08/10/2010 Meeting Minutes - Laserfiche WebLink

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Minutes of a Public Hearing On Proposed Charter Review Revisions 8-10-10 Page 4 whole bunch of laws to protect our citizens. No one can change that. This Council can't. The Mayor can't. The Law Director can't. The police can't. Those are rights that every citizens in the U.S. has. State government cannot go against those. The State government has certain government that we as individuals in Mayfield Village can't go against. So, lo and behold, this community which is now called Mayfield Village, in 1974, carved out its geographical boundaries and separated from what was then Mayfield Township. Mayfield Township then was reduced by the size of Mayfield Village. You seceded from the union of the Township and you became Mayfield Village, a chartered government with your own Mayor, your own Council, your own laws, and your own government. That's the way it's been since 1974. The original voters in this community adopted the Charter that you lived under and that you live under today. And one of the provisions they have in that Charter is that every five years citizens need to be appointed from among the residents' electors in this community who will get together and within five months study the Charter from beginning to end. The Charter is pretty thin. It's not a big document, about the size of the Constitution of the United States. It's really not a big document but the words are very important. Why are they important? Because we all take an oath of office, just like we saluted the flag to protect our nation, we all took an oath of office to protect this Charter. No one can go against it. No one can violate it. So when the Charter says the Charter Review Commission must review the Charter and make recommendations for changes and it shall go on the ballot, that is a Constitutional requirement that we can't stop. It must go forward and it will go forward in November of this year. The other provisions in this Charter, many of which have been changed over the years, are meant to be reviewed and changed for a specific reason, just like our government was created from the United States going forward. We are a patchwork of individual thoughts, Court decisions, new laws that come together to represent the current population the way we are today_ We never had a Department of Homeland Security. Why do we have that? Because of circumstances that occurred. We never had an EPA. Why did that happen? Because of circumstances that occurred over time. So the Federal government makes changes to adapt to current conditions. The State of Ohio makes changes to adapt to current situations. Nlayfield Village must adapt to current situations by modifying its Charter from time to time as recommended by its citizens, approved by its citizens and implemented by us the Administration and the Council. That being said, on February lst, we swore in your Charter Review Commission, gave them the same little spiel I gave you tonight, told them to go forward,and do your job to make sure that our Charter is current and relevant to today's needs in this society. They did that. They did it deliberately and very efficiently. They met on numerous occasions. They invited the public. They invited government officials. They invited employees. They invited everyone to come and give their thought process on our Charter and what needed to be changed in our day-to-day working relationships with other citizens and businesses in this community. In the process of doing that, they read every single sentence in the Charter. They examined it. They made their recommendations at the end of the five-month period. Those have resulted in