My notes from tonight:
Finance committee
The committee moved forward an ordinance allowing for sidewalk assessments and another assessing a lien on property on which a house was demolished.
The committee passed through approval for up to $50,000 in outside legal counsel fees to Kastner, Williams & Wilkins. A group of us met with three different firms. Each had its positives. I think we all came to a conclusion that Kastner had most experience in the field and its partners were extremely prepared. Another important question is: How will we use them? I’d prefer to keep the attorneys involved in the background, and to bring them into negotiations only after we reach an impasse. I think that’s the mayor’s preference, too. Any money we spend on lawyers is less we can offer to the unions.
Planning committee
We voted to move the JEDZ agreement out of committee. It will get a first reading on Thursday. It can be moved back into committee if necessary. It is sort of complicated how all of this will work with two other city councils also needing to approve it.
Our economic development team told us that Pneumatic Scale is still evaluating its options on where it will open its new plant.
Committee-of-the-whole
We had eight proposed charter amendments before us.
The most-heavily debated ones regarded term limits. We passed the first two provisions without debate. Several members of council were unsatisfied with the provisions that removed term limits for mayor and law director, however. The reason: The amendments require a “yes” vote to eliminate term limits. The others require a “yes” vote to adopt term limits. So it might be confusing to someone who wants to walk into the ballot box and cast four “yes” votes or four “no” votes. I give the voters a little more credit than that. It’s also my hunch that you cannot amend the charter with a “no” vote. Thus, you cannot ask, “Should we keep term limits?,” because that would be a charter change through a “no” vote. Assistant law director Kelley Bryan is researching the issue, so that will help clarify the debate.
We discussed the qualifications for finance director. I don’t have too much of a problem with the proposed charter language, which adds a finance degree to the acceptable educational backgrounds. Sara Drew sought to amend that to add “or any directly related field,” in order to expand potential qualifications.
The next amendment regarded the council president’s ability to vote as a councilperson when she is “called up” as acting mayor. Currently, it’s unclear. The proposal says the acting mayor forfeits her council powers during that time. Janet brought up a good point. This could be a detriment to the acting mayor. Consider the situation where there is a critical, time-sensitive vote on a piece of legislation, in which the council president was predicted to vote with the 4-3 majority. The mayor, who disagrees with the legislation but wouldn’t want to veto it, conveniently leaves town and appoints council president as the acting mayor for a week. The legislation would die 3-3, with the mayor skipping the political ramifications. It’s a little far-fetched, but it is feasible. Perhaps we can narrow the times when an acting mayor is appointed to solve that problem.
The last amendment was to strike the unconstitutional provision regarding residency. As I have stated, this is the only amendment that I might vote against. I think, at the least, it should be accompanied by an amendment that allows city officials – under very limited circumstances – to purge unconstitutional (and thus, unenforceable) language from the charter. I am in the process of writing the language, and I’ll present it as a separate charter amendment on Thursday. Here is a preliminary draft:
Shall Charter Section XX.XX be amended to include: “The city may amend the Charter without ballot approval solely for the purpose of striking provisions that are wholly unconstitutional, as determined by clear interpretations of state or federal law. This procedure requires: 1) concurrence of 2/3rds majority of City Council, 2) signature by the Mayor, 3) signature by the Law Director, and 4) affirmation by at least one outside legal counsel.”?
There are likely to be other charter proposals from council. Janet outlined an amendment that clarified the Charter Review Commission’s duties as being solely a recommending body, not legislative, and that it must submit proposals by June 1. Matt Riehl also has something up his sleeve regarding another unconstitutional part of our charter.
These amendments must all be submitted in their final form by August 4. Riehl wisely asked for a special meeting set for August 4 so, in case the rules are not suspended, we can still get the amendments on the ballot after three readings.
We have a finance committee meeting scheduled for Wednesday at 6:45 p.m. to discuss income tax receipts. I don’t expect the news to be good. We will continue the discussion on the charter with a committee-of-the-whole meeting at 6 p.m. on Thursday, to be followed by our regular council meeting.