboarding process.
“We spent so much wasted time just arguing over what was within our purview or not,” she said.
Months after the commission last met, some questions remain unanswered, like how much taxpayer money went toward the group’s legal fees.
City Council approved an allowance of up to $7,000 for the commission, but the group never passed its own budget or asked its treasurer to approve any expenses. The city hired a solicitor for the group before it convened, but it’s unclear how much was spent on that purpose. The city’s chief finance officer did not respond to Spotlight PA questions.
City Council poses constitutional questions
City Council’s role in the commission’s process is limited. The charter dictates that the council is responsible for appointing seven members (the mayor appoints the other four), accepting a report from the commission within six months, and passing an ordinance to put the amendments on the next ballot.
When those proposals move forward, council members can voice their personal opinions either for or against the ideas. This year, council members initially discussed the possibility of campaigning again before November.
“There are some [proposals] I agree that may arise some legal questions, but ultimately, I mean, we voted for the individuals that sat on that board, and they voted to have those questions on the ballot,” Councilor Jaime Baez said at a July 15 meeting.
The referendum questions themselves ranged from substantial — and costly — changes, to attempts to codify existing policy. When introduced on the council agenda in June, multiple councilors said they opposed some of the proposals over constitutionality, feasibility, and rationale.
Council attorney Michael Gombar and city attorney Fred Lachat said they believed some of the proposals could lead to litigation. The attorneys had met with members of the commission on at least two occasions in May to suggest changes.
“I will be raising my frustration with a lot of these amendments at the next meeting because I do believe some of them are blatantly unconstitutional and I think in violation of many people, both city employees’, the city clerks’, and others’ rights to free speech if they were implemented,” Councilor Ray Baker said when the questions were introduced in June. “But that’s an issue for next week and then for the ballot in November.”
Despite councilors’ concerns, Lachat said all amendments, if submitted by the deadline, had to move forward to the county’s election board for review.
The council met in executive session with Gombar before the final vote two weeks later. Normally, governing bodies cannot meet in private because of the state’s public meetings law, but the council used an exception allowing them to talk about litigation matters.
When they returned for the voting meeting, City Council removed the proposals from their consideration. The motion cited the missed deadline as the reason for the removal, rather than the content of the questions.
Gombar later told Spotlight PA he could not speak about the council’s decision because of the city’s policy not to comment on issues involved in active lawsuits.
City Council President Donna Reed told Spotlight PA, before the lawsuit was filed, that the decision showed the council’s concern over the number of questions, whether those questions actually related to the charter, the timing of the report, and other aspects of the process.
“I think between the passion of the council people and [Gombar’s] concerns, that if you combine those things really showed that this was just unacceptable for us to, in good conscience, move forward to the electorate,” Reed said.
A question for the courts
The civil suit Morrison filed in July asks the court to move the proposals forward to voters anyway — the county would need to receive the questions by Aug. 4 to make the November election.
Morrison argues that any objections should be on a case-by-case basis, and that any proposals without legal issues should head to the ballot. She put out a public call to residents to join her at the first hearing on July 20.
“This case is not about personal politics,” Morrison said in a news release. “It is about whether the Charter Review Commission process means something or whether it can be made meaningless by procedural removal after the public work has already been done.”
The council decision, while controversial, was not a surprise to everyone.
Melendez, one of the commission members, was disheartened that none of the proposals moved forward, but also told Spotlight PA she believed nixing them was the responsible option because of their “inconsistencies.” She said the lawsuit is not inclusive of the full commission’s perspectives.
Whether the commission actually missed the deadline was “up for a toss,” said Myers, another commissioner.
Commission members sent a letter to City Council in February, within the six-month deadline, that contained the draft ordinances for councilors to move forward. Commissioners then met again in May to approve the final report with some slight changes.
Still, Myers said he was disappointed that the council did not consider any of the proposals individually.
Officials plan to use the years before the next commission convenes to evaluate how the group can be better supported. They also want to discuss the best route to handle resident-led charter changes.
Lachat, the city solicitor, told the council it could eventually vote on a referendum to remove the commission altogether.
Jack Gombach, the city’s managing director, said the mayor’s administration would look into how the process could be improved, possibly with dedicated staff members or a clearer mission. The state does not require cities with home rule charters to have a review commission, and it is not the only existing path for residents to propose changes.
“We really need to ask ourselves, is this the most effective process to ensure that residents have the ability to weigh in on the charter?” Gombach said.
Editor’s note: Dave Myers, a senior fellow at Berks County Community Foundation, hosts monthly Community Forums for Spotlight PA.
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