Sean C. Morgan
Proposed changes to Sweet Home’s city charter are expected to go to voters in November after a charter review committee completed discussions during a meeting on May 20.
“Staff will go back and edit the document based on the suggestions the committee made,” said City Manager Craig Martin. The editing will include grammatical and substantive revisions.
“It doesn’t change the way the city functions,” Martin said. “It does bring the charter up to a more current version.”
The charter is a legal document establishing the city and dictating how it is organized and operates.
Among the revisions, wording in the charter will be made gender-neutral, changing “councilman” to “councilor,” which is the practice used by the city now. Male pronouns also will be replaced with gender-neutral language.
The charter also includes amendments that have no current function.
When voters would approve general obligation bond sales, the city added an amendment to the charter document. They serve no purpose being in the charter. The oldest bond amendment was included in 1944. The last was added in 1978. The charter includes 16 bond amendments.
The charter also includes an amendment from 1993 that prohibited minority status for homosexuals and prohibits spending public funds to promote homosexuality. Citizens gathered signatures and placed the amendment before city voters, who approved it 77.3 percent to 22.7 percent.
Around that time, the Oregon Citizens Alliance, which failed to pass a similar law statewide, turned its attention to the local level, and numerous cities and counties passed similar laws. Similar laws were approved by voters in Linn County, Albany and Lebanon.
Since then, the prohibition has been ruled unconstitutional, said City Attorney Robert Snyder.
He told the charter review committee that the language in the amendment is useless as an argument in court, rendering moot the language in the city’s charter.
Altering the charter in these cases changes nothing substantive, but the charter committee ing language about how the council can make decisions.
In one section, a quorum of the council, four of its members, may make any decision, according to the charter. In other sections, some decisions must be made by a majority of the council, which has seven members.
That implies that a quorum cannot make “any” decision even though a quorum is given the power to make “any” decision, Martin said.
In yet another section, the council has the power to meet with less than a quorum to compel the attendance of other members to prevent filibuster by absence, Martin said. This section doesn’t really conflict with the others and isn’t targeted for revision.
“Majority of the council” also raises a question, whether it is a majority of a total council, seven members, or a majority of current councilors, Martin said. At times, the council may have six or even fewer members following a resignation or a death, for example.
Among the powers apparently reserved for the majority of the council – and not a quorum – is the removal of a city manager.
The issues with defining a majority of the council and reconciling the language with the section about a quorum have not caused any problems for the city so far, Martin said. It is possible for them to cause a problem, but courts have tended to allow councils to interpret their laws.
“There is some benefit to clarifying that,” Martin said.
Conflicts were likely introduced as the charter has been revised over the years, Martin said. A section may have been added, while the rest of the document was not revised to match language.
The charter review process began as a goal of the City Council in 2013, Martin said. As such, the committee was formed to review and discuss the changes.
After the charter is edited by staff members, Martin said, he will return a draft to the committee for review.
The committee will then send a recommendation to the City Council. With City Council approval, it could be on the ballot for Sweet Home voters in November.
Martin said he does not know what the election will cost.
The review committee includes councilors Marybeth Angulo and Scott McKee Jr.; former mayors Dave Holley and Tim McQueary; and citizens Mark Woody, Teresa Glenn and Aaron Pye.