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The Town of Kensington has introduced several changes to its charter that would allow it to broaden and change the powers currently available to town government and staff.

The changes include officially creating the town manager position, raising the threshold at which the town needs to seek competitive bids from $10,000 to $30,000, and creating a permitting system for commercial or reserved use of town parks.

A public hearing on the proposed changes is scheduled for 7 p.m., Jan. 11, at the Kensington Town Hall, 3710 Mitchell St.

Sanford Daily, the Kensington town manager, said his official title since starting work for the town in April 2008 has actually been interim town manager. Creating the official position of town manager is a permanent step, he said, and would mean that a town manager would become a designated professional executive handling the day to day concerns of the town. The position of mayor, currently held by Peter Fosselman, would become more of a political and ceremonial role with less administrative function.

The town has proposed to amend the charter to allow the Town Council to provide purchasing rules and regulations through ordinances. A purchasing ordinance has also been proposed that would increase the threshold at which the town would need to seek competitive bids to $30,000 from $10,000. The Town Council would still be required to approve all contracts of more than $10,000. The proposed ordinance would also allow the town to piggyback bids obtained by other government entities with similar processes, rather than going through a new bid process for the same thing, Daily said. For example, Daily said, if the county got a bid for a multi-year contract for copy machines — something that may cost more than $10,000 — the town could also enter into a contract with the same company without asking for more bids from others.

Daily said most of the expenditures that would cost more than $30,000 would be infrastructure improvements, but some multi-year contracts might qualify as well.

Finally, an ordinance has been proposed that would allow the town to create a permitting and regulation system for town parks. The ordinance was inspired in part by a recent controversy in Kensington that arose when a private school, the Brookewood School, was using a town park for its recess, but Daily said other uses of town parks have also contributed. Daily said, for example, there have been instances of people running soccer lessons and camps at town parks.

Currently, Daily said, the process for reserving a park for an event like a family reunion is vague, and the town has no system set up to issue permits for commercial or reserved use of its parks.