The town’s Code of Ethics, a little more than six months old, was amended Monday night by the Board of Selectmen to address concerns over town employees already covered by other codes.

A new Code of Ethics was put into place last September following public hearings on the code and revisions to the town’s prior code from 1983 by the Independent Committee on Ethics. Though there have been no complaints filed or advisory opinions sought from the Council on Ethics as provided by the code, the council nonetheless saw a problem in the code that needed to be fixed.

The problem centered on certain town employees, such as police officers and firefighters, being covered by other departmental codes. With the town code expected to cover every town employee and official, the council needed to come up with a solution to make sure no employee or official was covered by two codes that might conflict.

The amendment the council came up with states that if a union employee is covered by a board or departmental code of conduct and two conditions are met, the employee will be exempt from the town’s Code of Ethics.

The two provisions are that the employee’s code “contains provisions equivalent to, or stricter than, those contained” in the town’s code and that it “includes provisions for the making of citizen complaints and for an adjudicative process for review and resolution of them.”

“The default is always back to the town code,” said Stephen Hudspeth, chair of the council.

Mr. Hudspeth said the police department’s code was already set with changes made to qualify under the amendment, and the fire department was also working on doing the same.

“It’s going to take a while because they’re really at ground zero,” said Mr. Hudspeth of the fire department.

No members of the public were present to comment on the amendment at the public hearing. After the board voted to unanimously approve the amendment, First Selectman William Brennan said a sticker might be put on existing copies of the code reflecting the amendment.

“We don’t want this thing looking like it was made at a frat house,” said Mr. Brennan, drawing a laugh.

Mr. Brennan said the amendment was “an eloquent solution to what appeared to be a complex problem,” and thanked Mr. Hudspeth and the council for their work in crafting it.