08/17/2015 Meeting Minutes (2) - Laserfiche WebLink

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Minutes of the Regular Meeting of Council Monday, August 17, 2015 Page 2 Council President Marcie asked, what is it? Mr. Christian replied, the Notice of Public Hearing for tonight. I got it tonight. Some people haven't gotten it yet. Council President Marcie apologized. Mr. Christian stated, you need to do a better job of getting the word out. Council President Marcie stated, we have members of the Charter Review Commission here this evening, Chairman Paul Fikaris, Al Hehr, Tom Piteo, Merv Singer and Ron DiNardo. Paul, would you like to say a few words before we throw it open to the floor? Corrunents from Chairman Paul Fikaris -Charter Review Conunission Good evening everybody. My name is Paul Fikaris. I live on Oakwood. I am the Chairman of the 2015 Charter Review Commission. Just a quick review. As per the Charter, every. 5 years, the Mayor and each Council person choose a representative for the Charter Review Commission. Our job was to review the Charter and make any recommendations. We were not required to make recommendations but we had about 10 meetings where we took apart the Charter bit by bit and reviewed it. We discussed it and made recommendations amongst ourselves. I would be remiss if I did not say we had a lot of help from Joe Diemert, our Law Director. I introduce again Al Hehr, Tom Piteo, Merv Singer and Ron DiNardo who is with us this evening. Vetus Syracuse, Stivo DiFranco and Jim Sheridan could not be here. We spent a lot of time and deliberations tallcing about different things that we thought we could make improvements on. We made some suggestions. That's why we are here tonight. There were 6 suggestions. I will go through each of them: Shall Mayfield Village Charter Article III, Section 4, be amended to substitute the term "Civic Center" for "Village Hall" in this section and throughout the Charter where applicable? This is a very simple language change. Village Hall does not exist anymore. Whether we were thorough or went overboard, we look at everything in the Charter. Shall Mayfield Village Charter Article III, Section 6, be amended to pr®vide an increase in elected official compensation for the first time in 15 years? This deals with compensation of our elected officials, Council and Mayor. How this is set up in the Charter is that Council itself makes a recommendation to raise their own salaries. We noticed that that has not happened since 2000. These folks serve technically on a part-time basis, but I would not say that much is part-time. What we proposed was a one-time increase in their salaries based on the consumer price index since the last time it happened in 2000. The numbers that were given were modest. Technically if you would plug in the year 2000, economic dollars would equal to roughly less than or roughly equal 1 t