[0:02] okay chair you would like to call this meeting to order okay I will call the charter commission meeting of Thursday

[0:09] 2025 to order we need a roll call or um I can't remember that i don't know that

[0:16] we need roll call chair but it's helpful to get the for the recording secretary you can do that then um Rod

[0:26] Axel Ronald Barnes here karen Linquist

[0:32] lenquist was saying to here John Eagle here kathy Gusen is

[0:39] a she indicated that she was unable to attend cynthia Hunt here rana Lindell

[0:45] here j Maja here jeanie McGovern

[0:50] emily Melby here uh I haven't perfected this name yet ling lingala oru

[1:01] here michael Ramirez here welcome thank you

[1:09] mark Thorson here

[1:14] you have a quorum thank you um so before um before we get started on the agenda I

[1:20] want to welcome Michael to the chair commission um and typically what we do when we have somebody new is we kind of

[1:26] go around and introduce ourselves so I'll I'll kind of kick it off and just kind of go around this way and take so

[1:32] I'm Steve Peterson i think I've been cursed of being the chair for two years now I think and decided to give it up

[1:39] and I didn't quickly enough appoint you to propose somebody else to do it um my history kind of with being

[1:46] involved in kind of city affairs is I got involved in the planning commission in 1996

[1:52] i was elected to the city council starting in 2000 i was on the city council from 2000 until 2000 the

[1:58] beginning of 2014 um and I'm involved in the charter commission and I'm also a member of the

[2:04] board of the port authority at the city yeah so

[2:11] Juj I've been on the commission for almost two years now surprising um yeah

[2:20] it's me first commission first commission for me in the city of Bloomington so cool

[2:25] uh Mark Thorson um I've been on a number of commissions over many many years uh

[2:32] primarily planning housing and redevelopment authority and now the charter commission

[2:38] uh Mike lived in Bloomington for since

[2:44] 2017 work in city government i work in parks and recreation i used to work for the city of Bloomington and now I work

[2:51] for the city of Egan so happy to be here yeahelcome here i do still live here yes

[2:59] that's the Yes absolutely otherwise we'd have to take a look

[3:04] i I do live here i have my loyalty is to Bloomington folks he signed me there we go well welcome

[3:12] John Eagle uh uh I think this is my second year on and um a heating air

[3:20] conditioning business in Bloomington lived here for 46 years I think it is now so welcome

[3:29] emily Melby um I've lived in Bloomington since 2014

[3:35] um and have been on the charter commission for three weeks

[3:41] cynthia Hunt I uh many many years ago was on the planning commission had the pleasure of serving at various points

[3:47] with Mark and Steve um and then was on um well started on this many many years

[3:54] ago um after planning and also was on the Bloomington on the board of the Bloomington Convention of Visitors Brow

[4:01] Too and then I've also been on um the Port Authority as commissioner for a number of years

[4:07] so welcome to our group hi Michael i'm Ronalyn Del and I've been a member of

[4:13] this commission I think this is my I'm into my second term now so what are we four year

[4:19] five but anyway that's yeah and um I too

[4:25] did work in municipal government for 40 years i worked for the city of South St paul as the community development

[4:31] director housing authority director so I have do have come with some background

[4:37] in in government and um and I live I've lived in Bloomington

[4:42] since 1987 i'm Ronald Barnes i've been on the

[4:50] commission my second term um I've been for 30 years

[4:59] um that I'm having there jamie Hensson city clerk and I'm Melissa

[5:06] Manderside a charter attorney and I'm coming up on my 9th anniversary with the city of Bloomington

[5:12] time flies and you're having fun i'll call 2.1 a periodic review of the city charter take it away all right uh chair

[5:21] and members endeavor to share my screen i made a PowerPoint slide which is in your packet oops I keep using the wrong

[5:27] mouse um which is in your packet and

[5:38] um sure

[5:47] um so we have um as you recall we've been marching through the charter um

[5:54] chapter by chapter and at our last meeting we covered a couple of chapters

[6:00] um specifically two and six and uh during the meeting tonight we are um

[6:08] looking into uh chapter 5 which as if you might

[6:14] remember talks about um initiative referendum and review or uh recall

[6:19] excuse me so we're doing chapter five here we've got uh 12 total chapters and we'll

[6:27] be tackling the next three more chapters next year right as you recall we we showed

[6:33] this slide at the last meeting to highlight the quantity of sections in this particular chapter and and the

[6:40] reason that we're having it as a standalone and so we're going to as we have done with each uh of these

[6:47] conversations we're going to go section by section interrupt at any time with questions and I have the city clerk here

[6:54] um and I appreciate her participation in this conversation as well as you'll see

[6:59] almost every section involves some action by the city council our city clerk um so it's helpful to have her

[7:06] here and she's done some number crunching as well that'll be helpful for us all right next

[7:13] slide right any questions before we get started section one all

[7:19] right so section one talks about at a high level the powers of the people as

[7:26] you as we've talked about in the past the the essence of a city charter is

[7:32] that you have reserved for the reserved powers for the people and they are able

[7:39] to have special powers that a statutory city they would not have so specifically

[7:45] and not every charter city has all three of these powers in Bloomington you have all three in your charter you have

[7:51] initiative and I'll I'll I'll explain these in really simplistic terms and you'll see them flushed out more as we

[7:57] go through the the the chap chapter but essentially I think you can think of as initiative as the power to start

[8:04] something the power to make law uh similar to like the legislature it's the

[8:10] the ability to initiate new laws referendum um or as we see here referral

[8:16] uh is the power to pull back on a law that the council

[8:22] has already acted on so essentially like a veto power um of an existing law and

[8:28] then recall is the power to remove officials all right and those terms are

[8:35] roughly the same in every charter in Minnesota that uses these powers all right

[8:42] so with regard to um all three of these all three of these

[8:49] um it should come as no surprise to everyone that you can't pay people or give them a gift for their

[8:55] signature that's what this this section says but it doesn't prohibit you from using legal um services or consultants

[9:04] and that sort of um outside assistance to prepare the work that's required but you can't pay somebody um or give them

[9:11] some sort of reward for in exchange for his signature all right and then the council

[9:16] can also adopt additional regulations um to implement uh these specific steps um

[9:23] in this charter hey can we go back to 5.02 first sure

[9:30] um on that first sentence it also seems like you can't be paid to circulate the

[9:36] petition so you couldn't hire people to go is that right to prevent it from doing that

[9:47] i think you could probably read it to mean that as well because it says you can't yeah render in connection with the

[9:54] circulation so yeah I would agree okay so it would have to be your committee and its volunteer

[10:02] not like your campaign herself

[10:08] yep all right so people have questions just where you're headed all right so this is

[10:16] the the first batch of sections that have to do with initiative so and you'll

[10:21] see some um a couple of years ago you look at the history down here a couple of years ago we went through in response

[10:27] to some questions from citizens we did if you might some of you might remember we did a bit of cleanup in chapter 5 and

[10:33] tried tried to uh create some commonalities between these so that it

[10:39] wasn't such a unique process with each one of them um so for example we created a petition form for each of them things

[10:46] like that just to help people um achieve what they were trying to achieve because we were getting a little bit of feedback

[10:52] that people didn't necessarily understand so we had done some cleanup back in in 21 to help people so there is

[11:00] a lot of repetition and you'll hear that um and that some of that is on purpose to try and make some of these steps the

[11:07] same at um in each of the three okay so on to the onto the show okay so each one

[11:12] of these has a committee that has to be formed by five Bloomington registered voters they have to establish a

[11:19] committee and in the instance of an initiative they have to essentially create an ordinance which is how we act

[11:27] to create laws in at the city level so they have to submit their draft ordinance to to me the city attorney um

[11:34] along with a purpose statement and then I am um required to approve it or put it

[11:42] into a legally sufficient form fit for its purpose or if I fail to do that then

[11:47] it's considered legal and they can keep moving forward um this I will say from

[11:52] my experience comes up because there's things on the internet like petition.org and things like that so sometimes people

[11:59] will circulate them and then I will find out about it and it's unclear sometimes

[12:05] whether they are trying to do this process 5.04 and so when we get

[12:11] something all the staff have been reminded like if you see something that says petition on it or it's seeming like

[12:18] it's trying to start a new law you need to let me know right away um because I

[12:23] want to get in touch with them oftentimes there's like a committee or some sort of organizer and I'll get we'll get in touch with them we'll send

[12:29] them a letter and say uh we want to clarify that you are you know are you

[12:34] trying to do what what 5.04 is or or are you doing some other approach so we have

[12:41] a system in place to address that because the clock starts ticking all right um so if it um once it is uh ready

[12:51] to go uh the ordinance is ready to go then they have to file a copy of that with with the clerk uh along with the

[12:58] five names um and and the uh of the people on their committee and then when

[13:04] they uh circulate the the signature pages to collect signatures they have to

[13:10] attach that ordinance um to each to the signature page as well as the names of

[13:15] those five people on the committee the names and the addresses of them does that make

[13:20] sense all right next slide so here is what that looks like here's a copy of

[13:27] the petition uh now in some states uh I think in South Dakota they their law

[13:33] they changed their law so it has to be all one piece of paper and so people would get like huge long pieces of paper

[13:40] yes in Bloomington can be multiple pieces of paper but they all have to be exactly the same um and so

[13:47] it when they pull them all together they submit uh the city clerk a ginormous stack of these signature pages uh and

[13:55] they fill in the blanks that are on this chart here to help them um make them all

[14:01] match and and comply with the process so you'll see on here um that it says for

[14:08] an initiative they have to get the signature signatures of at least 10% of

[14:14] the total number of votes cast in the last preceding municipal election so our

[14:19] city clerk here crunched those numbers just to give you a sense of what we're talking about for numbers so in this

[14:25] particular instance if somebody did this tomorrow they would need 2,88

[14:32] signatures from Bloomington uh residents all right any

[14:39] questions next slide so now here's like the next step

[14:45] they have to file all those signature pages at the same time with the with the city clerk um and then and then the city

[14:52] clerk um and her staff have 10 days to look through all of them dduplicate try

[14:59] and find them on the voter roles and then they have to count them make sure

[15:04] they meet the number that they need calculate the number and then meet the number if she if the clerk determines

[15:10] that it's insufficient she notifies one member of the at least one member of the committee and she has their name and

[15:16] address because they had to file that with her and then they have 30 days to fix that uh and if they can't fix it

[15:22] within 30 days then she has then the clerk notifies all of the committee members to say you were unable to do

[15:30] that you have an insufficient petition they can restart the process or the council can decide that they just want

[15:38] to put it on the ballot regardless of not having met the sufficiency requirement mr sure well the question on

[15:47] the the previous one does it have to be um I think you said resident of the city

[15:53] or does a does someone who signs a petition have to actually be a registered voter registered voter

[16:01] registered voter okay can we look them all up

[16:09] a question yeah would it be useful for the for you to get the

[16:15] telephone number and email address of the people on the committee yes firemen it it would be um they do they are uh

[16:23] like this last group had put a lot of time and effort into it and so they were periodic they were checking in with me

[16:29] quite often um but yeah that would be that would be a useful requirement as well i hearing um that I would yeah

[16:38] potential change okay write that down

[16:49] petition chair what I'm hearing is the former petition at um where it says

[16:54] address it would be like telephone number and okay

[17:01] yeah okay i have my cell phone all right next

[17:08] oh we're on 5.7 all right so now um if it's found to

[17:15] be sufficient by the clerk's office the clerk transmits notice of this to the council and we do that in an official

[17:22] way because as you'll see here the counting of days matters so the clerk notifies the council at the next time

[17:30] the council's getting together typically and then the council uh they at their

[17:35] next meeting that they can meet um they will receive that transmitt from the

[17:40] clerk and then they'll oftentimes schedule that public hearing all at the

[17:45] at that same meeting and the public hearing is like an like a public hearing on an ordinance uh in the typical way

[17:52] that you have seen it done before and then there's a clock that starts the council must take action within 65 days

[17:59] of being notified from the clerk they have to take action on that ordinance so we we publish notice in the newspaper

[18:06] it's on our city website etc um and then we hold a public hearing and then the

[18:12] council has to take action within that time period if the council the council can adopt that ordinance and then it

[18:18] becomes law um or the council can choose to not adopt it um or adopt uh a amended

[18:27] version of it if the amended version is not satisfactory

[18:32] uh to the committee um then it can trigger um the process to have to be put

[18:39] it put it on the ballot um if the committee if four fifths of the committee four of the five people on the

[18:46] committee are okay with the amended ordinance then you don't have to have an election

[18:53] any questions think about that four fifths number

[19:00] four fifths of the committee the five person committee right the five person committee did we have to Did we do this

[19:07] it wasn't exactly this version but we were checking with them um feel like we did a version of this when we were

[19:13] working on something previously we checked with them to make sure that that they were tracking

[19:19] remember which one that was it wasn't the one I was here oh okay

[19:24] okay so do not do not express their objection okay okay so it's kind of kind

[19:30] of an inverse thing right so what can happen sometimes is is we identify a

[19:35] legal issue and we point it out to them and it starts a conversation where

[19:42] they're like "Oh good point can we take care of that?" as opposed to like starting all over again um so sometimes

[19:50] everybody agrees that what we're proposing to do to tweak the language is still going to achieve what they want to

[19:56] achieve uh it's and it makes it better and more legal or more defensible or

[20:03] more understandable or what have you um so oftentimes

[20:08] uh it's not attorneys drafting these and and we know a little bit more about our code and you know the numbering or the

[20:15] labeling and whatnot so we work to try and find something that everybody agrees

[20:20] is trying to achieve the same purpose and so in many ways excuse me Mr sure um

[20:27] so in many ways that four of the five people or all five people are sort of speaking on

[20:35] behalf of the signators in many ways sort of yeah the signators aren't the

[20:40] committee on it

[20:46] any questions now the ballot a lot of these ballots

[20:54] are largely the same the ballot questions as you may have noticed we've had some ballot questions on our ballots

[21:00] recently here in Michigan they have to be yes or no city ballot questions have to be yes or no and the majority has to

[21:09] vote yes so we are we very carefully construct these questions so that the

[21:15] majority is the yes vote you know what I mean like the way that so that the goal

[21:21] of the of the purpose of the initiative or the purpose of the effort that we're hearing we construct the sentence so

[21:28] that yes means approval right yes means to put into action what they want to happen

[21:34] uh and so we oftentimes will provide those explanatory sentences at the bottom to say a yes vote means a no vote

[21:42] means you have a question hey John if a person

[21:48] Voting does not vote either way does it go as a no or is it just

[21:55] it's out of the number of people that vote so if you chose not to vote say a 100 people were issued ballots but only

[22:02] 50 of them voted on that our total would be taken out of 50 and just a note that's different than a

[22:08] constitutional question at at the at the state level we so we also can um just as a side note

[22:16] um the law authorizes local governments to spend money to educate voters on

[22:22] things like this and so we always put that the answer to that question on those FAQs for ballot questions so when

[22:30] people come up and have we have it on our website and as an explanation so people can understand how the math is

[22:37] being calculated and and we can build out those yes no explanations a little bit more than we are able to do on the

[22:43] actual ballot given the size limitations mr chair yeah a quick question in terms

[22:50] of um the structuring of the of the

[22:56] ballot so that a yes vote means approval or passing is is that universal

[23:02] among cities that that do have initiative as a state law or do you will

[23:08] you see some communities a no would mean I can't imagine what it would be but but

[23:13] the whole idea that you're structuring it as you said around a yes being approval is that it's always

[23:20] handled sure i don't know the answer to that question um I have not done that research um I think we talk about it

[23:28] here as being um you know as trying to be intentional

[23:34] about how we create the incentives and you'll or the questions you'll hear us talk about it at the council meetings

[23:40] because they have to approve the ballot language and explaining to them thought process on it so I could report back at

[23:48] the next meeting it was more of a curiosity than anything yeah

[23:54] I don't think that that's always the case with the constitutional questions i'm not sure

[23:59] when was the last time that an initiative passed and looked

[24:05] did you check that i did not check that um it's been it's been a while i don't

[24:11] remember so the litigation um chair the litigation in um just a second oh yeah

[24:17] you're good the litigation in Jennison I can't remember if it was one or two i think it was maybe one which was the

[24:22] solid waste garbage um litigation um one of the issues that was heavily um

[24:30] briefed and argued before the courts was what which what were they what were the

[24:37] petitioners trying to do and there was an argument that there were there was

[24:42] one argument that they were trying to do initiative and another argument they were trying to do referendum um and

[24:48] another argument I believe that they were trying to amend the charter uh and uh and so I think that at times people

[24:57] have tried to use some of these powers um and different approaches to to doing

[25:05] that um and one of the goals I think of this process is to increase

[25:10] understanding of of what these things are and how and what they're for um but then also when we talk to when I for

[25:17] example present to the um the Bloomington leadership program and programs like that we always talk about

[25:24] this chapter and explain to them what's happening in this chapter um and we also

[25:29] when we hear about um an effort um sometimes we'll hear about an effort to

[25:35] to do to try and use some of these powers we'll reach out to them

[25:40] especially if they have legal counsel will reach out to their lawyer and sometimes their lawyer will reach out to us and we can

[25:47] um have a conversation about what do you what are they trying to achieve and then you know offer feedback um about whether

[25:56] something is you know potentially not constitutional or what have you because it takes a lot of time to collect all

[26:01] these signatures and a lot of effort and energy and money sometimes and so we

[26:06] want to make sure that they understand what they're doing and if if and If a word needs to be four and

[26:13] they've got five and we know it needs to be different we want to be able to tell them that so that they don't get

[26:18] frustrated um and we can make that simple edit early on or at least make

[26:24] them aware of the suggestions they can consider it before they go around and collect signatures okay go ahead Michael

[26:31] yeah Mr chair um I guess just question kind of on like Mark's thing about like the yes versus no i mean I guess like

[26:38] what was the money resource of like the education that like say for rank choice voting on the last one of

[26:44] like to educate that yes vote actually meant to like repeal you know the thing

[26:51] so I mean I guess like because I guess that's where like that yes versus no

[26:58] yeah there was there was right chair and members um the educational efforts that

[27:04] I'm aware of that we've done is it's in the briefing it's in the newspaper

[27:09] um and and it's on the city website and do you post it in your anywhere else

[27:17] it's on the sample ballot um one sample ballot one other point to remember is um

[27:24] when it gets to the actual voting um the election judges are not allowed to try to help them interpret in any way um and

[27:32] so um we we have to be very careful you know navigating that but um yep we put

[27:38] we put it in the um briefing um and given this was the second goound our our

[27:43] voters were familiar with it so

[27:49] Okay I got a question would it be useful based on your comment would it be

[27:56] useful to make them specify whether they're doing the initiative well chair members is it it seems like

[28:02] in the in the trash case it wasn't obvious wasn't manifesting

[28:09] on the actual petition it does say that says initiative referendum recall yeah

[28:14] um so there I think that that particular

[28:19] example of Jennison was complicated so complicated twice um so

[28:30] um I mean I will offer that I'm always happy to have a conversation with I didn't I didn't notice that it was on

[28:35] the form so it seems like implicitly that they're saying this is a an initiative or a referendum okay we're

[28:42] trying to be as intentional as

[28:49] possible 5.9 okay um

[28:55] 5.9 this is section is pretty straightforward and saying that none of this stuff in uh is saying you can't

[29:01] also amend the the city charter um and um amending the city charter has to be

[29:08] done in accordance with the constitution and state law um so there was some question in previous some previous

[29:14] amendments that were that we suggested a tweet to make uh or challenge the

[29:20] constitutionality of them some of you that were on the charter commission might remember that so um this occasionally comes up

[29:28] next slide all right are we ready for referendum

[29:34] so similar to what we've talked about before um five Bloomington registered voters can form a committee to repeal an

[29:40] ordinance um that's on the books and they have 15 days from the date that the ordinance

[29:46] takes effect to file with a clerk so at the end of almost every ordinance we have you'll see at the end effective

[29:52] date and there is language um about when um it becomes effective

[29:58] sometimes it's on publication sometimes it's into the future um etc so that's

[30:04] why we always make sure to say that chair do you want to acknowledge our newest arrival hey welcome thank you

[30:10] sorry for my chariness for the record chair the um

[30:17] uh member McGovern um arrived at

[30:24] 7:37 right why uh is it isn't it possible after 15

[30:32] days to pursue a referendum or ordinance you

[30:38] don't uh chair and members I don't think that it's impossible i just think you can't

[30:44] use this vehicle to do it you have to use you have to you would have to talk to your council member um or um

[30:52] otherwise reach out and express your unhappiness with it um I I don't know

[30:58] exactly why the 15 days is in there other than that um the only thing that comes to my mind

[31:05] most people make decisions and infect decisions and spend money and you know

[31:11] buy land and whatnot based on um um something being statically in the

[31:17] law and so we need to provide them with certainty that certain things are going to stick uh and so the time period is

[31:25] relevant for that reason mr chair I had I had the the same kind

[31:31] of question 15 days doesn't seem very long in many ways for like word we have

[31:36] to pay attention I guess and um I mean is that something that's

[31:42] in the statute by chance or is that something that is um that if there was

[31:48] agreement on the charter commission that we would look at that number of days is it part of state statute chair members I

[31:55] don't think it's state statute um because this is a unique to Bloomington

[32:01] law um if you're interested in um I didn't do an analysis of other cities

[32:07] like we did the analysis of percentages you could certainly look and see what sort of percentages are in existence for

[32:13] other referendum cities that have referendum powers i just don't know that off top of my head but I could bring

[32:18] that back um I think it'd be interesting to explore that at at some level i think

[32:24] that would be maybe too far out there has to be a limitation of some kind that I can not only see a situation where 15

[32:31] days isn't really enough time for people to realize what might have happened and maybe but but more

[32:39] importantly and I guess it would probably just fall into one of the you know it probably fall into uh initiative

[32:45] but let's say people begin to realize the implication

[32:51] of an ordinance where maybe uh it's full effect and that takes some time so but I

[32:57] think yeah I would I would be in favor of exploring the number of days learning more about that so chair members I'll

[33:04] offer that you know there is a public hearing there's notice of a public hearing on the ordinance then the then

[33:09] there is a public hearing and then the ordinance doesn't take effect until typically publication which is 10 days

[33:16] later so it's more like 25 or more days after the public hearing that you know

[33:23] so it says 15 days after the it takes effect but it doesn't take effect until 10 days

[33:29] it is more than just two weeks yeah that's a good point about a month

[33:36] excuse me after 15 years you

[33:42] initiate a petition to

[33:48] chair and members uh I Yeah you probably could um initiative to do that yeah

[33:59] or to otherwise change it to be what you wanted yeah

[34:08] so there'd be avenues to be able to share there would be avenues to be able to navigate like if said you noticed

[34:18] 30 days 45 days later chair members the other thing I'll I'll offer is that this this process here is

[34:26] is one vehicle but there's also parliamentary procedure process in our

[34:34] council the council has rules it has the it it created it for itself the right of

[34:39] reconsideration um so it can reconsider it can um within

[34:44] within certain time periods it can also reconsider if there's an if there's an error so if there was a factual error or

[34:53] a clerical error or something like that it can reconsider on its own and issued on its own prerogative to do that uh and

[35:00] it has um it has done that on a couple of occasions that I can remember uh it

[35:05] can reconsider on that same meeting which is more typical parliamentary procedure but we've actually changed it so it can reconsider at the subsequent

[35:12] meeting as well that the immediate meeting so we have some robust

[35:19] reconsideration um rules on our part for the council

[35:28] already all right so similar to what we discussed that's set up for a referendum

[35:36] and as um uh our city clerk crunched the numbers and for here for this referendum

[35:42] based on our last election it would be 3,132 signatures of registered Bloomington voters

[35:52] mr chair would the session also be here to add in this petition as well probably the email uh yeah yep chair members I

[35:59] wrote that down for each of the petitions yep all right any questions on this

[36:07] um chair I was just curious how do they when if you're going through this

[36:12] process do they reach out to you as this to find out that figure yes okay so they

[36:19] know going into it like how many they're trying and chair members I'll also offer

[36:24] almost always that I've seen it's they'll do the landscape of a 11 by 17 sheet of paper that's the that's the the

[36:31] preferred signature collecting format in my experience

[36:38] all right next slide sure

[36:44] question was on like 510 talked about phone and email for

[36:50] like would it be helpful like in the would that also be helpful to have

[36:57] their information that's what we were yeah that's what we

[37:02] were talking right commission members any like really any position

[37:13] all right so um now with regard to the filing it's somewhat similar uh oh I

[37:19] just one thing if you go back one there's I think there's an interesting dynamic here is that the initiative

[37:27] threshold is 10% and the reference threshold is 15 and I

[37:33] as you as you go through here there's going to be a couple places where we hit where it's generally harder to have a

[37:38] referendum there's many different ways than it is to do initiative um and the 15% is the first of more than one of

[37:46] those harder it's like the the the 15 days thing that we talked about is a harder

[37:52] so chair and members as a um for those of you that remember or maybe weren't here um I was asked to compile the other

[37:59] communities that have these rights and so that's in your packet and then um in anticipation of the question I crunched

[38:06] the numbers and came up with uh I think it's mode the most commonly occurring

[38:11] quantities and crunch those numbers for you so when we get to that point I I can tell you what those are all right so

[38:17] with the filing of the petition the committee must file um signatures with the clerk within 15 days of its initial

[38:24] request so it's got 15 days to collect signatures they file all those signature pages at the same time and then again

[38:29] the clerk has those 10 days to determine sufficiency if it's insufficient then the committee has another 15 days to get

[38:36] it sufficient and correct the deficiencies and if it's still insufficient after um 15 days uh the

[38:45] clerk notifies each committee

[38:51] member all right if it's sufficient I or complete then the ordinance that it's

[38:57] seeking to appeal is suspended and the council must reconsider it at its next

[39:04] regular meeting after it provides notice remember it's going to have published notice so it's going to publish notice

[39:09] and it's going to reconsider this suspended ordinance the council has two choices it can repeal it or it can

[39:16] reaffirm it if it reaffirms then it must order an election

[39:22] um on the ordinance and the ordinance stays suspended until after the election

[39:28] results are official if a majority of the people vote against the ordinance then it then that

[39:35] ordinance will will not be effective or in the alternative if the majority vote for keeping the ordinance on the books

[39:42] then the ordinance will be effective after the election has been canvased

[39:48] any questions um observation or question so the observation is that this seems to

[39:54] design to be that people got to be pretty worked up to make this process

[40:00] work it's not just like an ordinary thing people got to be pretty worked up the other the other question I

[40:06] have is on a referendum petition what would what would you say

[40:13] the that voting yes means on the referendition what is what is the yes on

[40:19] that yes i repeal it or yes I keep it so uh chair members I would go back to what

[40:27] we typically use is how they have been circulating their petition like what are

[40:32] they trying to do you'll see on the petitions as the purpose of what they're trying to do and use that as a guide for

[40:39] what is a yes what is the goal of the yes and try to stay as intuitive as

[40:46] possible for the people that are because when we when the voter goes to to vote

[40:53] we want it to to be like a natural brain connection from the question to the yes

[40:59] to the no and not have to do mental mental gymnastics ics so we try to avoid

[41:05] um double negatives we try to avoid negative words that are especially

[41:10] negative words that are modified with a no or a never or not in front of them

[41:16] and then we also run these ballot questions through um software that gives them a grade um grade level and we try

[41:24] to keep that grade level at 12 uh grade level 12 um we sometimes we've had to go

[41:31] higher because the question is complicated but we try to go with 12 or

[41:37] lower um as an as of all all of this is in the way of trying to make the question

[41:43] understandable to every voter because the reason I was asking it says

[41:49] if if a majority of registered voters vote against the order yeah I know

[41:55] um and I guess the the question there is is there is there a language change there that would help align this with

[42:03] what you're trying to achieve so I don't I don't really there is but chair members I don't necessarily disagree

[42:10] that that that I I shouldn't say disagree um I think that's worthy of discussion because if you go to the next

[42:16] slide um it says that ballots have to conform

[42:21] to the roles in 5.8 and 5.8 eight of the charter is the one we've already talked about that says

[42:29] um the majority vote uh if the majority votes yes then it

[42:36] then it then it happens so you've got a potential for confusion here with the

[42:41] majority voting against then it will not be effective and so it would be it might

[42:47] be more complicated to explain um to a voter again we would certainly

[42:54] use those a yes means like a yes means you don't want this to happen or a no means you want this to happen if there's

[43:01] some like dueling intuition there but it's

[43:06] worthy of worthy of more conversation and you all have the language i I I I'm

[43:12] certainly welcome to take a run it if you like me to but I'm also open to any

[43:17] suggestions that that the commission might

[43:23] have i know why we I know why we did the next If you go to the next

[43:29] section I know why we did this in 21 i remember why we did it because we were

[43:34] again this was a part of the consistency discussion and trying to create as much consistency as possible um but I too had

[43:41] the same thought chair when I was preparing for this and thought I wonder if that would having you know four years

[43:48] of experience on ballot questions since then we've had some um I wonder if this

[43:54] is maybe some space for improving the clarity on that

[44:00] i'll defer to you all if you want generally we've been in favor of clarity so I

[44:07] think you know speaking back to what

[44:13] keeps clear worthwhile i think that that

[44:19] section there basically five parts of it are just about initiative ballots and parts

[44:25] of it are about initiative ballots and ref ballots and kind of maybe trying to tease that apart a little bit and have I

[44:32] was looking I was looking ahead to see okay for the recall does the recall get tangled up in this and if necessary

[44:38] seems like it does but trying to trying to clarify that this language applies to both initiative referendum this applies

[44:43] to initiative this append

[44:49] But our hypothetical 12th grade reader can right speaking against that

[44:56] it occurs to me that by definition referendum requires a yes to whatever

[45:09] they're sure by its very nature it's it's trying to do something trying to

[45:15] take something away so yeah but but the proponents of it

[45:20] they want to say I want to vote against

[45:26] Yeah it's a referendum it's undoing right which is probably why it's written the way it is if a majority

[45:32] vote against a majority of the voters vote against it then it's not Yeah yeah it's

[45:38] a good question

[45:44] you showed up at a in a meeting and they said "Are you you know how are you in favor?" It's

[45:50] basically are you in favor of keeping this ordinance i think to your point is what they're is what the question is

[45:56] really are you fa in favor of keeping it or not well or are you saying that it's are you

[46:02] in favor of getting rid of it are you saying are you in favor of getting rid of it right yeah that's that's where it

[46:09] starts yeah yeah

[46:16] yeah so chair members we've had the very similar conversations in the legal department trying to honor all of the

[46:24] goals in competing goals here um of clarity and grade level and um and so we

[46:31] often will end up with these if then statements at the bottom like if you vote yes then you want and if you vote

[46:37] no just to make it as because those sentences tend to score very low grade

[46:43] level are just very clear that was in fact the

[46:49] position go around for franchise voting if you voted yes you wanted to get rid

[46:55] of Right right because the people that were initiating

[47:00] the effort were trying to take trying to it

[47:08] that's a great example then is the suggestion for

[47:14] 514 then to previous paragraph kind of like I think I'm gonna I'm gonna ask a

[47:22] question guidance though um

[47:27] do do we want as a group to say that we want in the in the

[47:33] referendum that we want yes to be in the referendum mean to get rid of it

[47:40] undo what council did that's I think basically what you're proposing yes that would do that are people okay with that and saying that

[47:46] that's our that's kind of our guiding principle on that

[47:52] not seeing anybody object to that so let's let's let's say we're going to continue with

[47:58] on continue with yes meaning that it it does what the committee is asking effectively that's kind of the way I Yes

[48:06] means what the committee is asking yeah i think the idea of like rationalizing

[48:14] parts of 513 and 508 and teasing that apart I think that still makes sense to make it be clear um but I think that I

[48:20] think I want to be very specific about that okay all righty

[48:27] clarify we're creating a new then separate paragraph on 514 i think we're I think we're letting the staff Okay

[48:37] kind of he's had a part to make it

[48:42] one noted on 520 all ballot 514 says referendum ballots

[48:50] and then 508 says initiative ballots it'd be possible

[48:55] to change the title to just be form of for each of those since they both address the form of the ballot itself

[49:02] rather than having those three different titles

[49:08] yeah I'll check

[49:25] on that before we move on to the recall

[49:36] recall so as a reminder recall is to remove uh an elected

[49:43] officials so again a five member committee has to be formed um and the

[49:48] the official who's trying to recall their term must expire more than 300

[49:55] days um from when the petition is

[50:01] filed the committee files with the clerk they have to give their name the name of

[50:06] the elected official they're trying they're seeking to recall the grounds um

[50:11] for which they want to recall the official their intent and then the names

[50:16] and addresses of committee members so my suspicion is that you all would like me to add email and telephone or something

[50:24] which I'll do um and then the clerk has five business

[50:29] days to determine compliance with the requirements if yes then they can the

[50:38] certification moves forward and is provided to the committee if no then the clerk notifies the committee they need

[50:44] that certificate for the subsequent stages where they have to attach it to each signature page that they're

[50:52] circulating all right so it's pretty similar to before but not quite the same it's not a petition it's a certificate

[51:00] does I mean it doesn't appear that um Yes there's any standard or guidelines

[51:07] for grounds so grounds could really be anything that the committee

[51:13] deems as grounds correct less than however reasonable or

[51:19] unreasonable two words or less so then the question is is there any reason to have grounds make them specify

[51:28] it i just like I would say yes because when on a subsequent slide you'll see the okay opportunity to respond all

[51:36] right i think that's that's interesting to

[51:41] note here and it's I don't know if I care about I just want to point it out is that the other the other

[51:49] two it goes to you for this one it goes to you is that is that difference

[52:01] meaningful is that Mr chair is that normal enough for charters too but this

[52:06] one goes to the city clerk versus chair members i don't know the

[52:14] answer to that um I will say it didn't spark as being unusual to me um and I

[52:19] only get I only need to approve the language of the ordinance um not the

[52:25] referendum

[52:31] yeah i mean just I think from working in city government I don't it didn't strike me as odd just because I assume being like the charter attorney something that

[52:39] has to do with that where like the city clerk overseas elections which would directly

[52:45] Yeah and then I mean what would happen if they gave it to me it's the first thing I would do is call the city clerk

[52:52] i don't want to get involved with really that would be the first thing I would do so

[53:00] all right so again here is the the count they they include the certificate with

[53:06] the with the petition that they fill out similar to the other ones um and for a

[53:12] citywide official so the mayor or two citywide council members you would need

[53:18] 500 5,220 signatures if you did it tomorrow um and then you see the various

[53:26] districts for four district specific council members

[53:35] so again for citywide it's pretty high bar well we have n 90,000 voters so yeah but

[53:43] I mean it's a lot of signatures to collect

[53:48] yeah yeah as you pointed out they'd have to

[53:53] take off yeah right

[54:00] so within 30 days of the clerk getting the certificate the committee must file its completed petition and then the

[54:07] clerk has 10 days to determine the sufficiency of their petition and then

[54:14] um they have 10 more calendar days to collect more signatures if they need to

[54:19] um but they can't change their statement um of you know their grounds and if they

[54:26] can't get the number of sufficient signatures then it's

[54:31] done within that time period if they do next slide if they do

[54:37] get all their signatures the clerk alert council

[54:43] and at the next regular meeting um they transmit that to the council the clerk

[54:50] transmits it to the council and then the council must provide for a special recall election they must do by

[54:57] resolution they have to take that action and then that recalled official has 10 days to provide the clerk with a

[55:03] statement that answers those grounds responds to those grounds that were put

[55:08] forward by the by the committee of petitioners

[55:15] all right 500 words they get Yeah they get twice as many words to say

[55:20] why they should stay and then what happens to that all right next slide

[55:27] okay it's like a keep jumping ahead my page

[55:32] uh all right so um the clerk publishes notice of the election and con in in

[55:39] that notice includes the statement why they want the recall and then the

[55:44] officials answer rebuttal response um and then the the candidate must file

[55:54] um uh the candidates rather the candidates who want the job who want the the seat

[56:01] have to file in accordance with the typical filing rules with the clerk as if it was a regular election ballot i

[56:09] know I'm I know that I'm kind of bumping through these but if you have a question interrupt but this next one is where the meat of it

[56:15] is so this ballot if the council if the council

[56:23] person member of the council resigns 10 days after they receive the

[56:30] petition there's one process if they if they resign within those 10 days we back

[56:36] up and say if they resign within those 10 days it just proceeds as much as possible like a

[56:43] typical special election to fill the seat and the clerk will do um her best to

[56:49] pull that off and um do it as much as possible like a typical special election

[56:56] if they resign after um then it's a little more complicated

[57:01] because you're already proceeding forward um you've got the requirement again of the yes no on there you've got

[57:07] the names of the candidates um excuse you got the names excuse me restrike

[57:14] what I said about the resigning after you've got the names of the candidates who want to fill the vacancy as well as

[57:20] the ballot question about the recall um

[57:25] so if that candidate is recalled um on by function of this ballot or

[57:32] excuse me if that official is recalled let me poor job on this one sorry if that that elected official is recalled

[57:39] as a function of the voting on this ballot then the subsequent candidates

[57:44] that had filed or replacing the recalled official the clerk uses rank choice

[57:50] voting to elect that candidate for the remainder of the term that's available

[57:57] you want me to take another run at that or do people get that um chair I feel like this one could use a little

[58:04] Absolutely that's good sorry about that i didn't do a very good job no no I don't think that that's on you i think

[58:09] it's worded in a way that's very like confusing unless the officer whose removal is s resigns like my brain Yeah

[58:17] i got lost there i mean eventually you'll figure it out if you read it a few times but like this

[58:24] feels important and maybe there's an opportunity to make the language a little more Yeah friendly right i don't

[58:30] disagree because I had to read it like 13 times um chair so if they I think

[58:36] what this is trying to say is if they resign within 10 days you're not going to have to do all this recall shuffling

[58:44] on the ballot right you're just going to run it like a regular election um but if

[58:50] they don't resign within those 10 days then then you're you're going to have

[58:56] sort of a two- stepper on that ballot you're going to have to vote on whether they should be recalled and then you're also got the rank choice on the

[59:03] replacements so the they're gonna have I'm saying that they're probably gonna have some hand counting

[59:09] mr chair is if if they choose not to resign why does

[59:18] the recall election need to be tied tied to

[59:24] um the replacement candidate couldn't it just be treated just as if the person

[59:31] had they chose not to resign there was a recall election they lost a recall election so to speak and now there'll be

[59:38] a special election there's I can think of two reasons what's that i can think of two reasons okay number one is

[59:45] um it doesn't leave you with a long period of time where there's no particular part of town number one

[59:53] number two is there's if you're if you were going to have a special election to

[59:59] select someone you have to pay for two two elections you know and and it gets tangled up

[1:00:05] because our and then you have to remember that for council positions they they don't if somebody

[1:00:12] resigns there's a whole separate process around that

[1:00:18] that involves the there's an appointment this doesn't allow for appointment in that this path doesn't allow for

[1:00:23] appointment right so if somebody remembers if somebody passes away or they have to move out district the

[1:00:30] council and and you so the first thing when I find out that something like that the first thing I do is look at the statute there's state law and you do the

[1:00:37] math on how much time is left on their term yeah whether you have to have an election or whether you can appoint um

[1:00:43] and if you can appoint then then you march through that process and if you have to have an election then I call the clerk right

[1:00:49] so like looking at it from the standpoint of the petitioners

[1:00:55] um if you if you threw in like the council could appoint someone that that would probably anger people because

[1:01:02] um the council may not appoint the kind of person that they

[1:01:08] had hoped to replace this person with i'm I'm kind of all over but I I'm kind of saying where that comes from i still

[1:01:14] think it's kind of unfortunately complicated if he didn't

[1:01:19] resign because if he resigns the statutes that run in

[1:01:26] elections would make him resign no two that um a few

[1:01:33] years back they passed um legislation that established basically I believe six uniform local election dates so um if

[1:01:41] you were going to have a special election it's the law designates which of the particular dates you can have so

[1:01:48] if you did separate them into two you'd have that one and then you'd have to wait another two and and the cost of of

[1:01:54] running an election is about $85,000 per So I can certainly

[1:02:00] see I I think that um in terms of your first point Steve in terms of you know

[1:02:06] uh there's a period of time where there is not representation well that that can happen in other situations and that's

[1:02:12] unfortunate but the reality if the people choose to recall that person cost

[1:02:18] is always a tough one you kind of hate to have to think about that but the reality is that's a lot of money from I

[1:02:25] don't know where I come up thank you so that makes sense out of curiosity is

[1:02:31] there a sample ballot or a previous ballot that may have ever been used for recall election i'm just curious just to

[1:02:38] see what that looks like that one um so I have every ballad ever

[1:02:45] um I believe for for the most part um I could look and find it i'm just out of curiosity yeah if we have one um I don't

[1:02:52] know off the top of my head i don't know not aware of us ever having going back to the going back to the 70s i hope I

[1:02:59] don't back now one with rank choice voting on it oh this actually looks rare occurrence yeah I'm not thinking

[1:03:07] chair and members i'm trying to remember another city that had a recall

[1:03:13] sure there has i'm sure there has been yeah I could do a little research and circulate it for sure

[1:03:24] not too much are we ready all right that's it hello hello so I've

[1:03:31] been keeping notes um I have one two four five things to follow up on um and

[1:03:38] that leads into last chapter or next slide leads into the next

[1:03:44] um next steps here we have our annual meeting on May 1st um and we do have a

[1:03:50] couple of topics that um there

[1:03:56] are four or five sections of the charter um that you all that have come up

[1:04:03] through staff or from you all that that you'd like to be adjusted and so I plan

[1:04:09] to bring those in May if you want me to um and then I could bring these other

[1:04:15] ones as well for your consideration um the next agenda item unpacks those a bit

[1:04:21] more and it's pretty short u but I I I happy to provide more details on on

[1:04:28] ideas are or I can just orally talk um but in order for you all to take

[1:04:35] action on specifics we have to start a process and make some decisions

[1:04:40] um or we can do the annual meeting and then um make decisions at that point so

[1:04:47] chair I think that that would be a good suggest good conversation for the next agenda item if

[1:04:55] you're if you want to move to the next agenda item sure um I agree with that

[1:05:00] one question I had kind of going back to 5.20

[1:05:07] 20 is there is there any is there any interest in

[1:05:14] people wanting to talk about the adding the appointment path on this or do

[1:05:19] people want to just stick with the

[1:05:28] I just wanted to put that out there and don't don't take that as me pitching you on a hey we ought to think about it i

[1:05:34] just want to make sure that they make an intentional decision on that

[1:05:41] anybody strongly feel that they want to change it

[1:05:48] i think it would be fun to have a recall go try and figure out what's

[1:05:54] going to happen it's just Ron ron go find four people

[1:06:02] i I that's a really interesting question,00 recommend going to district because it only requires 500

[1:06:12] that's your that's if you want to try it out that's how you

[1:06:19] It doesn't seem like there's Okay okay i did want to report the findings of my coalation so you've got the got the

[1:06:26] analytics on each charter city um so the percentages was something that we had

[1:06:32] talked about um as being something you all were interested in so in initiative

[1:06:37] the um thresholds the voting thresholds in the past election um the most common

[1:06:44] ones are 5 10 15 20 and 25% and Bloomington has 10% and um the most

[1:06:51] popular um most commonly occurring is 10% um of the cities that have um

[1:07:00] uh this power 25 cities have the 10% requirement the second um most is that

[1:07:08] 19 cities require 20% so the majority of the cities

[1:07:15] require more than us more than Bloomington um but we require the same

[1:07:22] as a lot more commonly occurring percentage

[1:07:33] want to move on to the next one sure yeah like for trivia when you're I know right um referendum we require 15%

[1:07:42] um which 31 other charter cities or 30 other charter cities require the same amount the second most common percentage

[1:07:50] is 17 cities both 17 and 17 require 10 and 20% so we're right in the middle um

[1:07:58] and um the most commonly um occurring

[1:08:03] percentage is what we have in Bloomington i have a I have a question

[1:08:09] um it's more a question for the for the group here um back back quite a while ago

[1:08:18] um the we used to charge the princely sum of $2 to file for city council okay

[1:08:25] that was that was the filing fee for city council and we got we got people who filed for city council and never ran

[1:08:33] campaigns um and they triggered primaries back when we had primaries and

[1:08:39] and the charter commission got tired of that and we and for the folks who've been around for a while and I and I

[1:08:46] don't know if you remember if you were here what we thought but we bumped it to $50 i do remember

[1:08:52] and the concept was that that no one who was running a real campaign would find

[1:08:58] $50 to be a problem for doing it but it kept it kept people from just impulsively going down and filing and

[1:09:03] and blowing $85,000 on them on a um on a primary election oh I think that the

[1:09:11] question that I have listening to what you kind of talked through here is I would be interested in a little bit of

[1:09:16] history on initiatives and what initiatives have been successful in Bloomington and

[1:09:23] whether because if if we whether and to let us think a little bit more about whether our threshold for the number of

[1:09:31] um signatures is maybe a little bit too low um if if we're seeing a lot of

[1:09:38] initiatives that are being created but not getting brought through not being voted on by the I think our goal is to

[1:09:44] have that number be low enough that if the voters really feel like they want to change something they have the ability

[1:09:50] to do it we don't make it unnecessarily hard but we don't want it to be so low that it's that you don't have to go

[1:09:56] build consensus around the idea um more disruptive yeah you know and I my goal

[1:10:04] is never to like try and cut people off from doing things but if if if we come back and say you know in the past 30

[1:10:10] years we've had seven initiatives and none of them have passed with this threshold that I'd least like to have a

[1:10:16] conversation about whether that signature number is too low i would suggest we consider it as to

[1:10:23] whether or not the signature percentage is correct not too low or too high oh yeah I'm okay with that just because

[1:10:30] there is an awful lot of work involved with just the process of gathering signatures so

[1:10:37] um one point I might make is is it worthy of discussion as to why

[1:10:44] um there's a different threshold for initiative versus referendum you know

[1:10:49] what's the reason for that I I actually have a second question for you asked and

[1:10:55] the reason is is that the um referendum the have the power to stop an ordinance

[1:11:01] from going into effect and I think in my mind I want people to be pretty riled up

[1:11:07] to to stop something like that that because they basically can go collect signatures and stop an ordinance from

[1:11:13] going into effect um I think there's other things like recalling people or

[1:11:19] the next election where you can fix things that are a little bit longer term so I I'm personally I'm I'm okay with it

[1:11:27] being much harder to and I think it's much harder to to um have a referendum

[1:11:33] than it is to have an initiative and I think that's on purpose and I personally I like that

[1:11:38] i think it's worthy of discussion i don't have an opinion on either way yeah now is the time to talk about it it's

[1:11:45] early to you know yeah

[1:11:50] over recall we require 25% which is the most common percent required 23 other

[1:11:57] charter cities require 25% um the next highest is 20% and that's 10 10 charter

[1:12:08] cities i think the one that were potentially

[1:12:14] um different I mean we're where the most commonly occurring percentage but but

[1:12:19] but more cities require more would be initiative um so 25 cities are at 10% n

[1:12:29] 15 cities are at 15 and 19 cities are at 20 and two cities are at 25%

[1:12:37] so we're definitely on the lower end although it is a very frequently

[1:12:42] selected percentage among charts yeah and is it true that for the vast

[1:12:47] majority it's relatively equal for both on percentages so you know initiatives

[1:12:53] and referendums there large enough disparity between

[1:13:00] cities where they for example favor a higher percent referendums as opposed to

[1:13:07] chair members i did not do that number crunching but you do have them here for you and I see a lot that are the same

[1:13:13] and I see some and I see a couple that are different

[1:13:19] some cities are just have a completely different approach like 50 and 100 you know in Leverne um talk about barriers

[1:13:27] and seven people have one city had like three people needed to do it

[1:13:37] um 500 people in Leverne Lever like specific numbers I guess um

[1:13:49] are we the largest of the charter cities or like where do we fall we are not uh

[1:13:54] chair members we are not the largest of the charter cities because Minneapolis St paul Rochester and Duth and St cloud

[1:14:00] are charter cities so we are not the largest charter city um those are all technically larger what's the population

[1:14:06] of St cloud oh I guess population population of St cloud is less than than

[1:14:12] Bloomington I believe um Okay it's that whole tri city yeah tri city yeah

[1:14:21] how many charter cities are there for some reason I have 103 in my head i think

[1:14:29] that's good the rest are

[1:14:35] statuto yeah i I I have it in another presentation i just can't remember you told us yeah I two months ago

[1:14:44] but I guess I guess so Mr chair I guess really it would be in line like the

[1:14:50] Rochester Doo that St cloud area which they're probably of

[1:14:55] similarish size to us like are that are

[1:15:07] Rochester does not have initiative and referendum

[1:15:13] um Rochester is the most similar to us in size and it does not appear it has

[1:15:19] recall either

[1:15:28] st cloud St

[1:15:45] cloud%

[1:15:56] Anything else on this topic here

[1:16:03] all right we'll go on to agenda item number two

[1:16:17] i will go and grab the other

[1:16:26] presentation this is the one you have on your microscopic slides sheet

[1:16:35] i wonder

[1:16:42] I didn't think I just I thought this conversation would

[1:16:47] be at a pretty high level and we could talk through it this way so that's why I didn't um say hand out no it's not in

[1:16:53] your handouts um um it's on the back it's on the back

[1:16:58] grab one anybody else need one i would give you the slides just in case

[1:17:04] you want if you want to take notes on the particular slides

[1:17:13] I see what you mean [Laughter]

[1:17:18] captivated by the fact I get them all in one sheet and I just went for it all right so um Okay so for the record here

[1:17:26] um we're on to item 2.2 two um which is discussing the um potential amendments

[1:17:32] for the charter so for some of you that haven't been on the charter commission for very long there's

[1:17:38] essentially four vehicles um to amend the charter it's in state

[1:17:44] law um you can you as the charter commission can propose

[1:17:49] um uh by you can do it by proposal um or um by ordinance and I think that the

[1:17:58] most I have the actual statute in the packet for you if you want to read it um

[1:18:04] I think that the the easiest way to to sort of think about it at a high level is that it's a conversation sort of a

[1:18:11] tennis match between the charter commission and the city council and if you both agree it's a short it's a short

[1:18:17] match and if you disagree then it goes back and forth a couple of times

[1:18:23] um and so that's a a common way that we have amended the charter the other way

[1:18:29] that the charter can be amended is by a unanimous vote of the city council and by unanimous I mean every single member

[1:18:36] has to be there and has to vote in favor of amending the charter that's the other vehicle then you can have you know

[1:18:41] elections and you know all the other methods petitions and whatnot but it either flows through the charter

[1:18:47] commission or flows through the city council eventually all right this is at a super

[1:18:52] high level there's two and a half pages of text on it all right

[1:18:58] so these are the ones that have come up through the staff and the city staff and the charter commission from our last

[1:19:05] conversation um at a very high level I'll just run through them um the readability came from the charter

[1:19:11] commission discussion at the last meeting 6.06 and 6.07 we discussed at the last meeting and there have a lot of

[1:19:17] similarities and so there was a request to dduplicate it dduplicate them I

[1:19:24] should say and simplify them so I took a run at it a couple times and you'll see

[1:19:30] that language um the second one is um a modernization of some language there's a

[1:19:37] shift in the in the public administration world to the using the word deputy instead of assistant and so

[1:19:44] we have a mention of that in three places in our charter lots of other places in our roles but a three three

[1:19:49] places in our charter and so I'll highlight that that is that is more

[1:19:55] nothing more than a than that and then I put an asterisk by six and six six and seven because my readability assignment

[1:20:02] um in my dele in the delegation ID I'm going to tell you about in just a little bit um ad addresses this already so it's

[1:20:10] really just a change in 6.03 3 the delegation is is something it's an

[1:20:16] efficiency effort which I'm interested in your feedback on um related to our systems that we have in place and

[1:20:26] the use of outside counsel into that all right so here is the text of 6.06 and

[1:20:34] 6.07 uh long and there is a fair amount of repetition between them um and we've

[1:20:40] done a little bit of tweaking of them back in 21 and 17 um to address some um

[1:20:48] delegation and a little bit of cleanup um but beyond that um there hasn't been

[1:20:56] really much work on these two sections so I put together a draft of 6.06 and

[1:21:03] 6.07 on the subsequent slide i can circulate this PowerPoint for you so you can look at it um more closely but um

[1:21:10] it's what's happening in both of them is two separate things one is this

[1:21:16] delegation so essentially what's happening in these statutes or in these sections is um for as a refresher from

[1:21:23] our our last conversation is it's discussing what has to

[1:21:28] happen who has the power and when do contracts have to go to the city council

[1:21:34] versus being administratively approved by staff so it defaults as a form of of structure

[1:21:42] and and drawing lines to the uniform contracting law which is in state law which says draws a line at 175,000 those

[1:21:50] contracts all have to go to the city council for approval and then there's a delegation that that flows below that for lower

[1:21:57] dollar amounts uh and within that delegation is a is several documents that the council adopts related to the

[1:22:04] implementation of our financial management policies so the council signs on to the delegations and they're also

[1:22:10] in our they're also very specifically in our financial management policies it's a chart um and so you'll see here

[1:22:19] um because titles change over time and what we're running into is that we've

[1:22:24] already had to address it once i don't know why that's stinging but I'm just going to keep talking um we've already

[1:22:31] had to address it once in our employment or in our financial management policies to unpack what a department head meant

[1:22:38] um and we're running into it again with assistant city manager and so I'm suggesting more um durable language

[1:22:46] which is certain city staff and then the council would take action at when it

[1:22:52] adopts its financial management policies to effectuate who those certain staff people

[1:22:57] are okay okay and then the same thing in a different version of the challenge down here we have a delegation in our

[1:23:05] office um that you all authorized back I think in 21 that allowed someone else in

[1:23:12] the city attorney's office to sign um pursuant to a council approved city manager approved delegation and that

[1:23:19] delegation currently says if I'm out of the office me Melissa the city attorney I'm out of the office for three or more

[1:23:26] consecutive days I I have to designate someone to sign for me and and I and I

[1:23:31] do that every time I go on vacation and it's more than three days I send a message to the city manager consistent

[1:23:38] with the requirements when I'm coming back how I'm accessible etc etc and um and then it also addresses if I

[1:23:46] am um uh uh unexpectedly gone in scenarios like

[1:23:53] that otherwise previously contracts just sat there till the city attorney got back because there was no delegation

[1:23:59] authority what we're encountering on a pretty regular basis now is that we work with

[1:24:06] outside counsel um and I have to sign the document and they have to sign the

[1:24:12] document and um while it does perform a function in me reviewing it I'm um it is

[1:24:20] slowing things down sometimes because they're they have they have the same

[1:24:26] client we have the same client and so it's I'm I'm interested in your feedback

[1:24:32] and maybe maybe the term is not under contract but that's the most simplistic language but we are we are in a

[1:24:40] contractual relationship with them we are their client the city is their client and they have the same duty to

[1:24:48] the client that I do for the most part so I'm interested in your feedback on

[1:24:54] that you're saying the city of Bloomington is the client yeah we have the same

[1:25:00] client yeah so if I think about this and I think about my time on the H and we

[1:25:05] had legal counsel for the HR that would allow in some circumstances the

[1:25:11] delegated HR attorney to Yep correct have the authority to sign okay okay

[1:25:17] well and to play that out further um chair members in some instances we

[1:25:23] have special counsel assigned to the city um we're hired by the city and they

[1:25:30] are working on uh under contract for the HR the city the port and the city on a

[1:25:36] project and so what's happening is they have to sign for those entities and then I have to sign for the city even though

[1:25:43] they're the attorney working on the deal and we're paying them to work on the deal so it it's not it's I'm not

[1:25:50] suggesting it's a burden for me to do it because I'm in a lot of those conversations but it's a it's slowing

[1:25:55] things down when we're otherwise paying them to do the job and I and I'm guessing they

[1:26:03] the reason we're contracting with these various attorneys is they are

[1:26:08] specialists in that area that have expertise that goes

[1:26:14] probably beyond the expertise of what we have on staff therefore we have them so

[1:26:19] remember that's accurate yep so you'll see a similar approach taken here delegate to certain um certain

[1:26:28] staff and then licensed attorneys under contract would it out of curiosity would

[1:26:35] it be easier just to say for example approved by the city attorney or a licensed attorney

[1:26:41] uh designated or retained by the city for example and and designated by the city

[1:26:49] attorney so somebody retained by the city to represent them and then is designated as the signer by you or even

[1:26:57] a licensed attorney as permitted and approved by the city manager we could just cover it in the delegation

[1:27:03] that would work too yeah um chair members certainly um looking for direction on this if you're interested

[1:27:09] in me pursuing it um uh the the concern I will um remind the

[1:27:17] group for those that were not here the last time we made this edit was that there was a strong preference to have

[1:27:23] somebody in the city attorney's office signing so if it wasn't me they wanted the delegation to be somebody in our

[1:27:30] city attorney's office so I want to just because I want to be as transparent as possible this would be a diff this would

[1:27:37] be a change what if any are the downsides to that as

[1:27:43] you thought through this downsides dangers you know potential for

[1:27:51] chair members i I I have the duty to the client regardless

[1:27:57] of whether I'm signing the document or not um I'm involved in the conversations

[1:28:02] i I guess it's potentially possible that I may I might not know everything that's

[1:28:09] in the document um typically though I will say that when we're working with outside council those are huge contracts

[1:28:16] dollar value and they're going to the city council so they're the likelihood of me not knowing about them or the

[1:28:23] council not knowing about them is is mitigated by that but those would be the things that I would or for example they

[1:28:31] may not be as familiar with our our requirements as I am and so they might

[1:28:37] not know of something that I know about um every now and then we'll work with

[1:28:42] outside counsel that doesn't know that we have ironically this signature requirement and so I'll have to say to

[1:28:48] them you need to add my signature onto this document and then I point them to the charter and that's the most common

[1:28:54] thing I point out to outside counsel sure go ahead John when you say delays are we

[1:29:00] talking days weeks months typically uh days chair remember days days

[1:29:07] but on uh on these documents you're often times collecting uh nine so or so signatures

[1:29:14] so it's a lot and that's just on our side that doesn't include the other side so if it's the if it's the port the H in

[1:29:21] the city which often often it is not always but often on big deals um those are that's nine signatures there and

[1:29:28] then and then it's the other side who usually has one or three sometimes these

[1:29:35] things are pretty timesensitive um

[1:29:40] as dancing attached by a certain you know whatever it might be I mean sometimes days can be I would say Um

[1:29:48] chair members the other thing though that it does create is that I don't feel comfortable signing something unless I

[1:29:54] know what it's going when what unless I know what's going on and what's happening in the document because it

[1:29:59] because the requirement says that I've reviewed and approved it so sometimes it's more than days if I have other

[1:30:06] things going on and so I have to have reviewed it and I have to have approved it so if it's a really big deal it can

[1:30:13] take a lot of time for me to and and and it may not take just it may be a

[1:30:18] couple days delay at the back end of signing but it's all of the meetings in the middle that I that I need to attend

[1:30:24] so that I can know what's going on when it gets to the point where me signing so

[1:30:29] we have multiple attorneys on in these meetings

[1:30:35] so kind of my my reaction to this is I think this this section here around kind

[1:30:40] of what I call like the review responsibility um I'm fairly comfortable

[1:30:46] with that being delegated i I think the the execution

[1:30:52] instruments one I have to think more about around that which is the one on the previous slide

[1:30:59] um because I think that you know I think you make on the 6.07 07 language i think

[1:31:04] you make valid points that um sometimes we have an expert who's better equipped

[1:31:09] to do that review than you are and saying that we're going to make you do every review and it to somebody else

[1:31:16] seems kind of redundant particularly since you can control who does the review so you know allows just gives you

[1:31:23] the flexibility to delegate that to somebody from outside if they have that particular expertise um on the on the

[1:31:31] execution of instruments I'm just I'm thinking a

[1:31:37] little bit more about that one i I need to think a just think a little bit more about that stuff genie um from

[1:31:45] experience um is there a way of working out a tier where at a certain amount

[1:31:52] um you pay or you sign um documents and then it tears down to a contract that

[1:32:01] doesn't have a lot of face value that way it it kind of um takes

[1:32:08] the pressure off of you and and you can delegate it to uh certain people that

[1:32:13] you see fit that would work well with that contract chair members we talked about that

[1:32:20] internally right now um as as an option as well as an approach and uh there

[1:32:27] there because I'm signing contracts from the entire city I see commonalities that

[1:32:33] individual attorneys working just with that department don't always know are happening so there

[1:32:40] are probably two handfuls of times during a year while where I'll realize that we're contracting with this entity

[1:32:47] in this department and this entity in this department and the same entity in another department and and I'm like does

[1:32:54] do we do we know that we're all hiring tree cutting companies like you know so

[1:32:59] things like that happen with some frequency or or will or we'll notice

[1:33:04] that um and maybe AI could solve this in couple years perhaps but for right now

[1:33:11] um I will notice those things and um or else that we have this one performance contract where we're we were signing it

[1:33:18] with the same person lots of times um and it because I was signing all of them

[1:33:23] I I asked the person sending them to me who is this person and could we just

[1:33:28] enter into one contract with this person to do all of these things as opposed to 15 contracts during the year and um and

[1:33:36] not to say that I'm like some brilliant problem solver but because I was seeing every one of those contracts I it it was

[1:33:44] there was some value to that so I'm I'm a little bit reluctant to do that um

[1:33:49] because it will it will we'll lose that uniformity and the actual act of

[1:33:55] clicking the docuign button does not take very much time at all so and then I

[1:34:00] can also I also know then what's going on and I ask questions like I'll sometimes see a like and I'll ask a

[1:34:06] question why did you take this particular approach and I I I frankly find a lot of benefit in in seeing all

[1:34:13] the contracts and knowing what's going on so um so at this point we're not we're not recommending that delegation

[1:34:21] approach maybe in future but not quite yet

[1:34:27] um so another piece of feedback I have on this is the second sentence in here where it talks about the contracts that

[1:34:34] do not require household approval um if we're in kind of the mode of

[1:34:40] simplifying is to basically in see I'm talking about six

[1:34:47] yeah it refers to under um is to say that contracts that don't

[1:34:54] require that basically telling the city council you make the policy for contracts that don't require council

[1:34:59] approval and don't specify the city manager and that just completely delegate the responsibility for that

[1:35:06] policy to the council because they will end up putting the city manager in there and that but I don't I don't for those

[1:35:12] here I don't know that you know if if uh if the city council has the authority party to do that you know they can it it

[1:35:19] makes it simpler to read if you take city man say they they set a policy for

[1:35:24] those yeah yeah because that's what they're Yeah yeah I think

[1:35:32] well because I know even just like from the staff perspective who executed contracts that were around

[1:35:41] 10510,000 it was much simpler because again you budget for it you have all that stuff goes to the finance and all

[1:35:48] that the council approves that budget and it kind of comes through so like even if it's $105,000 of something

[1:35:55] having you know at the time it was Jamie but like you know the city manager right you know to be able to you know and just

[1:36:01] have like this simple review so just go through because again you do the steps to figure out you know where that money

[1:36:07] should be going because it was like very laid out in the budget that this contract is for like officials sports

[1:36:18] all right okay so this one's really straightforward um it's just this is our

[1:36:26] merit system which we've talked about at our last periodic charter review um and

[1:36:31] this just needs a term change here all

[1:36:37] right um and then I thought there was one more

[1:36:46] oh nope and then anything else you guys are interested in i got a list so that

[1:36:52] might be the anything else but is there anything How would you like me to be to bring these to you for the

[1:37:00] May 1st meeting

[1:37:06] i'm not near you how would you how would you would you like me to put all of them for example in resolution form for you

[1:37:12] to take action on and then they would go to council um or would you like me to bring you drafts then you would approve

[1:37:19] the drafts and then we'd have a special meeting thereafter where we put that all into motion or we decide I could put

[1:37:26] them all into drafts and you all could make decisions about whether you want to start them or whether you want me to

[1:37:32] suggest for example this merit board one this one could probably go to the

[1:37:40] council yeah you know seven votes that that could be a possibility yeah so let

[1:37:46] me ask that question everybody okay with this coming that's housekeeping that one yeah there's your answer on that one

[1:37:52] okay um these um for example um I could

[1:37:57] prepare a draft and then we could decide how to proceed with them or I could put it into resolution form and we could

[1:38:04] drop the hammer and move it forward um we can take a two-step approach my gut

[1:38:10] if you're looking for a reaction is we need a two-step approach there's a lot of discussion and questions and we're

[1:38:16] already going to be having a lot of discussion and questions about these other ones and so they're already going to necessitate a two-step approach so

[1:38:24] let's do it might be easier to pack i think that's that makes sense going to meet at least

[1:38:30] twice more if everyone's okay with that

[1:38:36] and then um the other thing that I would suggest would be helpful is to for me to

[1:38:42] work with the city clerk and get some election dates um and some things kind of backed up so we have a bit of a

[1:38:48] calendar in the event any of these end up taking that direction

[1:38:54] um and um because there are some requirements

[1:38:59] of I think 70 days and 65 days and things like that um just so that we

[1:39:06] don't back ourselves into a into a situation where we have to potentially trigger a special election requirement

[1:39:12] which I don't think you probably want to do un accidentally right I mean in purpose maybe but not accidentally um so

[1:39:20] we can work out those timing we have the council calendar so we could map out a couple of those scenarios for your

[1:39:26] consideration and that'll help inform the dates when we meet um to continue

[1:39:33] moving this forward that generally makes sense can you go back to the merit one for a second

[1:39:39] um given that everything else is going to be a two-step process are you are you still thinking this one would be uh you

[1:39:47] would come with a resolution or you going to do them all at the same time

[1:39:57] um chair members um I want to look and see how we've done

[1:40:02] it in the past but I want to say that when we've asked the council to

[1:40:08] consider an ordinance on something it's come from the the charter commission to say "We've looked at this issue and we

[1:40:14] recommend that you you take action by ordinance unanimous adoption of this ordinance to to amend the charter." I

[1:40:20] want to say that that's how we did it fast that sounds familiar my question on this one was this one that's highlighted

[1:40:27] the assistant city manager is that the one we want to change it to deputy deputy and then part of me is like well

[1:40:33] what happens when deputy is out of favor and is there a way to more generically

[1:40:40] and you probably tried to think through that already um typically I would say chair members typically I would say yes

[1:40:46] except for what's happening here um what's happening in this section and in

[1:40:52] this subdivision in particular is that these specific titles are being pulled out of the classified service right so

[1:40:59] specificity is very important here um so those are the only titles that are

[1:41:06] not a part of the merit system got it that matters yeah the other thing that could happen

[1:41:14] is that when the title is changed in the rest of the documents um you know

[1:41:20] because it's in employment rules and all the rest we could package this change to happen at that same time that would be

[1:41:26] another option you all could say when you take action

[1:41:33] to do all the cleanup related cleanup we recommend that you also amend the charter to Yeah coincide with all of

[1:41:40] that so the council working on that to like

[1:41:45] change like Kathy is so chair members there

[1:41:50] there are council discussions um ongoing um somewhat related to that topic but

[1:41:58] also there's a compensation plan that's coming out um and some other related

[1:42:04] employment updates because it just we do annually comp um annual reviews of the

[1:42:09] documents And this has been something that's been on the list for a while um to have updated and

[1:42:18] um and so here's our sort of typical time so you you so just to kind of frame

[1:42:26] it up because I you know I'm sympathetic to what Mark is suggesting about trying to bundle it together but seems like

[1:42:32] there's a little bit of there's a little bit of utility in trying to get this done um whereas the other ones there's

[1:42:39] not quite the pressure to immediately kind of make a change to that um and

[1:42:45] given and the the cost difference here really is the cost of running an ordinance through the process which is

[1:42:52] primarily going to be your notice costs right putting in the paper right

[1:42:58] yeah i think it's $90 twice typically oh so it's not it's not that much money so

[1:43:04] you I guess based on that I' I'd say that what we ought to try to do is to try to send this one through because

[1:43:10] it's it's not like we're going to debate the language in it right go send that to the city council

[1:43:16] and then on the other ones try to word smith that more and the package of that so question uh chair and members so on

[1:43:24] 6.07 and 6.06 you've also got a reference to the assistant city manager

[1:43:29] in the current language there yeah so I could change that as well and so that

[1:43:35] they're all at least consistent so that we don't have an internal inconsistency

[1:43:40] and because they're all they've all got sort of a version of the same problem

[1:43:45] the um

[1:43:50] it's down there there it is

[1:43:57] is so is is the 606 and 607 language right now is that causing any practical

[1:44:04] difficulties members no okay not nope because we have charts that exp okay

[1:44:10] unpack it so since it's not since it's not it doesn't have my opinion is and whatever folks the consensus of the

[1:44:17] group is but my opinion is on the merit system one there's a there's a practical

[1:44:22] reason for wanting to do that right now and get that done for the 6.07 and 6.06

[1:44:28] 6 we would like to do that it's not the language that's in there right now is not causing a practical difficulty today

[1:44:33] and so spending the extra month or two to get language flipped into shape and

[1:44:39] doing that it's not material in the big picture of things does that seem reasonable

[1:44:45] i would tend to agree because I mean it looks like we're removing it anyways i mean as we debate that language as opposed to like present 606 and 607 one

[1:44:53] time and then do it again yeah okay later mr mr chair just one quick question though is would you have a

[1:45:00] preference between that and what you brought up as

[1:45:05] sort of there being a trigger or when the change happens

[1:45:11] um chair members I can certainly ask that question um I mean I think we'll

[1:45:17] know more um there the meeting is Monday night um so I think we'll know more then

[1:45:25] um and and take some direction from that discussion um

[1:45:34] just to be clear if I did an ordinance to to correct or to update to change this term here to

[1:45:41] deputy then um I would do that i would do it all in one ordinance so I wouldn't have $90 $90

[1:45:49] $90 it would be $90 um so um there's no

[1:45:56] my preference would be that this gets done at the same time

[1:46:04] and then as you said or no not on May 1st it would go to the city council by ordinance but you all could make a

[1:46:10] recommendation that timing would probably make sense chair members if you all made a

[1:46:16] recommendation on May 1st then it would go on a May agenda or something

[1:46:22] But what you're what you're proposing that that you would you would change the

[1:46:27] wording it's just it's a you're you're proposing that we would change the language from a assistant city manager

[1:46:34] deputy city manager in the three places yep for whatever the number is there and we do that as one thing and then this

[1:46:41] kind of rewarding would go as a on a separate path

[1:46:46] are people okay yeah let's do that then okay see

[1:46:54] okay anything else anybody other any other ideas they want to toss out on things we want to

[1:47:02] propose not hearing anything okay right so as a reminder the May 1st meeting is

[1:47:11] a the annual meeting so we'll we're going to be the minutes from a bunch of past meetings um and just as a reminder

[1:47:19] when you look at those minutes they've already been through a process back and forth and you've already been provided

[1:47:24] with a copy of them so this is a largely ministerial approval and that they've

[1:47:30] already been checked a couple times um but just just there's a bunch of them because we've been having these meetings

[1:47:37] um and then we also do the the other sort of annual review type things um or

[1:47:43] where we have um uh the report from the past year and you

[1:47:49] know things like that so uh election of officers and so if those things are on

[1:47:54] your mind um you know you can reach out to me if you're interested in learning more about that that packet should be

[1:48:01] coming out it's pretty much put together it should be coming out um soon so will

[1:48:08] our pay increase be a part of that you're also getting smiles with your handshakes

[1:48:15] speaking of speaking of speaking of our pay either that on the 29th of April or volunteer

[1:48:23] rec get whatever the piece of swag is that the city has this year and get fed

[1:48:29] and talk to people in other commissions that's you got an email on that that's I think 4:30 shows us 4:30 to 7 of my

[1:48:36] calendar i entered it correctly there's anything else for tonight's meeting

[1:48:43] uh if I think there's a motion to adjurnn is there a second second second any discussion all those in favor say I

[1:48:50] i all those opposed we are Mark Thorson

[1:49:00] i don't have time to go i got too many