CHARLEMONT — Voters at this year’s Annual Town Meeting may be presented with a new list of old bylaws, as Town Clerk Thorne Palmer is working to reorganize the town’s master list of bylaws into a chaptered document organized by category.

The goal is to ensure all of Charlemont’s bylaws are easy to find while also making the document easier for the town to update in the future.

“When I joined the Selectboard, I asked the question, ‘When was the last time all of our bylaws were reviewed?’ And at the time there wasn’t a good answer, so I proposed what Thorne has now done” Selectboard Chair Valentine Reid said during a board meeting last week.

Palmer was tasked with reviewing the bylaws and making changes to the document. He told the Selectboard his research has included going through the town’s existing bylaws, Town Meeting minutes and decisions from the Attorney General’s Office. He found bylaws that were approved at Town Meeting but were never submitted to the Attorney General’s Office for approval, as well as town bylaws referencing Massachusetts General Laws that have since been updated or repealed, bylaws potentially dating back to the 1800s without records of a Town Meeting vote and a few bylaws with typos.

“I made a lot of changes. There were five chapters and it had come to a point where they were just tacking bylaws at the end of the bylaw list,” Palmer explained. “I tried to make it more understandable than the last list of bylaws.”

The new list of bylaws will be broken up into categories, such as roads and infrastructure, and public safety, and will include the dates each bylaw was adopted at Town Meeting.

“We should have a real clear idea of where [each bylaw] should go in this document so it’s not just tacked on the end randomly,” Palmer said. “We need to make it make sense.”

Over the next few months, Palmer plans to continue his research and take into account feedback from the Selectboard while reformatting the bylaw list. The polished document will eventually come before Annual Town Meeting voters, or potentially a Special Town Meeting, depending on the timing.

The document being presented includes bylaws that have already been voted on and adopted, so voters are not going to be asked whether they support the bylaws included, but rather if they agree with the layout of the document and the order the bylaws are presented. After accepting the document, the town can proceed with making changes to the bylaws themselves, including fixing typos.

Any changes to the language in the bylaws would need to be made while following procedures set by the state for amending bylaws, including hosting public hearings.

“The idea with that is that it should be less complicated to vote on something that is already true. What we’re doing is just repackaging it and putting it up for affirmation,” Reid said. “Then you can go in with the editorial pen and start making changes.”

Reach Madison Schofield at 413-930-4579 or mschofield@recorder.com.