Lino Lakes Ledger
First Reading Of New Charter Amendment Passes
Over a year has passed since the Citizen's Task Force was authorized by the Lino Lakes City Council to study the issue of whether an amendment to Chapter 8 of the city's charter was necessary to facilitate the reconstruction of city streets.
Currently, the charter requires a city-wide referendum for such improvement projects.
The Task Force developed an amendment that was submitted by the council for the Charter Commission's review. Following its review, Charter Commission members spent 5 months with the help of an attorney developing an alternative amendment; the commission submitted the fruits of its labor to council in December 2007. Both amendments recommended elimination of the citywide referendum. However, according to minutes of the city's March 3 workshop, a legal review indicated the Charter Commission's amendment "would actually make it harder to fix roads in the city." At its meeting of March 24, the Lino Lakes City Council sent the ball back over the net with a tweaked version of the Citizen's Task Force amendment: council held the first reading of Ordinance No. 05-08. The ordinance passed 4-0 (Council Member Dan Stoltz was absent.)
"It's basically starting over again," City Clerk Julie Bartell told council members at their workshop preceding the council meeting. "It's the same ordinance we sent them before, with one exception," she said.
That exception is the elimination of the charter-exempt zones contained within the charter amendments developed by both the Task Force and the Charter Commission. Those charter-exempt zones, originally included in the city's charter to ease financial burdens on residential property owners within developing commercial areas, raised red flags for city bond counsel Steve Bubul from Kennedy & Graven.
Bubul told council members at their March 3 workshop that having exempt areas creates differing rights among property owners and could compromise the city's ability to sell tax-exempt bonds. The difference in cost to city taxpayers between the sale of taxable and tax-exempt bonds to finance public improvements would be "significant," according to Bubul.
The 60-day clock has now begun for the Charter Commission to review the council's latest proposal. Th at 60-day review process will expire May 26, Bartell said. Should the commission require more time, it can request a 90-day extension, which would bring the process to August 23. According to Bartell, that allows just enough time for a second reading prior to Anoka County's deadline for ballot submissions, which follows the council's Sept. 8 meeting by a matter of days.