Lino Charter Commission Completes Review
Submits Alternate Charter Amendment To Council
LINO LAKES - Following its review of the City Council's proposed amendment to the city charter, the Charter Commission officially submitted its own version of an amendment to City Clerk Julie Bartell on Nov. 30 and presented an overview of its eff orts to council members at the council workshop of Dec. 3.
"We spent many hours over the last five months hashing out all of the issues," Home Rule Charter Commission Chair Cori Duffy told council members.
"We did recognize there was a need for change in the language of the charter to accommodate road reconstruction," she said, adding that commission members worked for a balance between maintaining the rights of the citizens and addressing what the needs of the city are.
To that end, the group met at least ten times over the review period and retained independent legal counsel, funded from the city budget, to help them in the process.
In meeting with the Charter Commission, attorney Karen Marty assisted commissioners in drafting "regular language that people can understand," Duffy said, which she says eliminated some of the current "clumsy" language.
In proposing that the city-wide referendum be eliminated, Duffy said the commission tried to substitute a process "where the citizens and the city could work together to come up with a project that everybody could agree on."
Having an informed and involved citizenry, Duffy said in a later interview, is a better way to get projects built.
"When you don't understand the issue, you tend to vote against it, especially when it has something to do with your checkbook," she said. "We took it really to heart to get the citizens and the city to work together."
The result is a substitute amendment that, according to the Charter Commission's Nov. 30 letter to the city, "strikes a better balance between the concerns of the City Council and the concerns shared by many Lino Lakes residents."
The letter requests the commission's amendment be placed on the 2008 November ballot. By taking action at its Dec. 10 regular meeting, the City Council is "formally recognizing the receipt of that amendment within the statutory timeline," City Administrator Gordon Heitke explained.
The city's charter currently requires that a public referendum be held for city road reconstruction projects that use public funds to pay for the improvements.
In the past, Charter Commission members have maintained that the public referendum gives voters a necessary voice in street improvement projects, and have opposed charter changes that would ask residents to surrender their rights to limit city spending on road reconstruction projects.
City council and staff members believe the referendum requirement makes it virtually impossible for the city to reconstruct city streets identified by its pavement management program as "problem" roads, pointing to a string of failed referendums in recent years.
The Charter Task Force, a group of volunteer citizens convened by the council in February 2007 to study the charter issue, recommended in its proposed charter amendment that the city-wide referendum be eliminated.
It was the work of the Charter Task Force that was presented to the Charter Commission for its review last July, which led to the development of its own amendment proposal.
Whether the council's amendment, the commission's amendment, or some hybrid of the two will end up on the November 2008 ballot remains to be seen.
Although council did not identify a formal review process for the commission's proposal, Mayor John Bergeson stated that a "thorough review and comparison of the two amendment proposals will be conducted," and a "dialogue with the Charter Commission" will take place early next year.
The commission's amendment was also referred to the city attorney for review, a process that the mayor, at least, expected to generate some comment.
"I've never heard two attorneys agree on anything," he said at the council workshop.