WEST WARWICK — The Town Council went through a slate of proposed charter amendments in painstaking detail during a public hearing last night. Two hours into the discussion, two amendments had yet to be discussed, not to mention other proposed referendum questions.

Council members did, however, narrow the questions that the voters might see on the November ballot, eliminating at least five of the proposed eight questions up for discussion. The status of the two non-binding referendum questions — to spend $2 million to implement an automated trash pickup system and whether to televise Town Council meetings — was still undecided late last night.

Today is the deadline for communities to submit referendum questions to the secretary of state for inclusion on their local ballots.

Going into the late evening hours, the Town Council voted to put these proposed charter amendments on the ballots:

•Increase the terms for council members from the current two years to four years;

• Give the council the option of reorganizing — electing a president and vice president — annually, rather than every two years.

• Allow departments to purchase items up to $2,500 before being required to obtain quotes from three vendors. The charter currently requires competitive telephone bids for goods over $400.

Surprisingly, two changes that have been brought up repeatedly in recent years — effectively replacing the Financial Town Meeting with an all-day referendum, and requiring a simple majority vote for the council to oust the town manager or town clerk (which now require four votes) — were shot down by the council last night.

Under the referendum proposal, the town meeting would have been retained, but the critical vote on the budget would not be taken at that session.

As for the requirement for dismissal votes, council members and meeting spectators said the supermajority that was required to fire the town manager worked, for example, in the case of Wolfgang Bauer, who was dismissed unanimously last year.

“If you do your due diligence in the search and hiring process, you should need four people because otherwise it’s too easy to tick off a couple people [and oust the manager],” said Richard Lovett, who said he was on an earlier charter commission that proposed the supermajority rule. “You should put your trust in a person and if they’re doing something wrong, I’d expect all five of you to fire that person.”

Despite yesterday’s lengthy meeting, some residents complained that the process was being pushed forward too rapidly. The normal procedure calls for a nine-member Charter Review Commission to be appointed to comb through the document for potential changes. That review often takes more than three months.

The last two charter review commissions were convened in 1998 and 2000. The first commission saw its changes shelved. As for recommendations submitted by the second commission, issues with the language of the changes kept the proposals off the ballot that time, said council Vice President Peter F. Calci Jr., who served on both of the commissions. In 2001, that commission reconvened, but it didn’t make the deadline to place changes onto that year’s ballot.

The Town Council is opting to put the issues forward rather than reconvene yet another commission because, if it doesn’t happen now, the next election where changes could be voted upon is in 2010.

tbuford@projo.com