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 5 the Ordinances which are now before Council. The reason it has to come to Council for them to pass it is to make sure the language is what the Charter Review Commission suggested, make sure the language is not contradictory to the Ohio Constitution, make sure it is not contradictory to the United States Constitution, and to pass it on within a limited time period and get it to the Board of Elections before September 2°d so that it can appear on the ballot on November 2nd After Council pushes this on to the Board of Elections, a copy of the proposed amendments will go to every citizen in the community. Every elector will get a copy in the mail. It will be published in the newspaper. We will try every possible way to get folks aware of what the proposed changes are. The Mayor and Council suggesting this public hearing is the first time that we are opening it up to the public other than the Charter Review Commission doing it during the course of their study, inviting anyone who had any comments. The proposed amendments will be published twice in the newspaper 30 days before and 15 days before. They will be sent to all residents at least 30 days before the election. That's basically the background as to how the Charter Review Commission comes to do their job on your behalf. I will sumrnarize briefly what the particular Ordinances are that they are recommending for change. These Ordinance numbers are not what the ballot numbers will be. Once we send this to the Board of Elections, the Board of Elections will put an Issue number on each of these questions. I do not know what those numbers will be. The Board of Elections will probably not publish those until September sometime where they will put a number on it and then we will know what those numbers are and it will be called Issue 1, 2, 3 4 or Issue 19, 20, 21, 22. We just don't know yet. Once we do, those Issue numbers will be published and made known to the residents. 1. ORDINANCE NO. 2010-22 This amendment is proposing that the definitions and the gender and grammar throughout the Charter be modified. What does that mean? It means throughout the Charter that originally was adopted in 1974, we referred to "policemen"; we said "he" everywhere throughout the Charter; we said "him" in most places throughout the Charter; and we kind of left out the possibility that it might apply to a she or to a patrolperson. The Commission thought the gender throughout the Charter should be corrected to be more current with the way we talk these days. As a result, they have recommended that the Charter be amended to correct all of those gender areas, and clarify some of the definitions and grammatical mistakes that they found throughout the Charter. The English teacher that happened to be among us this time pointed out the important things that need to be corrected. As a result, we are making those kinds of corrections. So, that's more of just a housekeeping-type of correction.