Of seven changes suggested by the Charter Review Commission, council rejects three, passes three intact, and passes one more after applying their own changes.
At a special summer session on Wednesday, August 17th, Youngstown City Council passed legislation that forwards four charter amendments to the November general election ballot. The election is Tuesday, November 8th, with early in-person voting scheduled to begin on Wednesday, October 12th. Voter registration deadline is October 11th.
The three rejected measures include a change to Section 2 that would have made the convening of a charter review commission by the mayor mandatory every four years; additions to Section 5 that would have placed a one-year ward residency requirement in the Charter for city council candidates plus an exemption against disqualification of candidates potentially affected by redistricting between the primary filing deadline and the general election; and a change in Section 52-C that would have allowed for the resident and domicile provision for appointments to commissions or boards to be waived by the mayor with approval of council upon the mayor making a demonstrated need for the waiver. The change to 52-C would have also deleted the city residency requirement for all City employees, a requirement outlawed in 2006 by the state legislature and upheld by the Ohio Supreme Court in 2009.
The three measures passed intact to the Board of Elections from the Charter Review Commission through council have been characterized by Commission chairman Chris Travers as “housekeeping” in nature. They include deleting from Section 18 an unenforced $12 “missed meeting penalty” for city council members, deleting an obsolete term from Section 24 which governs the City’s funds disbursement policy, and deleting a reference to the now-defunct Parks and Recreation Commission in Section 85.
City council rejected the Commission’s version of changes to Section 83 (governing the division of the city into seven wards) but passed their own version. The Commission suggested that redistricting of the seven wards must take place if the difference in population between the largest ward and smallest ward was seven percent; council changed it to ten percent. Also, the Commission recommended a 90 day deadline for redistricting to be executed (the starting point is typically when the Ohio Secretary of State issues a proclamation of the decennial U.S. Census results); council changed it to 180 days.
To view the ballot language for each amendment, click on the links below and download a copy of each amendment issue to your device.
The language must be certified by the Mahoning County Board of Elections.
Charter Review 2016 