A Council majority gave direction to conduct a comprehensive review of the City Charter in a March 2014 Council meeting. The City Manager recruited a committee of 15 individuals from the community and requested the Deputy City Manager, City Clerk and City Attorney provide staff support to that committee. They met eight times over the course of three months and developed a set of recommendations in priority order (see Attachment A) that included recommendations from staff as well as Committee members. The Committee's recommendation was to take approximately 20 amendments to the ballot. There are also a series of footnotes which came from recommended changes to bring the Charter consistent with State law that supersedes the Charter.  Due to the number of questions, the Committee was recommending that these either continue or be included as footnotes in the Charter.  Lastly, there is a list of discussion items that had no recommendation but the Committee wanted the Manager and Council to know they were considered.

As an advisory committee to the City Manager, the Manager has taken this report and added his recommendations and notes to their work in presenting it to Council.  Again, Attachment A represents the Committee's work in an unaltered form. Attachment B is a summary of the Manager's recommendations. In large part the Manager supports the recommendations made by the Committee. The principal recommendation is to limit the ballot to 20 changes. Under State law, each change to the Charter must be considered by the voters independently. This makes for a very long ballot when some of the changes are very minor in terms of the amount of text necessary to accomplish the change. However, ballot fatigue is a very real issue and we want to ensure a complete and returned ballot. For this reason, I believe we should limit this to 20 ballot questions.

To stay within that recommendation, the Manager has recommended against two items and the consolidation of three items. This reduced the list to 17 questions. He then recommended that one of the items on the "No Action" list be moved into consideration; this is in regards to the sale of property. This leaves two slots. The recommendation is to keep these slots open for possible election changes pending the outcome of the Phoenix and Tucson lawsuit against the State requiring consolidated elections.
 

The purpose of this work session is to review the items and the recommendations. A second work session is recommended to determine:1) if you wish to go forward with placing these items on a May ballot or some other time; and 2) which items you wish to place on that ballot. 

Amendments to the City Charter require a vote of the citizens. A mail ballot election was budgeted in FY15 (July 1, 2014- June 30, 2015).  There would also be some small reprinting costs associated with updating the Charter with the measures that pass.

The review and possible election of Charter amendments support the following Council Goal:

11. Effective governance

REGIONAL PLAN:
Goal ED.1. Create a healthy environment for business by ensuring transparent, expeditious, and predictable government processes.
Goal ED.7. Continue to promote and enhance Flagstaff's unique sense of place as an economic development driver.

Council discussed this item at its January 21, 2014 and March 11, 2014 work sessions. Council gave direction to review the City Charter and propose amendments for Council consideration using citizen input and with an eye on a March or May 2015 election.

This meeting is intended to review the proposals and recommendations by the Citizen Advisory Committee and the City Manager. To meet the March ballot, Council would need to call the election by November 4, 2014. To meet the May 2015 ballot, Council would need to call the election by January 2015.

The City Manager Appointed a Citizen Advisory Committee.  Additionally, any charter amendments require a vote.  Therefore the following levels of community involvement are associated with this agenda item.

Consult
Involve
Empower