A city charter review committee comprised of seven residents has made two recommendations to update the charter.

The committee initially looked at seven issues in the charter, including: the number of members on city council and term limits of council and the mayor; the way vacancies are filled on council; publication of ordinances; residency requirement for the city administrator; civil service terms; and vacancies on council for military service.

By a unanimous vote, members of the committee - Louis Fahrbach, Deborah Hornstein, Craig Kohring, John Melnyk, Laura Perkins, Gary Weatherholt, and Kelly Willis - recommended reducing the number of council seats from to five from seven, and giving council more leeway to members of council who are called up for military duty and lose their seats within a 45 day period, as noted in the current charter.

Council has to agree to place both recommendations on the ballot for voters to decide on changing the charter, according to Councilman Dave Gallaher, who is chairman of the committee.

“The committee felt strongly about those two issues,” said Gallaher. “They have to be voted on by council and placed on the ballot. That’s our next step. The committee felt, especially these days, it’s kind of an unfair punishment for someone serving in the military to be given just 45 days to be away and lose their seat on council. If you’re gone 45 days, there’s no wriggle room allowed. It’s the way it’s spelled out in the charter. With people serving in the military now all over the world, members of the committee felt it was unfair that these people were going all over the world to protect us, and their charter does not protect them.”

The committee is recommending that the section of the charter that limits military duty for council members to 45 days before they lost their seats be removed from the charter, said Gallaher. Another section that deals with vacancies has more flexibility for council to make a decision on a member being called up by the military, said Gallaher.

“We just feel that section that only gives 45 days is not needed. There’s another way to deal with this and give more latitude for council to make a judgment. So it would not be a black and white situation,” he said.

The committee also felt that the city did not need seven members of council.

“For the most part, the committee felt we could get the job done with five. The city is not that big, about seven square miles,” said Gallaher.

“We’re here to represent the people. And five people on council would be able to get the job done,”
added Gallaher. “Every department in the city has been cut. Residents are more likely to miss the guy who got cut in the Streets Department than they would a council person. I don’t see people breaking down the doors to say we need more council people.”

Gallaher, as chairman, did not vote or make motions on the committee, he said.

“I ran the meeting, took the notes, and set up the schedule for the meetings. The motions were all made by committee people and votes were taken by the committee. Both of these recommendations were unanimous by the committee members. Everyone felt very strongly about both of these items,” he said.

The committee met twice, he added, and is no longer meeting.

“Basically, before we met, I sent out a copy of the charter to members with instructions to make themselves familiar with it, to highlight parts of the charter they might have a question or concern about. And that’s what everybody did. It really went very, very quickly. At our first meeting, we went through the charter page by page, hit the high points people had questions about and identified things that may not really need to be changed. For the most part, it was pretty straight forward.”

The committee has to get the recommendations to council for a vote to get it to the board of elections by a certain date, he said. An ordinance would have to pass by emergency to beat the deadline or a special meeting would have to be called.

“Council has to have legislation drawn up and then vote on it to be at the board of elections by August. With our council meetings scheduled for the summer, it’s going to be a real tight fit to get everything done by August, but I think we’ll be able to,” he said. “We’re going to have to pass this as an emergency to get this on the ballot. There’s time for people to come to council and say whether they support it or not. By council putting this on the ballot, it gives people the opportunity to decide on how their city is run.”

The city charter was approved in 1981. It was previously updated in 1994.

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed