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Friday, June 20, 2014

RAMSEY - After watching the June 10 council meeting segment on franchise fees, and hoping ABC Newspapers would cover things, there now is an online item, hence a link.

Eric Hagen reporting, this link. The item speaks for itself, so have a look.

Briefly, among much more detail, Hagen wrote:

The city charter allows residential property owners to petition against a city-initiated project. If more than 50 percent of residential property owners sign a petition within 60 days of the council’s public hearing, the project is called off.

The council unanimously asked the charter commission to take another look at this language, with some suggesting an increase to the percentage of petitioners required to stop a project.

I missed that in watching the meeting. However, the Charter Commission has a planned meeting, this link to view an agenda.

The pdf version of the agenda includes a quick transcription of the council's public hearing segment [in draft form - since there has been no formal approval of council minutes for the June 10 meeting].

As posted earlier, how Charter Commission agendas get constructed for Charter Commission meetings is not subject to much sunshine, and there are no procedural rules for a Charter Commissioner to get topics onto an agenda or to initiate possible meetings. It is strictly ad hoc, and for a body having a municipal equivalent to constitutional jurisdiction, it is wholly improper that there are no procedures, and that is a problem in need of fixing.

Part of the posted Wed. Jan 25, 6:00 pm meeting agenda is a post of Charter Chapter 8, this link. Readers should notice how Sections 8.2 and 8.3 seem parallel, except for "services" mentioned in 8.3, while 8.4 is focused on "all local improvement projects." Those sections raise interesting possibilities aside from the Sect. 8.4 "agenda" item focus. They read:

click the image to enlarge and read