Currently, those two positions can be hired with consent of council but fired without consent of council, so “this allows council to be involved in any proceedings for removal of your upper management,” said Howard Kitko, interim city manager and public service director.
“It just allows council to be more informed on their upper management, and just makes all administrators have the consent of council for hire and fire where currently it’s only the finance director has that.”
The vote on Section 5.02 of the charter is on whether to add language stating that a resolution of council may be used to ratify a contract or agreement, but that an ordinance of council is needed to ratify a franchise.
Kitko said this amendment was to simplify the legislation because you don’t need an ordinance to do certain agreements.
“For the majority, ordinances are somewhat for laws, and resolutions can simplify that because it takes less readings. It’s a little shorter process on something that can be a simple council approval, so you do it via resolution instead of a first read, second read and then your putting-off period for the ordinance,” he said.
The vote on Section 9.01 is on whether to remove language requiring that each copy of a petition to run for office contain the signature of the candidate and a statement indicating acceptance of the nomination and willingness to accept the office if elected.
Mayor Bill Cook said this section of the charter has previously allowed qualified candidates to be overlooked because once they got to the board of elections, their petitions were denied due to not having included the letter of acceptance.
“My feeling is delete that section so that when we get the necessary signatures, being at 25 minimum or 75 total, that we can go ahead and get these petitions processed and get the people who want to run and can run to be on the ballot,” he said.
No council members voted against putting any of the charter amendments on the ballot. Kathy Wright said a group of residents spent about three months going over the charter, which hadn’t been studied in a long time “so many changes were needed.”
“Having the council refresh the charter each election period aims to keep our charter up to date and remind us what citizens want because every line of our charter has been approved by them by their vote,“ she said.
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