LISBON – Selectmen, in a lengthy meeting Tuesday night, approved several articles for inclusion in the May town meeting warrant including one that will ask voters to establish a charter commission that could result in changes in the way the town is governed.

J. Michael Huston, chairman of the Lisbon Governance Committee, presented selectmen with a 20-page report, complete with graphs and statistics and minutes of the panel’s many meetings and votes along with final recommendations.

Huston said the report was “as complete a report as the committee felt it could do,” and that members could not come up with a unanimous recommendation.

They did, however, recommend by a 6-1 vote, to ask voters to establish a charter commission and selectmen agreed to include it as a referendum question on the May town meeting warrant.

The charter commission, Huston explained, would be charged with the creation of a charter for the town, something it does not have now.

The committee’s second recommendation, also by a 6-1 vote, was to keep the town meeting, but have voting on articles done by referendum. A final recommendation, which was favored by a 4-3 vote, was to continue with the existing town meeting, but find improvements such as: an earlier date for the meeting, change it from week night(s) to weekend; list the articles by some sort of lottery system to eliminate special interests being present for very short periods of time; and provide additional written information about the articles.

Selectmen opted by a 5-0 vote to put the question of establishing a charter commission before voters. Selectmen established the committee several months ago in an effort to learn if changes could be made that would improve voter participation in town affairs.