City tries to sneak one by on voters- vote no on first charter amendment!

Posted on November 4, 2008 @ 11:01 am by David Esrati

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I consider myself a well informed voter- yet, I was totally unprepared for the City Charter amendments on the ballot.

Reading carefully- the first amendment has wording that allows (from memory) “The mayor or two commissioners to convene a meeting by informing the other members of the Commission”- totally negating the emergency notification system.

The language on the City Website is a PDF- here is what they say:

“Clarify procedures for when the City Commission is required to meet in public. (City Charter Section 39)

The proposed amendment provides that if a quorum is unavailable for the weekly Commission Meeting (at least three of the five members are required for a quorum), the meeting may be cancelled simply by the absent Commission members notifying the Clerk of Commission in advance.  As the Charter language is now written, if no quorum is available, the one or two available City Commission members must still convene the public meeting only to immediately adjourn for lack of a quorum.  In addition, the new language clarifies that the first meeting for newly inaugurated City Commission members will take place on the first Monday of the new year, unless that date is a holiday, at a location be announced to the public in advance.  The amendment also preserves the requirement that City Commission meetings comply with the Ohio Sunshine Law. “

Proposed Charter Amendments 2008.pdf (application/pdf Object).

That language does not even come close to what was on the ballot.

A search of the DDN site and the City of Dayton site and the Montgomery County Board of Elections sites never shows actual ballot language.

This should be grounds for a lawsuit to cancel election results.

Here is the search page for the City:

http://www.cityofdayton.org/Search/Results.aspx?k=charter%20amendments&start1=1

I wasn’t that worried about the other issues, but the idea that Commissioners can convene a meeting without notifying the public totally negates open government.

If anyone can source the exact ballot language- please comment below.

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