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

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Minutes of the Regular Meeting of Council Monday, August 17, 2015 Page 6 The initial proposal was could variations occur? We felt that was too truncated. That was too much authority to take out of all of your hands because so much of this can be done in that direct Democracy approach where each one of you decide whether those variations occur and how they occur. I have been in Mayfield Village since 1968. It's done pretty good getting to where it is now. Our Charter is pretty solid. The small changes we made are really those that will allow the definitions so to speak of what is commercial and what is industrial versus light industrial. That would allow those people that can quickly make those changes to make them. Like you, I am often suspect of government. What this did is this allowed us to remain suspect of govermnent because we have kept the focus narrow and kept our Council people responsible and that responsibility has been laid at their feet and has done reasonably well over the last several years and we want to keep it that way. We also want to be able to vary according to the time. That was the overall objective behind our Commission, to keep responsibility for what happens in our Village with us to allow mild variations to occur. We did not have pressure. We did not initiate large formatted changes. We want to keep every 5 years at least coining back to the people and saying "do you like where we are at?" Mr. Diemert stated, the Charter Review Commission made sure that no legislation could be passed in one meeting or without a 30 day waiting period which gives the voters the right of referendum so that a limited number of voters could sign a petition if you didn't like it and you went to the public meeting and Council did it anyway. You could still circulate petitions and put it on the ballot. It wouldn't become law until the voters voted. They left that protection in there as well. Mr. Hehr asked, Mr. Diemert, how many people are required on that, do you recall? Mr. Diemert replied, I think it's 10% of the electors at the last Governor's race so it's probably 150. Mr. Hehr stated, so it's a really small number. Mr. Diemert replied, yes. Mayor Rinker added, in the time I have been Mayor, I have worked with a number of Charter Review Commissions. My experience, every single one, and they are all different in composition, this question about the referendum voting has arisen. From afar the perception is that you are making some change in the zoning classification. Eastlake is a good example where it was changing residential to some non-residential use. That's typically what gets people going. We have had a number of referendum issues where we have actually gone through and changed a zoning classification through the vote of the people. The most recent one was the Deacon's property to allow that expansion. What's not so obvious and this is why I I'~