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Minutes of a Public Hearing On Proposed Charter Review Revisions 8-10-10 Page 2 it to go on the ballot. So this November you will all have a chance to make a decision on that which you are discussing tonight. We are all here to answer your questions as best we can on those issues that will be on the ballot. As the Mayor and Council President Buckholtz has indicated, the meeting will be open. We will hear your discussions. We will try and answer your questions. The meeting will be closed. No vote will be taken. No vote will be taken to change anyone's rights until November when the voters have a chance to do that. That being said, I have a meeting with the Charter Review Commission every five years in this community. That has been going on since 1974 with my predecessors in this position. Your first Charter was adopted in 1974. To give you a little background, like I do to each Charter Review Commission, I would like to explain a little bit of Civics which you may have lost grasp of over the years because it's 6th grade Civics. Back in the beginning of the United States when we were first formed, the colonies or individual States formed together to make a union. That union was called the United States. They wanted to preserve the rights of the individuals in each State by what they call a Constitution. The Constitution of the United States creates certain rights inalienable to every individual in the country and to every individual in Mayfield Village. As the State's rights began to develop, some States wanted to do certain things and others didn't. The Federal Government would usually be the arbiter of what was the basic fundamental rights of all Federal citizens of the United States. When the Federal Government did something, it had to be followed. The States could have their own individual Constitution, their own governments, but they could not contradict whatever the Federal Government had in their Constitution or in the Federal statutes. As you all know, it went through the Civil War where that issue was fought, and bitterly fought in the worst War this country has ever been involved in. In the Civil War, the Union, or the Federal Government, prevailed over individual States' rights to do whatever they wanted to do. That being resolved in 1865, we have now lived under the government where the United States Constitution is the prevailing dogma as to all of our individual rights. All of the States accepted that from that point forward and that's the way we have been living. Ohio became a State in the United States. They adopted their own Constitution. In their Constitution, they have a Governor and a State legislature. In the beginning, they had what was called a County and Township Government. The State was divided up into counties and townships. All laws were adopted by the State legislature. The State Capitol would dictate how you would farm, how you would build, how you would police, how you would put out fires. It was all dictated from the central government of the State of Ohio. In the late 1800's, the industrial revolution, the State of Ohio, like many other states, began to experience difficulty between the industrial and the rural areas of their states. Places like