DRAFT
MINUTES OF MEETING
2008 CHARTER REVIEW COMMISSION
MARCH 20, 2008
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Members Present: Bartolozzi, Lazzaro, McGovern, O’Donnell, Rodgers, Snyder, Urban,
Absent: Thompson
Presence Noted: Mayor Pamela Bobst
Andrew Bemer, Law Director
Council Members Present: Council President Jim Moran, Ward 3 Councilman, Michael Mylen, Councilperson At-Large, Anjanette Arabian, Ward 4 Councilman, John Shepherd, and Clerk of Council, Misao Kurokawa
Press: Ben Saylor, Westlife ************************************************************************
Mrs. Bartolozzi opened the March 20, 2008 meeting of the 2008 Charter Review Commission at 7:05 p.m. in the Council Chambers of City Hall.
Mrs. Bartolozzi asked if anyone has any additions or corrections to the Minutes of the March 13, 2008 Charter Review Commission meeting.
MOTION: Moved by Mrs. McGovern, seconded by Mr. Urban, to approve the Minutes of the March 13, 2008 Charter Review Commission meeting.
6 Ayes – 0 Nays – 1 Abstain (Bartolozzi) PASSED
Mrs. Bartolozzi said that tonight they will discuss Article III – Council and Mr. Lazzaro will lead the discussion along with her.
Section 1: Powers and Leadership – Mr. Rodgers addressed Mr. Bemer saying he does not understand the meaning of the last sentence regarding when the Charter will prevail. He said it seems to read that the Charter would take precedence over State law. Mr. Bemer said that as long as our Charter provisions do not permit that which is prohibited by State law or prohibit that which is permitted by State law, we are fine. It was determined that they would add the review of the last sentence in this Section to the master list of items for further discussion.
Mrs. Bartolozzi said she found that most of her questions or concerns were with the choice of wording and/or the lengthiness of sentences, which cause the meaning to be lost.
Section 2: Term of Office – Mrs. Bartolozzi said this section touches on the similar concept they reviewed last week regarding the Mayor’s term. She asked whether or not the Commission wants to consider discussing the 4 year term for members of Council. Further, she said they may want to discuss the issue of all Council members being elected in the same year. This means there is the possibility of having 7 brand new members at the same time. She questioned whether that possibility is in the best interest of the City. She said the School Board staggers their elections, with new people being brought in every 2 years, as terms expire. Mrs. Bartolozzi invited the Council members in attendance tonight to speak on this issue and on any other issue they feel the Charter Review Commission should take a closer look at as they review Section III.
Council President, Jim Moran came forward and said that length of time from the start of campaigning for a potential Council member is about 9 months. He feels it is a lot of effort for a 2 year term and he is in favor of 4-year terms for Council members. He added that membership in Council does not turn over very often and it takes a while for a newly elected member to get used to the program and understand everything. A 4 year term would be positive for the person who is elected, as well as for the City. He said they can consider doing what the School Board does, which would be to have all of the At-Large candidates run at one 2-year time and all of the Wards run at the other 2-year time. This would give anyone the opportunity to run for a position every 2 years if they still want to be involved on Council and not be closed out for an entire 4-year period. A candidate could run for a Ward in one 2-year period and At-Large the other 2-year period. Mr. Moran said the average length of a Council member’s term is approximately 8 to 10 years. Mrs. Bartolozzi said since the City has been established there are only a half dozen people who served only 1 term. Typically, they run for the second term, they are re-elected and there is longevity in their service of Council. It was clarified through discussion that if the City chose to stagger elections, terms for Council members would have to be 4 years.
Mr. Snyder asked how they should present this to the
community so it does not get voted down again.
Mr. Moran said it should be presented to the community and advertised in
a way that is positive, weighing a 2 year term versus a 4 year term. He said that the next term coming up would
still be 2 years away and that term would be a 4 year term. In that situation, he said it wouldn’t seem
as if they are trying to communicate that we have the people inside Council
right now and we want to keep those people in for 4 years. Mr. Snyder said that the At-Large members
would have to do 1 more 2-year term while the Ward people would do a 4 year
term, and thereafter they would be in sync.
Mrs. Bartolozzi said it is her
understanding that the last time this was taken to the voters, it was
determined that they like to have the choice to vote for a Councilperson every
2 years because they like the job he or she is doing. It seems that if things are going well and
people are satisfied, they will stay with the Council person they have. She said she does not see the residents being
interested in changing just for the sake of change. Also, she said that when there
are about 19 issues on the ballot she feels that people are not interested in
reading all of them, so they either don’t vote or they vote “no” on
everything. Mrs. McGovern said she does
not interpret it that way. Mr. Moran
said that the average voter in
At-Large Councilperson, Anjanette Arabian, came forward to say she would be in favor of staggered 4 year terms for Council members. She is one of 4 new members of Council voted in this year and, in her opinion, it is nice to have the 3 veteran members on Council to lead the way and answer questions. If it ever happened where 7 new members were elected at once, she said that while it would be a positive for the City because change is always good, it might also slow the process for the Council who is charged with making sure the City is running in a proper and efficient manner. She feels the staggered terms would definitely be a positive. This way, they are guaranteed to have someone with experience to lead the process for the new members who join Council.
Mayor Bobst came forward with some follow-up information concerning a discussion they had last week. She said she contacted the Board of Elections and was shocked at what she heard regarding the City’s actual cost of an election. She distributed additional information to the Commission Member from the Board of Elections, saying she would like to note the following 3 things:
1. On September 18, 2007, the City had a primary election only in Ward 3. The cost to the City for that election was close to $25,000. She added that this also speaks to another issue before them, which is changing the date of our primary so it coincides with primaries in every other community in Cuyahoga County. There will be substantial cost savings to the City if we do that.
2. On November 6,
2007, we held our local municipal elections.
The cost to the City was $41,000. At that time, the schools paid an additional
$41,000 for their election of School Board members during that election, for a
total of $82,000 of cost to the City of
3. In the March primary that was just held by the State, there was a levy for the Rocky River schools along with a County issue. For that election, the Schools only had to pay for the printing on the ballots. Everything else was paid for by the State who pays all the costs for a State Primary. The additional printing on the ballot for that issue was split with the county. The total was $3,000 and the school’s portion was $1,500.
Directing their attention to the information she provided, Mayor Bobst said that going forward, a full municipal election of all 26 precincts will now cost the City more than $61,000. She added that these dollars come directly off of our property tax receipts, meaning that this amount is deducted before we get our property tax revenues.
It was confirmed that if we switch our primary date to coincide with the County date, our costs would reduce significantly. Mayor Bobst said that for absentee ballots alone, there is a minimum charge of $15,000. For a City-only election, the City of Rocky River has to bear that entire cost. However, if there are several communities holding elections at the same time, then that cost is spread across all of them. Mayor Bobst said that part of the reason for these expenses is that State Code has changed, allowing them to charge back things to cities that they never could before.
Mrs. Bartolozzi said there have been suggestions made that a special election should be held to fill a sudden vacancy in the Mayor’s position as well as a Council member’s position. If that were to happen, then the cost to the City for each election would be $61,000. The Mayor confirmed that.
Ward 3 Councilman Michael Mylen came forward to say that the Commission should be aware that there would not be any cost relief if the City elected to have staggered 4 year terms because there would always be an election every 2 years. He added that the possibility of having 7 newly elected Council members, with a new Law Director and a new Mayor, all at the same time, would make things difficult because nobody would be familiar with procedure.
Section 3 – Qualifications. It was decided that since they are proposing to review military service for the Mayor, they should also review it for Council.
Mayor Bobst said as a follow-up to their discussion last
week, she contacted the City of Lyndhurst who most recently considered the
military service issue and found that their Charter and Ordinances are silent
on military service. She said their
issue is with compensation because the State allows for someone to remain in
their position even though they are serving in the military. She confirmed with Mr. Bemer that
Mr. Bemer said State statute exists that provides for up to 1 month paid compensation for any public employee on active military duty. There have been ordinances superseding or overriding that State statute and the Ohio Supreme Court has deemed that, even though a municipal ordinance is in conflict with a State statute regarding the 1 month paid leave, it is an appropriate exercise of home rule authority. He said we also have a Federal statute that provides for anti-discrimination against military personnel, allowing for any municipality to provide up to a total of 5 years leave of absence for any public employee who is in the military. Mr. Bemer said that leave of absences seem to be guided by State law but the payment for a leave of absence is controlled by home rule authority of a municipality.
The Commission decided to include the residency requirement of both Mayor and Council on the master list for further discussion. Also, since even a minor spelling change or a change to anything in the Charter for the sake of clarity would have to be placed on the ballot, they decided not to propose those changes.
Section 4 – Organization. No comments or discussion.
Section 5 – Duties of the President of Council. Mr. Lazzaro asked Council President Moran if he feels any additional duties should be added to his position. Mr. Moran said he thinks the President of Council’s primary duty is to communicate to the rest of Council. He said the Council’s basic role is legislative, so for them to be doing a lot of things would not be appropriate. There are a lot of people in the City who have roles and responsibilities and he does not think the President should have a lot of duties and powers.
Section 6 – Removal. Mrs. Bartolozzi said she feels that topic is covered fairly completely in the Charter. Mr. O’Donnell said he has looked at other Charters and said many of them provide that the Council may remove the Mayor. Our Charter does not provide for this, but asked Mayor Bobst and Council President Moran if they feel this belongs in the Charter or whether it would be giving Council too much power. Mayor Bobst said that she has not given the issue a lot of thought and referred to the strong mayor form of government discussed last week. She said that of all of the organizations and institutions in the City that would be able to evaluate the performance of a Mayor, it is City Council. Mr. Bemer said that the removal of Mayor Knoble was done by judicial declaration. It was part of a plea agreement that was accepted by the Court. He added that Article VIII, Section 2 discusses recall. Mrs. Bartolozzi said she is not in favor of Council being in a position to decide they don’t like the Mayor and have the power to throw coup. It is an elected position and Council should not have that authority. It was decided this issue would be discussed further when they review Article VIII – Recall.
Section 7. Vacancies. Since they touched on vacancies earlier in the meeting when they discussed terms of office, there was no further comment by the Commission regarding vacancies.
Section 8. Quorum. Mrs. McGovern asked for an explanation about the day-to-day meetings held with less than a quorum. She asked whether they can keep a meeting going if that is the case. Mr. Moran said they can have a meeting, but they need to have 6 members present to pass legislation. Mr. O’Donnell said he believes the purpose of this section is so Council cannot decide to walk out and stop all City work. It is included to stop the possibility of a filibuster. Mr. Urban said the other way it works is that if there are 4 people and they need 6 votes, they can adjourn until tomorrow when 2 more people will be present.
As a follow-up, Mr. Lazarro said this section references penalities, and asked Mr. Bemer what penalties are in the Ordinance. Mr. Bemer said he is not sure there are any penalties. Mr. Lazarro said it seems that the Charter references penalties but there are none. Mr. O’Donnell said it references penalties “…as may be prescribed by Ordinance,” so it does not state that there has to be penalties.
Section 9. Meetings. Mrs. Bartolozzi said that the Charter provides that Council only needs to meet twice during each calendar month. At times it has been suggested that they do away with the Committee-of-the-Whole meetings on a separate week and do them preceding the legislative meeting. However, she said that can provide for some very long meetings. She feels it helps to have the separation between meetings, so Council has time to digest certain issues and get a feel from the pulse of the community before they vote to pass legislation. She thinks it works well the way it is currently structured. However, it gives Council the option to change the way meetings are structured if they so choose. Mayor Bobst said that Committee-of-the-Whole meetings are not required by Charter but they are very productive for all Council members who are considering the passage of legislation.
Mrs. Bartolozzi said that the provision referring to the period where no meeting is held is not to exceed 30 days is referring to the month of August when Council does not meet. Mr. Moran said the purpose of the 30 days in August is to coordinate vacation times for members of Council. He said having that month off is important so there is less chance they will have 4 or 5 members missing a meeting in the summer. The Mayor said that if the Administration should require some legislative action be taken during the month of August, then City Council members are aware that they may be requested to convene. It is not as though everything shuts down
Section 10. Special Meetings. Discussion was made regarding the media having to be notified under the Sunshine Act if a special meeting is going to be held. Mr. Snyder said he believes the Sunshine Law says that if there is a specific media organization that has asked to be notified of a special meeting, then they have to be on a list. Mr. Bemer said we have an Ordinance that addresses posting of special meetings and notice to the news media. The Commission discussed the provision which states that notice is required to be posted on a bulletin board in the lobby of City Hall. The question of whether the Charter should be revised to include posting via the website, e-mails, faxes, or other ways using today’s technology was raised. Mrs. McGovern said that they discussed that 6 years ago and it was decided that if a new method of communication is mentioned, it would continually have to be changed because of the way technology changes. Mr. Lazzaro wondered if they should consider just saying “posted” and let the Ordinance focus on how it is posted. Mrs. Bartolozzi said it would make it more general and would provide for all the new ways of communicating, but unless they want to change it more substantially, she feels a change that small is counterproductive. Mr. Bemer said that our Charter allows for the mandate of proper noticing of 24 hours. He said he believes we have the discretion as to how that is accomplished. Mrs. Bartolozzi said she believes the intent of the Charter is that word must be given out to the masses and how that is accomplished can be refined and updated with modern technological advances. It was decided that the issue of the means of posting would be added to the master list of items to be discussed further.
Section 11. Salaries, Compensations and Bonds. Mrs. Bartolozzi said she has questions about the Charter’s reference to Bonds. Mr. Bemer said a Bond is a surety or a backing of financial responsibility to assure performance of something. He said this does not refer to the passage of municipal bonds. Mr. Urban said he would think the Director of Finance or any other person handling money has a bond. Mr. Bemer said there is a bond for our Director of Finance.
Mr. Lazzaro asked if it is Council who sets the salaries for City employees. Mayor Bobst said that a salary Ordinance is prepared annually for Council’s consideration. They review the compensation for all City employees for bargaining unit and non-bargaining unit employees. From time to time during the year there may be adjustments made. She said that Council holds the purse strings and that is where they get their power and authority. While we prepare the Ordinance, it must be forwarded to them for their consideration and passage. Mr. Bemer said there are recommendations made through the Mayor’s office and Human Resource office to Council. The police and fire personnel are part of a collective bargaining unit so their rates are negotiated and are incorporated in the annual compensation Ordinance.
Section 12. Clerk of Council. No Comments or discussion.
Section 13. Enactment of Zoning Ordinances. Mrs. Bartolozzi said she had a problem with a very long sentence on the second page, beginning with “The failure to substantially comply with the foregoing public hearing and notice requirement…” She feels that this is an example of how the wordiness of some sections of the Charter causes the meaning to be lost. It was determined that all of the information in that sentence is there for a reason and that it does make sense.
Referring to Section13, where it states that the notice of the hearing shall be mailed by the Clerk of Council by certified mail at least 20 days prior, Mayor Bobst said she would like to clarify the issue of certified mail and who is noticed. In so many households, both individuals work, so picking up certified mail becomes an issue and it ends up back at City Hall because it was not picked up. When that happens, the Clerk of Council sends a notice out by regular mail. A few years ago, when Grandview was being proposed, condominiums were abutting a parcel of land on River Oaks. The decision was made at that time that every condominium owner had to be noticed of that zoning change. Council Clerk, Misao Kurokawa added that she thought there were about 300 notices that were sent by certified mail at $5.00 each. We certainly want to make sure our residents are aware of a rezoning, but Mayor Bobst asked the Commission to consider whether there is a way to be sure that every property owner receives notice of a rezoning without the use of certified mail. It was discussed whether notice could be delivered by a City employee, but it was determined that there is no way to prove they actually received it because the notices would be delivered during work hours. Mr. Moran said it is difficult to depend on the Condominium Homeowners Association to distribute the information to the Condominium owners. In his experience, they do not always distribute the information when you ask them to. Mr. Urban pointed out that the Charter does not say that notice must be personally served. It merely says that a resident must be notified. To save substantial dollars, he proposed the Council Clerk send them by regular mail with proof of service. This way, the post office receipt can be attached to the notice and there is a savings of $5.00 or $6.00. Mr. Lazarro suggested that they follow-up with certified mail if any are returned to the City. It was decided this issue would be added to the master list for further discussion.
Section 14. Action on Mapped Streets. It was decided that this section would be discussed with Building Commissioner, Kevin Beirne, when he is invited to attend the review of Article VI, Boards and Commissions.
Section 15. Legislative Procedure. No comments or discussion.
Section 16. Effective Date of Ordinances or Resolutions. No comments or discussion.
Section 17. Emergency Ordinances or Resolutions. No comments or discussion.
Section 18. Adoption of Ordinances by Reference. Mrs. Bartolozzi said she has a question
regarding the last sentence and the cost of copies of the Code. She asked Mr. Bemer if we charge people for copies.
Mr. Bemer said this comes under the
umbrella of public records requests. He
said they modified the Ordinance in the last year following his attendance at a
public records seminar. He said it was
determined that $.05 per page is the customary norm in northeast
Section 19. Independent Audit. No comments or discussion.
Section 20. Dedicated Parks. Mr. Lazzaro said he is confused about the meaning of the last paragraph in this section. He said it reads as if Council can get rid of a park for up to 1 year. He asked if under this section, Council can give Rocky River Park to somebody for up to 1 year. Mr. O’Donnell said that he reads the passage of an emergency measure in reference to how ordinances or resolutions are passed in an expedited manner. There are still the checks and balances like with every other emergency bill that is passed. He feels it is not a problem to have Council in control of it. Mrs. McGovern said that they may need to fix the sewers in the park and in matters of public safety they may need to restrict people from it.
It was determined that the topics to be moved to the master list for further discussion are as follows:
They will also be deferring to Building Commissioner, Kevin Beirne, for clarification of Article III, Section 14.
The next meeting of the Charter Review Commission will be held on Thursday, March 27, 2008. They will be discussing Article IV – Administrative Departments and Article VII – Finances. Mr. Urban and Mr. O’Donnell will lead the discussion. It was determined that Law Director, Andy Bemer, Safety Service Director, Jim Linden, and Finance Director, Michael Thomas will be invited to attend next week. Their presence will be requested at 7:30 p.m. so as to give the Commission an opportunity for discussion among themselves at 7:00 p.m.
There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 8:50 p.m.
Date Linda Bartolozzi, Co-Chairperson
Kate Straub, Secretary