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ST. LOUIS — Election Day is less than two weeks out, and much of the attention is focused on the races that will form the next Board of Aldermen. But the most important contest may be elsewhere on the ballot.

Proposition C asks poll-goers to authorize a special panel to review the city’s century-old charter, which lays out the ground rules for city government, and propose changes to voters next year.

And those changes could be big. The charter shapes virtually everything that happens at City Hall, from how tax dollars get spent to who gets hired to what gets built. And while the commission could spend its allotted year updating old language, like the male pronouns used to describe the mayor’s responsibilities, it could also take on hot-button issues: hiring rules derided by some as painfully inefficient, the number of elected officials, or even the city’s weak-mayor government, which, for instance, requires multiple bodies to approve the annual budget.

“It could change a great deal of the way St. Louis is governed, depending on how far they take it,� said Lana Stein, a longtime political scientist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

The process would be the latest in a series of civic debates about how City Hall should work in the 21st century, as it struggles with rapid population loss, a shrinking tax base, stubbornly high crime and breathtaking poverty.

The early 2000s saw a coalition led by business leaders call for an end to the city’s weak-mayor system, a smaller Board of Aldermen and cuts to the ranks of other elected officials — and lose at the polls. More recently, politicos took a run at merging the city with St. Louis County and its dozens of municipalities, though that fell apart when then-County Executive Steve Stenger was indicted on corruption charges.

Alderman Annie Rice, who represents the Shaw neighborhood and sponsored the new plan at the Board of Aldermen, said she isn’t rooting for any particular outcome, for the current effort. The idea, she said, is simply to facilitate a public conversation about the city’s constitution.

In remarks to her local ward organization this week, she pointed out that the last major reworking of the charter was more than a century ago, before women were allowed to vote. There are references to hawkers, hucksters and clairvoyants.

“A lot of things have changed since then,� she said.

And while residents, business groups and aldermen have made revisions here and there with petitions and resolutions, Rice said a more comprehensive vetting is needed. Her proposal would have aldermen and the mayor appoint a nine-member commission to meet for a year, review the document, hear from the public and draft possible changes.

The process would be open, unlike some past efforts, she said: Every meeting would be broadcast for the public to see, and all the documents could be accessed under the state’s Sunshine Law.

The proposal also attempts to reflect the diversity of the city, Rice said: Officials would have to appoint three commissioners from north of Page Boulevard, on the heavily Black north side. Three more would come from between Page and Arsenal Street, on the whiter south side, and the rest would be from south of Arsenal.

The plan would also provide for a new charter commission to meet every 10 years to keep things current, Rice said.

Commissioners’ proposals would go to voters in November 2024, Rice said, and would require support from 60% to pass.

So far, the plan appears to have made few big waves. There is no organized opposition to speak of. The bill that put the idea on the ballot passed the Board of Aldermen 25-1. And Mayor Tishaura O. Jones and Aldermanic President Megan Green, some of Rice’s fellow progressive Democrats, have both endorsed the plan.

“Our charter is ancient and it needs to be revised,� Jones said Friday. “It should be a living, breathing document that we are taking a look at frequently and updating based on what is current in our political world as well as how we run this government.�

They, too, have refrained from endorsing specific outcomes. “I would like them to look at the entire charter,� Jones said.

Still, in old-world City Hall, any talk of examining the charter inevitably conjures memories of past fights over all the idiosyncrasies lampooned by experts as outdated and inefficient.

Like, say, the Board of Estimate and Apportionment, where the mayor, comptroller and aldermanic president approve spending as a panel, in contrast with other cities that leave decisions to the chief executive and the legislature alone. Or the collection of elected “county offices� — so named because they perform functions typically provided by county government — notorious for filling jobs with politically connected employees.

In an interview on Friday, Comptroller Darlene Green, the city’s elected chief financial officer, took up for the Estimate Board, saying it protects taxpayers and keeps financial decisions independent of the politics found in cities with stronger executives.

“Why would you change what’s good?� she asked rhetorically.

Sheriff Vernon Betts, who holds one of the “county offices,� was also wary of another run at making his job an appointed one.

“As a law enforcement agency, there should be someone who answers directly to the citizens of St. Louis,� he said, contrasting himself with the city police chief, who answers to the mayor. “If I mess up, let the people vote me out.�