GREENFIELD — In the 28 years since the Franklin Regional Council of Governments’ (FRCOG) charter was first created, no amendments have been made.

That will soon change, though, as 26 member municipalities will be asked to approve changes to the charter this Town Meeting season.

“The FRCOG’s charter is a strong document and has stood the test of time,” FRCOG Executive Director Linda Dunlavy said in a statement, “but we are approaching our 30th year as an organization, and there’s room for some cleanup and clarifying based on what we have learned over the decades.”

The charter is the organizing document that outlines FRCOG’s purpose, structure, duties and authorities. To amend FRCOG’s charter, which went into effect July 1, 1997, the single article placed on each Annual Town Meeting warrant that details the revisions must be approved by a two-thirds majority vote in at least two-thirds of the 26 member municipalities.

The changes will then be submitted to the state Legislature to amend Chapter 151, Section 567 of the 1996 Acts of the General Court of Massachusetts — the enabling act for FRCOG — so the language matches the new charter and the state legislation. FRCOG Communications Manager Mark Maloni noted the timeline on legislative approval from the state is not set in stone, but he anticipates the Legislature would approve the charter amendments.

The amendments include references to the original creation of FRCOG being removed; cleaning up tenses, capitalizations and language for consistency; and changing “Franklin Regional Planning Board” to “Franklin Regional Planning Advisory Board,” which clarifies that this is an advisory board rather than a municipal planning board.

The changes would also:

■Allow municipal officials other than selectboard members to serve on the FRCOG Council, which is the oversight board that oversees FRCOG’s projects and activities, adopts policies, and develops and endorses the organization’s annual operating budget;

■Remove FRCOG as an arbiter of unresolved dog hearings, given that the organization has never been asked to act in this role and recourse is available in court;

■Allow membership of the Executive Committee — a subcommittee of the FRCOG Council that provides oversight of the executive director, staff and programs, and advocates for issues of importance to the region on the state and federal levels — to have more than one member per town;

■Eliminate the requirement that the Executive Committee is the hiring authority of the planning director and finance director, a responsibility that is being transferred to the executive director, who is responsible for all other organizational hires and which allows easier flexibility to change FRCOG’s organizational structure if needed;

■Clarify how a town outside of Franklin County could join FRCOG and how a Franklin County town could withdraw from FRCOG;

■And reduce the voting threshold from a two-thirds vote at Town Meetings to a majority vote for future FRCOG charter changes.

The proposed changes do not impact member municipality voting powers within FRCOG, nor do they impact the financial membership commitment.

Maloni noted that amending the charter comes at a time when FRCOG staff members have been around long enough to have seen the organization’s evolution and are still in a place to advise on changes to the document.

“While we still have the perspectives of what has and hasn’t worked, the thinking is that this is an opportune time to do the cleanup,” Maloni said.

A public information campaign is underway for FRCOG representatives to visit member towns and discuss the proposed changes, Maloni said. Over the coming weeks, representatives will visit different communities ahead of Town Meetings. As for Greenfield, City Council voted unanimously last week to approve the charter changes.

A red-lined version of the charter that highlights and explains the proposed changes, as well as a one-page fact sheet, are available online at bit.ly/frcogcharter.

Erin-Leigh Hoffman can be reached at ehoffman@recorder.com or 413-930-4231.