Bill 26-0172 - Update

26-0172 Charter Review is being replaced with three new bills.

The Charter Review committee has worked extensively to study the Charter and have come up with several reforms.  Initially all of these reforms for this year’s ballot were placed in one large bill, 26-0172.  

We heard from several residents, as well as Councilmembers, that transparency was important. At tonight’s City Council meeting, we will introduce three new bills that split the large one into three parts. We also negotiated with Mayor Scott and came to an agreement to ensure that all three bills had his Administration’s support.

The three bills are:

26-0190 Charter Amendment - Procurement Reform. This charter amendment resolution removes administrative language from the charter regarding procurement, and removes the requirement that the city only selects the lowest bid. A new process will be outlined in code this year. 

26-0191 Charter Amendment - Budget, Veto, and Board of Estimates Reform.  This charter amendment does several things:

• Changes the veto and veto override timing for regular bills, and for the budget. These timelines ensure the Mayor still has time to review, and that the City Council has time to override. In relation to the budget, there was never time built in to override a veto, and this new timeline allows for that.

• Removes the Board of Estimates from the first stages of the budget process. Instead, the budget gets introduced without first being approved by the Board of Estimates.

• Requires the City Council to get the budget by April 30th which is 15 days earlier than we currently get the budget.

• De-Couples the bill related to the tax rate from the budget.

26-0192 Charter Amendment - Minor Privileges. This charter amendment resolution allows for minor privileges without having to go before the Board of Estimates. A minor privilege is permission to put something in the right of way, like a sandwich board, or outdoor seating on the sidewalk, or something like that. Another formula will be drafted in code for requests to go before the zoning board instead. This cuts the amount of time for the application to a decision to weeks, not months. 

There are two items that were in the original bill that are not in this series of bills.  One is the conditional budgeting which would have allowed the City Council to set conditions on appropriates, and non-lapsing funds by ordinance, which would have allowed the City Council to create funds where the dollars do not need to be returned at the end of the fiscal year by ordinance rather than charter amendment.