04/24/2006 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Minutes of the Regular Meeting of Council Apri124, 2006 Page 2 School District on the ballot for May. Essentially this is to maintain the status quo. There is technically a slight increase in the tax although the millage actually drops down a little bit. The bottom line is this is something essential to the School District. Voicing our support for that public institution is appropriate. The other item of legislation involves the Resolution Mayor Rinker has asked to be put before Council involving the TEL amendment which is on the November ballot regarding the Constitutional amendment. We have been talking about this on and off. Phil was the first to announce it several meetings ago. In the interim, we have been trying to relay information, a lot of it coming from the Mayors and Managers Association. Also, just about every time you pick up the newspaper, there is commentary and input that we get. Mayor Rinker still stands by something he said in the last meeting which is he thinks that we should encourage the debate using the forum of the Council for that purpose. On the other hand, he has asked Mary Beth to circulate to everyone what he thinks is a very cogent editorial submitted to this week's Crain's by the past President of the Mayors and Managers Association, Bruce Akers, Republican Mayor of Pepper Pike and the current President of the Association, Deborah Sutherland from Bay Village, also a Republican. It is noteworthy that these are two Republicans who wanted to speak out on the issue insofar as people would view this as a partisan matter. It is safe to say that Mayors and Managers Association is clearly a bi-partisan organization and has very clearly spoken out against the TEL amendment. The thrust of this editorial focuses on three main points of the proposed legislation, the amendmerit° to the Constitution. We are not talking about a statute or something that 'the General Assembly deals with. This is a constitutional amendment. The Constitution is the highest legal document in the State of Ohio, so when you make a constitutional amendment, you really are tinkering with the main machinery of law for the State of Ohio. What is troubling about this and the features that are pointed out_ very well in this editorial is that anyone who wishes to challenge this has an easy way to get in to the courts to initiate a taxpayer's lawsuit which means the taxpayers end up paying for any disgruntled individual who will now be empowered constitutionally to raise his or her gripe through formal litigation. If anyone has any idea about the cost of litigation, we do. It is costly, time-consuming and ultimately who foots the bill? Ironically, it is going to be the taxpayers that would be voting for this curve on government spending. Secondly, any time this body wants to increase its budgetary spending by more than 3- 1/2% over the preceding year regardless of whether it is for all of our contract employees, public improvements, you name it. Anything that would fall within that 3-1/2% automatically because this is a constitutional provision requires a vote and the vote is not of those people who are registered who actually show up to vote but anyone that is counted on in the rolls as being a registered voter in affect, unless you get a super majority, you will not be able to pass this legislation because people who do not vote actually have a vote that would cancel the proposed expenditure. Finally, the other point that they bring out is the shotgun provision that says anything that is in conflict with this is suddenly automatically eradicated. In other words, it has a broad scope and in one fell swoop, years of legislative enactments, other constitutional provisions, for