Good afternoon. Welcome to this live broadcast of the Charter Commission. My name is Peter Ginder. I'm the chair of the Charter Commission. Before we begin this meeting, I want to offer a friendly reminder reminder to all members, staff, and the public that
these meetings are broadcast live to enable greater public participation. These broadcasts include realtime captioning as a further method to increase the accessibility of our proceedings to the community. Therefore, all speakers need to be
mindful of the rate of their speech so that our captioners can fully capture and transcribe all comments for the broadcast. We ask all speakers to moderate the speed and clarity of their comments. At this time, I will ask the clerk to call the role so we can verify a quorum
for this meeting. >> Commissioner Dlo is absent. Holquest >> here. Nye >> present. >> Schneider >> here. >> Rubenstein >> here. >> Prindle
>> here. >> Dhy >> here. >> Boon >> here. >> Kle >> here. >> Garcia >> present. >> Smith >> here. >> Cooper >> here. Perry >> here. >> Kak >> here. >> And Kinder
>> here. >> We have 14 present. >> Let the record reflect we have a quorum. Commissioners, the agenda for today's meeting is before us. May I have please have a motion to adopt the agenda? >> So moved, Clay. >> Is there a second? >> Second. I
>> We have a proper motion before us. Is there any further discussion? Seeing no further discussion on the motion. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> All those opposed say nay. That motion passes and the agenda is adopted.
Our next item of business is acceptance of the meetings from our December uh meeting. May I please have a motion to accept those minutes? >> So moved. Rubenstein. >> Is there a second? >> Second, Perry. >> Okay. We have a proper motion before us.
Is there any further discussion? Seeing no further discussion on the motion, all those in favor say I. >> I. >> All those opposed say nay. That motion passes and the minutes are accepted. The next item on the agenda is the
chair's report. I have two items on that regard. First, um we have a new commissioner joining with us for the first time, Commissioner Eric Prindle. Um so I'll ask Commissioner Prindle just to take a moment to introduce himself. Uh and why he decided to apply for this
position. >> Uh thank you. Yes. So my name is uh Eric Prindle. I live in South Uptown with my partner and two kids. Um I am a licensed attorney uh but actually have spent the majority of my career in marketing and marketing operations. Uh I also have a background in uh nonprofit governance. I
had the privilege of serving for 5 years on the board of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra Society. Uh and I applied for uh position on the charter commission. I was looking for opportunities to get involved. Uh this seemed to align with my uh with my talents and experience. uh
I am someone who uh you know has a has an eye for governance and uh systems and processes and uh this seemed like it aligned uh with that. So I'm looking forward to the opportunity to serve um and um thanks for having me. Thank you commissioner and and welcome.
Um, the next item that I have as far as the chair's report, as you will recall after our December meeting, we received a letter from the president of the Minneapolis Park Board um, expressing some concern about uh, the uh, report that they'd received visav the city
council and um, the independence of the park board. Um, and those of you who follow the Minneapolis Park Board know that they uh, jealously guard their independence and they were concerned that we were in some fashion looking at um, park board structure. Um, I did have
a lengthy conversation with the parkboard president um, um, and uh, did uh, assure her that we were looking more at a span of control issue for the city council and that we were not undertaking
any review of the park board. So, uh, I just wanted to just note that that I did follow up on that letter from the park board. The next item on our agenda is the election of officers for 2026. And I will now hand the meeting off to
the clerk for the purpose of uh, the elections. >> Thank you, Commissioner. >> Thank you, Commissioner Ginder. Uh I am the clerk for the tar commission Michaela and I will be uh handling the election of officers for this body. In
terms of procedure I will administer uh the elections by first uh opening it up for president then vice president and then secretary. For each election we will begin uh by nominations. After all nominations are made for that office we will proceed to take a vote by roll call
in the order that the nominations were made. Um, are there any questions from commissioners about the process at this time? Seeing none, I will proceed with the first office, which would be president. Um,
without objection, I will now open the floor for nominations. Are there any nominations? Commissioner Rubenstein. >> Thank you. Um, I enthusiastically nominate Peter Ginder to continue as chair of the charter commission. I base
my nomination on my great experience working with him. >> Thank you, Commissioner Rubenstein. Are there any other nominations for the office of president? Are there any other nominations? Seeing none, I will close the period for
nominating for that office. Um, we will now proceed to a vote uh to elect Commissioner Ginder. Uh, and I'll proceed to do that roll call. I guess Commissioner Ginder, do you accept the nomination? I don't believe I heard anything. My apologies.
>> I do. >> Perfect. Um, Commissioner uh Hawquest. >> Yes. >> On the nomination. Yes. >> Okay. >> Nye. >> I. >> Schneider. >> I.
>> Rubenstein. I >> Prindle. >> I >> Dhy. >> Yes. >> Boon. >> I >> Cle. >> I Garcia. >> I >> Smith. >> I >> Cooper. >> I >> Perry. >> I
>> Kak. >> I >> and Ginder. >> I. We have 14 eyes. Congratulations to Chair Ginder. Our next office will be the office of vice president. Uh without objection, I will open the floor for nominations. Are there any nominations at this time?
Commissioner Kak, >> I nominate Commissioner Rubenstein. >> We have a nomination by Kak. Uh, Commissioner Rubenstein, do you accept that nomination? >> Uh, yes. Thank you. >> Thank you. Are there any other
nominations for the office of vice president? Are there any other nominations? Seeing none, I will close the period for nominations. Um, and we'll now proceed to that vote
on the motion to uh elect Commissioner Rubenstein as vice president. Commissioner Holquest >> I >> Nye >> I >> Schneider >> I >> Rubenstein >> I >> Prindle >> I >> Dhy >> I >> Boon
>> I >> Cle. Garcia >> I >> Smith >> I >> Cooper >> I >> Perry >> I >> Kak >> I >> Ginder >> I >> we have 14 eyes. Congratul Congratulations to Vice President
Rubenstein. We will next move on to the election of secretary. I will now open the floor for nominations. Are there any nominations by commissioners? >> Uh yes. I would like to nominate uh Commissioner Garcia who I think has done
a terrific job uh in the past as part of the leadership team and I think she'll do a great job going forward. >> All right, we have a nomination. Are there any other nominations by commissioners? Are there any other nominations? Uh Commissioner Garcia, do you accept
that nomination? >> I do. Thank you. >> Awesome. Uh on the motion to nominate Garcia, Commissioner Hullquest. I >> Nye >> I >> Schneider >> I >> Rubenstein >> I >> Brindle >> I
>> Dhy >> I >> Boen >> I >> Kle >> I >> Garcia >> I >> Smith >> I >> Cooper >> I Perry >> I >> Kak >> I >> Ginder >> I
>> we have 14 eyes's with that chair Ginder we have completed elections now I'll hand the chair back to you >> thank you Mr. Waligo. Um, and uh, thank you for the election. Um, I think uh, I
know last year I had put forward a plan for for the coming year. I think uh, our plan this year is going to be very similar. We have a number of items to complete um, from last year's um, plan which included looking at the uh, the
city council makeup and we're continuing with that with the report tonight. um looking at department heads um which we've uh made a lot of progress on but continue moving forward with that as well as other technical amendments that we need to continue to look at during
this coming year. But uh thank you again for um for uh allowing me to be the chair of this commission. The next item on our agenda is number seven, which is the um uh excuse me, number six, which is the
uh annual report uh which is the approval of the uh report and directing the city clerk to forward to the chief judge of the Henman County District Court. That report summarizes the work of the commission in 2025. Are there any questions or is there any
discussion um by members on the report? >> Uh Commissioner N. >> Thank you, Mr. chair. Uh, so on page four, appendix B, I just want to make sure that, uh, Commissioner Cooper is, uh, well represented on the document. I'm not sure if he was going to bring this up, but, uh, I'm I'm referenced
twice, although I'd love to be in two places at once. I'm seat three, not seat 12. So, I would like the, um, the document that we submit to the the chief judge to reflect seat 12 is Commissioner Cooper, not Commissioner Nye. Please,
>> I think that's appropriate. And I noticed that we also have incorrect contact uh information with regard to Commissioner Cooper. So um subject to those corrections um before the clerk forwards it to the city clerk's office um um I think we would be ready to move
forward unless there are any other errors or omissions that anybody else has seen in the report. >> Okay. Move the report. Okay. Is there a second? >> Second. N. >> Okay. Uh we have a proper motion before us. Is there any further discussion?
Seeing no further discussion on that motion, all those in favor say I. >> I. I. >> I. >> Those opposed say nay. >> Uh that motion passes and the report is adopted. Uh the next item is number
seven is comparable research. Uh it's a presentation related to the research on municipal councils in select jurisdictions. Um, if you'll recall, we we received a presentation in December by city clerk Carl. We are today joined
by Guide House. I'll invite Mr. Carl to uh get us started started and introduce our guests. >> Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's my pleasure to introduce three of our consultants from Guide House who are here today, and I'll bring them on up so that they can get started. Hopefully, you all have a printed copy of their supplemental
report at your desk. uh they'll be going over that to address not only their original findings but especially the follow-up questions asked by this body which they have addressed in their supplement report. So I'll turn it over to our friends from guide house introduce yourselves. >> Good afternoon Chair Ginder, Vice Chair
Rubenstein, Secretary Garcia, members of the charter commission and meeting attendees. My name is Margaret Shouse and today I will be presenting Guideous's research on how Minneapolis's city council and legislative department are structured, resourced, and governed
compared to 11 peer cities. First, I want to thank the charter commission for the opportunity to share this work as part of your agenda today. And I also want to thank the office of the city clerk for their sponsorship of this research. I'm a director in the state and local
government practice at Guide House, a professional services firm that delivers advisory technology and managed services to both commercial and government clients. I'm joined today by two of my colleagues, Christy Thronson and Steven
Jackson, who contributed to this work. The team's role was to assess comparable jurisdictions data across cities, synthesize patterns, and present objective findings to this commission. As an overview of my briefing, I will
lay out the process, purpose, context, and key research questions for this work. I'll provide key details of our analysis, highlighting areas where Minneapolis is aligned with comparator cities and where it is structurally distinct. I'll summarize our key findings and
highlight our next steps. And certainly I'll invite your questions at the end, but if questions arise in the course of my briefing, please feel free to raise them. To frame this discussion, I'll first lay out our objective, scope, and methodology for this work. Our research
objective was to compare the structure and function of Minneapolis's city council and legislative departments to 11 pure cities, which I'll cover on the next slide. But I do want to clarify upfront that this analysis does not assess the relative effectiveness of the various
structures that we identified. This work in instead serves to identify comparative points of interest which may merit further analysis to determine the applicability to Minneapolis's context. Our research focused on four key areas.
First, council size and representation. Specifically, we examined the 12 city councils in our sample to identify key characteristics, including size, who they represent, and how council members are elected. Second, we looked at committees and
process. Specifically, we examined the underlying standing committees and how those are organized and configured. Third, we looked at mayor council relationships. Here we reviewed the appointment confirmation process for department heads to identify roles and
responsibilities between mayors and councils and where they differed across our sample cities. In addition, in addition, we looked at common challenges identified in strong mayor council relationships and highlight several strategies for addressing them.
And then fourth, staffing and legislative support. Here we delved into council's legislative departments to look at staffing levels and capabilities across the peer cities. To answer these research questions, guide house reviewed city charters and
city codes, analyzed FY2025 budget documents, conducted interviews with staff of six of our comparator cities, and supplemented findings with desktop research. We conducted this work from June through August 2025 and the data available are
as of August 2025. Moving on to our 11 comparator cities and how we chose them. We began by focusing on cities that closely resemble Minneapolis in terms of population, economic output, and budgetary scale. We then further refined that selection
by applying the criteria outlined in the left hand column. Specifically, we considered cities that have been referenced in other peer benchmarking reports with Minneapolis that operate under a strong mayor council form of government that maintain
a full-time council that feature both at large and district-based representation models and have made recent changes to their council structures. Only cities meeting at least four of those five criteria were included in our final list. And you see the table on the
right illustrates the 11 comparator cities that satisfied these requirements. It's important to note that the objective our of our benchmarking exercise is not to prescribe a single model for Minneapolis to follow, but instead to present uh the gamut of
models and practices that exist across the peer cities and to identify where Minneapolis aligns with the pe with its peers, where it stands out, and where there is significant variation across all cities without a clear leading practice.
Moving on to council size and representation. The table on the left summarizes key characteristics for Minneapolis and our comparator cities with respect to the number of council members, whether they serve as at large or district rep representatives or mix,
the year that the city established the council size and representation approach shown, and whether residents vote for council members via general election or rank choice. We identified that the number of council members in Minneapolis is in line with its peer average of 12 members.
Notably, when we reviewed uh representation as a ratio of its population, we observed that Minneapolis has a relatively larger council size um with 32,71 residents per council member shown in the bar chart on the right.
By comparison, the average across all peers is 63,18 residents per council member. We found only Buffalo has fewer residents per council seat. Whereas at the other end of the spectrum, uh the three cities at the top of this chart
represent more than two to four times as many residents as per council member as does Minneapolis. Now, with respect to representation election types, we identified two models used by cities in each of these categories for which Minneapolis's approach is in line with its peers.
Specifically, the cities in our sample were split in using either all district or a mix of district and at large systems as well as using either a general election model or a ring choice model. None of the comparator cities used a purely atlarge council model. In
fact, comparator cities that have shifted away in recent years from at large to mixed or district council structures have reported positive overall outcomes with respect to improvements in equity and neighborhood level representation. We further noted that Minneapolis and
Kansas City have the longest standing approach to council size and representation time compared to Columbus and Portland who have made the most recent changes with Columbus in 2023 increasing from seven to nine council members and adopting a new form of district representation whereby
candidates must represent a district but are still elected citywide. And last year, Portland changed their election model to a multi-winner rank choice approach. And then finally, we observed that most cities in our sample elect their council members through a general election,
while four cities, Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle, and Washington DC use a ring choice voting approach. Now, our evaluation of council standing committees focused on several key dimensions, including the number of committees, their average membership, and the meeting frequency.
These findings are represented in the table on the left and notably the number of standing committees vary significantly across cities. You can see that Boston has as many as 21 standing committees while Kansas City has only three. Columbus recently haved their
number of standing committees from 21 to 11. Despite this range, Minneapolis's committee types, sizes, and meeting frequency are comparable to the majority of peer cities. For example, on average, cities in our sample maintain eight standing committees, which is slightly
more than Minneapolis's six, but overall consistent. The average committee size across comparator cities is five council members, aligning closely with Minneapolis's average of six members per committee. In addition to these quantitative
measures, we examined the policy scope of Minneapolis's six standing committees and compared peer cities against this model. Our analysis found that Minneapolis's committee policy scope closely matches that of its peers. The
most notable differences lie in how cities name and organize their committees, which in turn affects how they assign jurisdictional oversight to each of those policy areas. For instance, all cities in our sample address the policy scope covered by
Minneapolis's standing committee on business, housing, and zoning, but we found that many distribute the scope across two or more standing committees. The similarities and differences across standing committees are represented in the table on the right, and I'll take a moment to walk you through it. So, the
top row shaded in gray lists the policy focus areas of each of Minneapolis's six standing committees. And then the rows below compare the structure and oversight of these policy areas in pure cities. So for example, the green circles indicate that a pure city has a standing
committee with the same policy scope as Minneapolis. Using uh the budget column, the third column as an example, each of the cities with a green circle also have a standing budget committee. The yellow circles denote policy areas that are also addressed by pure cities
but within different committee structures. So looking at the budget column again as an example, Washington DC was yellow because it doesn't have a dedicated budget committee. Instead, they address budget matters uh within the jurisdiction of their other standing
committees. And when they seek to address overall crosscutting budget issues, they do so in their committee of the whole. And then finally, the gray circles indicate policy areas that are not addressed by pure citystanding committees. So for example uh under budget Seattle is gray and that was a
function of their budget matters are addressed via a select committee rather than a standing committee. Now through the course of this research we also gathered qualitative feedback in interviews on challenges within mayor council relationships and anecdotal ways
to lessen them. Across our interviews several common challenges emerged and I suspect none of them will surprise you. First, with busy calendars and different priorities driving those respective calendars, cities noted challenges with advancing approvals and decisions on issues where
mayor council priorities are not aligned. Especially, we also heard that communication breakdowns between branches were also reported often due to interpersonal styles and lack of communication. And then a third theme was that
structural tensions between policym execution, especially where interviewees found ambiguity in roles and responsibilities created friction in daily operations. Some cities we spoke with have adopted formal mechanisms to mitigate friction, which we note on the right side. For
example, Denver holds standing meetings between mayoral and council leadership to ensure routine and consistent communications. The Portland city code mandates coordination between the city clerk and a policy liaison in the council president's office to facilitate open
and ongoing communications. And in Washington DC, they in their code, they use automatic confirmation timelines to ensure that mayoral appointments move forward automatically after 90 days to avoid delays caused by inaction.
Continuing on this theme, we assess mayor council relationships through the lens of how city mayors and councils appoint and confirm department heads as shown on this table. Overall, we observed a spectrum of engagement by city councils.
In Denver, Seattle, and Washington DC, like Minneapolis, those cities are structured so that the mayor appoints all department heads and the council confirms uh each of those positions. Milwaukee, Buffalo, Portland, San Diego fall in the middle where the mayor or a
city administrator appointed by the mayor appoints department heads and the city council confirms a subset of those appointees. On the other end of the spectrum, we found Kansas City, Boston, and Columbus where the mayor or a mayor appointed city manager appoints department heads
without council confirmation of those positions. This wide variation in appointment and confirmation processes highlights the distinct trade-offs each city faces. These include balancing accountability and efficiency as well as achieving
administrative clarity. A few other findings from our peer cities. Columbus has charter language that explicitly gives the mayor unilateral appointment and removal power over department heads without council confirmation. And while I noted previously that cities
like DC use automatic confirmation timelines to avoid delays to confirmation, on the other end of the spectrum, Atlanta's charter does not allow silent confirmation of mayoral appointees if a vote is delayed. Our final area of analysis assessed the
legislative departments across our sample cities, including the staffing levels and capabilities that support city councils. A number of cities we spoke with cited high staffing needs as a challenge with legislative staff often juggling multiple roles and responsibilities.
As shown in the table on the left, council staffing levels vary widely across comparator cities, ranging from one staff member per council member in Kansas City and Milwaukee to as many as 12 or 13 in San Diego and Washington DC respectively. On average, we found comparator cities
have four dedicated staff per member, which is slightly higher, but in line with Minneapolis's range of two to three cities, we found we're also largely consistent in giving flexibility to council members to hire their own staff within varying budget levels.
We also found that while no two comparative cities structure their legislative and council support teams in the same way, most cities have similar teams and functions. Most cities, for example, have some sort of centralized administrative support office for council, but vary in range and scope of
services and organizational placement of those positions. Also, most comparative cities distribute these functions across multiple offices or rely more heavily on mayoral staff. We further observe that there is broad consistency across the capabilities of
the staff supporting them shown on the table on the right. Across all cities, legislative analysis and support was the most common job function. And we also observed the range of business support functions across many cities such as budget, communications, IT, and crossgovernment
support. Now, this slide provides a final summary reiterating our main findings that tie back to our four key research areas I introduced at the beginning. With respect to council size and representation, Minneapolis is largely
in line with its peers. One area of differentiation is Minneapolis's larger council size when compared to its population. With respect to committees and process, Minneapolis's committee types, size, and meeting frequency are comparable to the
average of its peers. With respect to Mayor Council relationships, we did not identify a common or consistent model or set of leading practices across our sample. And with respect to staffing and legislative support, we found Minneapolis to be consistent with the
average of its peers in both the size of council staff and the capabilities those legislative staff performed. Our next steps are to conclude our analysis and we will incorporate that work into our final report for delivery to the city. This concludes my briefing
on our comparable jurisdictions research. Thank you again for the opportunity to present this work to you today. And with that, I'll pause and my colleagues and I welcome any questions you have. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Shaw, for that presentation.
Are there any questions or discussion from uh commission members? Commissioner Nye. >> Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for that presentation. Uh, one question I had um was just about uh uh
uh the election style of of the different uh cities that that you viewed. Uh so this commission may be looking at even years versus odd years versus uh and changing how how we may do our council and mayoral elections in in
the future. Did you uh the cities that you uh looked at, when do they hold city council and mayoral elections? Are they even years? Are they odd years? Are they a mix of both? Was that part of the research that you did? >> Thank you for that question. That was
not in scope of this research, but in delivering our final report, we'd be happy to add that uh analysis to our final report. >> I I'm I don't know if I'm if I have the authority to say yes, but I I know I would find it helpful. Um, Commissioner I I think I think we're all interested in in that. So, I would ask it you would
be if you could include that in the supplemental report. Um, as Commissioner Nye indicated, we're looking at that heavily um because of the impacts on turnout and there are a number of issues with evenear versus odd year and um it's been on our agenda.
So, we would appreciate if you could add that to it also. >> Absolutely. >> Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. >> Are there other questions? Commissioner Rubenstein. >> Thank you, Mr. chair. Um, you mentioned that that cities that have I think as I heard you correctly that cities that
have shifted away from at large members of city council have been sort of positive in in their description of the results and I wondered if you could just speak a little more to those factors. >> Yes, absolutely. That is a great question. Thank you. Um we found both in
our interviews and certainly in our research that the opportunity to uh prom provide more district level representation increased the likelihood that uh members were able to uh equally represent the breadth of uh perspectives
of their constituents. Let me see if my colleague would like to add to that. Yeah, I'll also add that um I think from a few cities that we spoke to that used the mix model that had both the district and at large noted that there was often
a positive balance between um or there can be both a positive balance between district level members being kind of more focused on those district level issues being well balanced with the at large members who can take a holistic view of the city and focus on more of
those city-wide issues. Um and with that balance uh a lot of folks noted the positive effects of that. Um but did also note that that um you know can also create some tensions as well um between some of those more district level focus
members and more of those citywide uh focus members. So pros and cons um to this to this style but uh overwhelmingly positive of of folks moving to this uh mixed or district level system. If I can just do a quick followup on
that. In the cities that have moved away, have they moved away completely from the atlarge or have they reduced at large? And um which cities in particular uh did that out of out of this list? >> Sure. I think um I'll have to check my
notes to just to make sure I have the specific list of cities right that have all moved away. Um but for those cities, they've mostly moved uh to sometimes that mixed level where they haven't totally moved away from all at large or all to uh to district level. Um but more
of a balance of um often will have uh I think Kansas City has an equal amount of six at large, six mixed. Most other cities we've seen have more uh uh district level representatives and then a fewer amount of of atlarge
representatives. Um, and like I said, I'll I'll check back at my notes and see if I can pull up that specific list. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Okay. >> Can I have a followup on that as well? >> Yes. >> So, one of the cons with regard to the
at large, which we've all talked about here, is the lack of representation of minorities uh in certain districts. Was that a I I guess I have two follow-ups. That's my first one. Was
that an issue that you looked at at all? Because that's a there are that seems to be an issue here that is of significant importance. I'll share that observation you made certainly came up in our research and in our conversations where uh I think that
was one of the primary reasons why those who shifted from a purely at large model to either a mixed or a district model identified that there were improvements in being able to more equally represent those underrepresented um uh residents.
And then my second uh question along those lines is in speaking because we have a at large members in our park board and in speaking to some of those at large members. One of the things that they mentioned is they do not get
anywhere near the constituent back and forth that district uh representatives do because if something's going on, people call their district representatives instead of looking to at large. Was was that anything you looked at at all in terms of constituent
uh interactions? >> Um oh sorry uh for we did not focus on on this scope as much of uh the particular constituent representation and looking at um kind of those inter sorry constituent interactions. Um but can I'll defer to the team to see if we
can follow up on that in the in the following supplementary report. But I think your takeaway was certainly reflected in our research and the conversations we had where you know as my colleague noted having that mix of at large and district was able to address exactly that exactly that tension you
mentioned where you know for those issues that are unique to districts um district representatives are more aly able to voice those unique concerns and where there are perhaps more crosscutting issues that affect the whole um of a city or municipality
having that balance of atlaw large to take that broader um that broader uh look and position on behalf of the entire municipality was also beneficial. But that's exactly what they said didn't happen was that the constituents when looking at citywide issues still went
only to their district representatives and didn't communicate with the that that there was a significant lack of communication with at large members >> on all issues both citywide as well as those involving their specific districts. >> Thank you for clarifying that. that did
come up as a point of feedback that depending on um how that at large position is represented um that there is sometimes there is that atlarge position can almost serve as an extension of a district um if if the individual uh
representing that at large position is more aligned with district interests. So, um I would likely defer back to some of our research that found some of the more um personality based uh challenges that would need to be addressed in whether there are any kind of internal controls to help make sure that the
intended balance of representation is a is achieved. >> Thank you. >> Um Commissioner Rubenstein, >> one more question. Thank you. Um, I also would be interested to know if there's any focus on people who wish to run for
at large seats. It one of the issues that we've heard raised is that it limits the ability of people who don't have the means to run for a citywide seat. So, it excludes people who might
otherwise be able to run for office. >> That is an interesting perspective. It did not come up in the scope of our research. Um, but I can Yes. Thank you, >> Commissioner Nye. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh so on uh this is sort of following
the um just the conversation that we've been having on page three of the of of the report that that you provided um talking about uh council size and representation under from the executive summary for key takeaways for the city of Minneapolis to include for anyone who
wants to look uh follow along. Uh talking about district representation, you write district representation is typically seen to improve citizen participation and increase diversity and equity. Um what do you mean by citizen participation here and does that include
voter turnout? >> Sure. I can I can speak to that a little bit. Um I think in terms of the citizen participation and diversity and equity I think we've seen that there can um as noted sometimes be more uh you know as we were speaking to if there's that
district level representation. Um we've seen that folks are usually more kind of active um with that uh with that district level piece. Um, for example, there are some cities where um they are, you know, have spoken about how how uh
how much they um kind of love having an all district council uh for example as kind of facing off of some of those historical issues that may have happened um with segregation and things of that nature. and that district level representation um really kind of leading
to to more improved citizen uh participation in terms of calling representatives in terms of being more active um in elections. Um however, we did not look as much uh at voter turnout uh in particular with with this research.
>> Okay. U Commissioner Cooper. >> Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, I have a question about the confirmation um, procedures that you looked at. Did your research in your interviews or in looking at like the materials from the Denver um, reorganization?
Did you come across any um uh I guess feedback from those governments about the purpose that the city council saw in the confirmation process in terms of something different than a one-time confirmation vote versus
ongoing accountability um that sort of thing. >> Thank you for that question. One point of analysis that we are completing is actually delving into more detail on uh the the process and the details of each of those confirmation of appointment
structures. Um so we will take your question into account as we complete and finalize that research. >> Uh Commissioner Homequist. >> Uh thank you. Um I think that for me is the most important analysis that could come out of this report for like the
immediate of right now. Um, will there be the, and this maybe is for the city clerk, is there going to be an opportunity for you to present that analysis to us at a later date? Um, because I think that analysis is what's at the heart of the question that we're
trying to address right now. >> We'll certainly defer that question. We would be happy to share as as requested. >> So, yes, I see Mr. Carl nodding affirmatively that that Uh, Commissioner Schneider,
>> thank you and thank you for this report. I'm It's There's a lot of information here. It's sort of hard to grasp, but I I have kind of two or three little questions and and maybe you can um answer them tonight and if not, you can answer them later. I I see that you interviewed six out of the 11. And I was
just curious like were you planning to interview the other five or just if you could comment on that? I'll tell you all three questions and then you could maybe comment on that. Um on um uh the question of peer cities, I I in
my prior life when I actually worked for the city, I did a lot of pure city research and a lot of these are familiar to us. A lot of them are Federal Reserve Bank uh locations. a lot of them are are sort of core um the key economic engine
of that state like like we are um and and but some are not u and I'm just curious again um how you if you could say a word a little bit more about how you picked these cities uh and then um I'm sorry I'm
you have uh in on diff different pages um how many count or constituents per ward And then you have on a different page staff people per council member. And did you find any relationship? Do higher uh
population I mean higher uh constituent per ward cities have more staff people per council member. Is there any relationship there? And finally, sorry for the um one of the issues that sort of I think I brought it
up um last meeting, but um part something that this city has and I I I do not know if other cities have is is a 311 function where um some years ago this city established this as a way
to to um uh enhance uh constituent access to you know, it was sort of a complaint function. And um and I know that our our 311 center, you know, handles thousands of calls a year and is
was was designed to take the load off of council members. Um and so I'd be curious if um how many of these cities have a sort of a similar, you know, centralized um constituent complaint
system like a 311. So, I'm sorry that's several different questions. So, >> all right. Thank you. Let me try to answer all of those. I can offer that our research scope did not cover um looking at the 311 function and where that fell across sample cities that we
looked at. Um to your question on uh peer cities and the criteria we used uh certainly I mentioned that we first look at the broad um factors of population uh gross domestic product and size of budget and then we understanding that
the nature of this was to understand where there might be other models or practices that would be of interest to Minneapolis. We looked at um other cities with uh either recent changes with similar strong mayor council structures who again had been mentioned
in um other peer reports. Uh to your to your um observation that there is this is a datari uh report. One thing we wanted to do was be more inclusive of peer city. So I will put that in quotes because we didn't want to leave anything unshared that could potentially spark an
area of interest or discussion um in your discussions. Um related to that, you asked about the number of peer cities that we interviewed. It truly was not for lack of interest. Um and in some ways that was why we also were more inclusive. We wanted to see how many
cities not only could we um find strong objective data on but also how many we could speak to to fortify that research with um anecdotal feedback. And so um I think we just fell um we fell to the availability of time and the um
willingness of our uh peer cities to to contribute to those interviews. And then you asked a great question about whether there was a relationship between the ratio of um council staff to council
members as well as the um I believe the budget and the >> constituents. >> Yes. constituency per ward. Um I'm looking at my colleague in case that was readily available if that will follow up. You're amazing. >> There's some correlation although it's
now of course. >> Thank you for the reminder. Hi everybody. I'm Christie. Uh thank you for having us. So there is some correlation between the number of staff and the number of constituents represented. We do see the highest
number of constituents represented in San Diego and they have the highest number of staff with the 7 to 12 um staff members per council member. Uh they're it's not, you know, universal across the board. With Washington DC, they have quite a large uh staff size
generally speaking, but they represent about 50,000 52,000 folks per council member. So some variation across the board, >> right? I I'll just observe here. I mean, Columbus, which is the second highest, has two people, two staff persons per
council. So, that's a huge >> kind of variation between the top two cities in terms of constituents per per council member. So, I'm just curious about that, how they get on with that, you know. So, >> thousand people and two staff people,
you know. So >> certainly and I'll note that there are supporting legislative uh functions almost across the board. Um so there are some shared service models where um when council offices need additional support with legislative drafting or analysis,
they can pull u from those staff to help them out and augment their dedicated staff members. >> Oh, Commissioner and I just a quick followup. So, I I will say I uh I I worked for a state senator and they represent about 75,000 people and I was
the only legislative staffer and we certainly do rely on uh uh nonpartisan staff on on other folks to to get the job done, but it was me answering phones and responding to constituents and so uh two to three would be would have been super helpful. Um, my question about
staffing, and I don't mean to keep tagging on to to folks, but how many of is there a difference between full-time staff and part-time staff and uh and what we would call those of us who work at the legislature um like session only
folks who are there just for a period? Um, or are these all full-time uh full-time staffers? I think they're primarily full-time staffers, but I'll have to get back to you on the exact breakdown of if we have session only included in those counts.
>> Yep. Also say a lot of those folks who have the autonomy to hire have that autonomy to hire uh full or part-time staff. And so we did hear from folks that sometimes they'll use their set budgets to hire two full-time staff. Sometimes they'll use that budget to
hire four part-time staff. Um sometimes they'll use that budget as a more seasonal hire when things are very busy in season. They'll hire some additional part-time staff just for that particular calendar month. And so we did see some variation in terms of part-time full-time and um council members making
that that decision. Um which is why some of these numbers are 7 to 12 or 4 to 13 have that more large variation um in in the numbers. Does this include interns and paid internships or is it just what we would consider staff? I mean, interns
are staff, don't get me wrong, but I think we typically looked at um staff and not internships. Um but yeah, we can we can um kind of pull that out separately in the supplement. >> Are there any other questions? Uh I don't see any. Um, once again, I
would like to thank you all for showing up and doing this work for us. Um, I know that, excuse me, we're going to find it extremely helpful and I know that we'll also look forward um to the supplemental uh reports that that you uh are going to prepare on some of the issues that have been raised previously.
Um, so thank you very much. >> Thank you. And since we have no no more discussion on this item, I'm going to ask the clerk to file uh this report. And I'm also um without objection, I'm going to refer uh
this report to the government structure committee to look at um in regard to both uh our department head process as well as the outline and the structure of the city council as we move forward on that issue. So I'm going to uh have that go to the government structure
committee. The next item on the agenda is even your municipal elections. And I know we we're expecting a brief follow-up related to the question at our last meeting regarding any potential cost savings from aligning local elections with
presidential elections. And I want to ask Mr. Carl uh to speak to this. >> Thank you, Mr. Chair, and to the commissioners. There was a question as the chair outlined at the last meeting where we did a presentation about uh city councils and different structures
about the costs that could potentially be saved by uh aligning municipal elections with evenyeared elections. You know, currently that in Minneapolis we conduct our municipal elections in the oddnumbered year. And just to frame that up, I'll I'll say in Minneapolis we have
a four-year cycle. So if we say that the presidential election, our biggest one is year one, the municipal election follows in year two. Then there's the off cycle or gubanatorial election in year three and in year four, the fourth odd year cycle, we are not scheduled to have elections. That's an off year. Um
in my 15 years here, we've had one off year. We end up having specials uh for some reason in that year. So in the four-year cycle, the municipal election would be in year two uh following the presidential year. According to my staff, the costs that could be saved by moving the city's municipal election
into an even numbered year, either with the presidential or gubinatorial, are approximately $2.5 million. So, I need to clarify for how the city's elections office budgets um because it is somewhat unique within the city. We have a
standard budget. I'll call it our base budget that pays for our staff, our equipment, um the facilities, basically to keep that unit whole regardless of what year we're in in the election cycle. So that's our base budget that pays for personnel, property,
facilities, equipment, um those types of matters. It stays roughly the same no matter what election cycle we're in, what year in that cycle. Then in addition each year we come forward and ask the mayor and council for a supplemental allocation to pay for the
costs of the actual election. So for a presidential election we know that's going to be our biggest impact and we ask for an allocation for that based on an analysis of the previous two or three years presidential elections. So we try and keep very close to those costs and we do that for the presidential, the
municipal and the gubanatorial. So, our actual election costs can fluctuate each year, but for a municipal election minus the costs of just the operations of the elections and voter services division, it's about $2.5 million for that
election. So, that is the potential cost savings we would achieve if municipal elections were moved into the evenear cycle. >> Thank you, Mr. Carl. Um, are there any questions for Mr. Carl? Commissioner Smith,
>> that 2.5 million, what percent of that is the is that of the total election budget? >> Uh, >> over say this four-year period >> through the chair, Commissioner Smith, I'm sorry I don't have that data. I can certainly pull that together and email it to you all tomorrow. U I just am not
prepared to answer that off the top of my head. I will say that the cost of the municipal is the lowest of the three in a regular four-year cycle. Um, and so it's going to be much more uh compared to our base budget as a standard. >> Any other questions for Mr. Carl?
>> Okay. Oh. Oh, >> I'm sorry, Commissioner. >> Thank you, Mr. Chair. So the I guess the question I would have is um should a decision be made to transition to even year what would be the cost to
transition we'd be offset offsetting it potentially with this 2.5 million but what would those costs look like >> to the chair commissioner boot a good question and I I have a maybe partial answer to start and certainly can follow up with the other answers um there would
be costs for a transition plan for the city to move to an even year election. The city of St. Paul is in the process of doing that now. Um those would be I would think fairly minimal notices to voters. Um you know making sure that we
have the spaces available. We might have to reallocate certain things and send additional mailers and notices to registered voters across the city. Uh the other issue I think we'd have to look into and I don't have great concern about this but it is an issue for me as the election administrator is when you
have an election every year um you have an easier time to recruit the same group of election officials back. And so in Minneapolis being the largest city and the voting of city and the voting estate, we are blessed to have a core uh seasonal team who come back year after
year after year. And that includes both the seasonal staff who work with us for planning and preparing for each election which starts you know in March before a November election. Um and then that ramps up to include our seasonal staff who work on us with us on absentee and
early voting which is going to start in about August. And then we ramp up especially for election day with all of our election judges covering all of the precincts and all of the uh districts across the city. So there is sort of a three- tiered system of staffing up for every election. And if there's an offear
in between um people who depend upon that income as a salary could be offset with that. I think that's the most significant impact I would anticipate from not having a steady election every year. >> Thank you.
And um seeing no other questions um thank you Mr. Carl and I'll ask the clerk to file that report. >> The next item on our agenda is the elected official salaries. As you will recall um we received a letter from the mayor related to elected official um
salaries. My intent is to refer this item to the amendment review committee for further discussion. But before I do so, are there any questions or discussions at this at this time? >> Mr. Chair, um just because they're here, I would be remiss not to also recognize
Guide House. Uh Guide House has done two of these studies for us over the last I I guess six years. They did the original study uh I believe it was in 2022 before the 2023 term began uh to validate uh the salaries that the city pays to our
mayor and city council in comparison to benchmark communities many of which were also included in this study tonight. Uh and then they did that again last year and repeated that to inform the decisions made by our policy makers about the salaries paid to mayor and council. So, uh, uh, nice thank you
again to Guidehouse for their partnership with us to provide a lot of factual information and analysis about how our elected officials are compensated in comparison to peer jurisdictions. I I would join in thanking guide house on that and I would note that the city council apparently took it seriously um
when they looked at uh electro official salaries for the coming uh cycle. >> Uh, correct. And Mr. Mr. Chair, with the commission's indulgence, in case you aren't aware, uh based on that analysis, what we found was amongst peer jurisdictions, the mayor of Minneapolis was at the bottom of the scale for
comparison uh cities by a significant amount. Uh the council was just above the mid range of that. And so the decision made by the council as part of last year's uh action to adopt the budget for the current year and for this four-year term was to increase the mayor
to bring the mayor's salary in Minneapolis to the midpoint of the range of comparable cities and to uh hold steady for the first two years of this four-year term for the city council. uh by which time they'll be at about just under the midpoint and then to provide
uh an increase yet to be determined based on the average of all of the compensation given to the uh bargaining units or I should say the uh recognized bargaining units within the city and so that would be given in each of those years years three and four in this term to the council members. So there is an
adjustment significant to the mayor to provide parody with our mayors and comparable communities and a smaller adjustment for the council to keep them at the midpoint uh for during this term. >> Thank you, Mr. Carl. >> Go ahead, Commissioner.
>> Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um Mr. Carl, did did uh uh Guide House or anyone look at whether or not any of our comparable pure cities
are charter cities? And did we look at all or could we look at all in terms of who decides on you know who has control over salaries? Is it the mayor and the council themselves or is it the charter commission? uh through the chair,
Commissioner Dhy. I don't have that information off the top of my head. Uh and it was a different team I believe that helped us from guide house. I will look into the report and also happy to circulate the report that was shared in public with the council so that you have the benefit of that information and see
if I can answer those questions. >> Thank you, Mr. Carl. Mhm. >> Uh, Commissioner Smith, >> I just wanted to confirm if the charter commission were to take on the role of setting council and mayor salaries, that
would require an actual change to the charter. Is that right? >> That's correct. >> Okay. Um just for information, currently the city council sets the salary and that's done pursuant to a special law. And so a special law can be
overridden by a charter amendment and conversely a charter can be overridden by a special law. You can get into a cycle if you wanted to. But um so it's a it's a law that was passed I believe back in the 1960s.
Um, and what it does, which is an anomaly from what most cities do, even where the city council sets salaries, is in Minneapolis, they do it by resolution. And in most cities that do where the council does it, they do it by ordinance. That has a big practical
effect because when you do it by resolution, um, there's no public hearing. Um, it can be done walked right onto the council. Conversely, in Minneapolis, when you do an ordinance, um, it goes to a committee, they they they go through the language, they have a public
hearing, it goes back to the city council. So, it's a much more, if you do it by ordinance, it's a much more transparent way of doing it than doing it by resolution. And I would just say as in my prior life, um I was drawing up
those resolutions the day before a city council meeting where it would be walked on the agenda amended at that time. And so there was no notice to the public at all of salary setting. Um and so um at
least for transparency purposes, even doing an ordinance required to be done by ordinance would be a significant change. >> Mr. Carl, >> Mr. Chair, I must hasten to point out um given your history, which is correct, that the council did uh adopt an
ordinance which prescribes now a process requiring that that resolution on mayor and council salary go to the standing committee of the council for a hearing um not a public hearing, but to be considered at the committee before final action by the full council. So there was an effort by council to insert greater
transparency into that process that the resolution would have to be published and be before the standing committee before any final action by the city council. So um yes to your point about the difference between a resolution and ordinance and I think the council because the special law requires a resolution attempted to find some
balance with that by saying it must come to a committee first before it goes to full counsel. >> Thank you Commissioner Rosson. >> Mr. Chair, I don't I don't know if this is a question or just a comment that your comments give food for thought to
two things. One is if the issue is more transparency um then that could be a compromise in terms of who decides what the salaries are. I'm not proposing it. I'm just saying it's an issue. and also um
whether if we were to take on that role if the charter were amended would we have public hearings and presumably we would >> um I don't want to foreclose a discussion that amendment review committee but um I think you know there
are a number of issues that we would consider as you looked at that transparency is one and then just what the obvious one for a lot of people was what looks like a conflict when you set your own salary Right. So there are a number of items to to look at and decide u if we think there's use in having a
change and whether whether the change is ordinance whether it's a different body setting it whether it would be this body or some other body or you can just do it set it to a um identify a particular a consumer index report and just have it tag along with that. I mean there are
things to think about. Um but again I don't want to foreclose the discussion at amendment review committee for those things is to talk about. >> Thank you >> commissioner Kak chair chair of the amendment review committee. >> Uh thank you Mr. Chairman. Uh it would be helpful to know and miss maybe Mr.
Carl could tell us uh in in our voluminous information today. I didn't see anything about uh other cities and how they uh determine their their their city council
and mayor salaries. If we could before we have a a meeting to discuss this in the committee, maybe we could get a few examples of a uh how many cities have a some kind of independent uh third party
group that decides how much and uh um who are they? Is it a charter commission? Is it some kind of special? Uh, but if we could just get just some uh uh at least some sketchy information about that, that might help us when we
have a when we do have a discussion. Thank you, >> Mr. Chair. Um, I I certainly through my own research have some knowledge of this, but I think this is one of the issues that I'm going to take responsibility for dropping the ball on this. I I recall and I turned to our
guide house guests and friends and said didn't we ask you to also look at this issue and it was not within the scope of their study but um I think that that would be maybe a better approach is ask some outside disinterested uh folk to look into that issue for us and to
report back and so I will happily work with guide house on uh considering their follow-up work and what that would entail to bring forward sort of that comparable cities is how salaries are set. >> Thank you. I I would appreciate that if
we could get that from from guide house. >> Commissioner Hulquist. >> Thank you, Commissioner Ginder. Um this is more just like me being new here. Um so for the amendment committee, is that separate from the governance committee?
Okay. And um are those two coming together at I guess what I'm worried about um is that the governance committee seems to be on the track of we're probably going to need an amendment. Um does that then switch over to the amendment committee and then is the amendment committee doing too much
or Yeah. Enlighten me. >> No. Um it well there couple parts to answer your question. They are two separate committees. Um the government structure was formed really to look at literally the structure of the government. And so that
was the exe uh executive mayor um legislative council um now looking at such things as um you know the ward uh districts uh you know sides that kind of thing. Amendment review is generally set up to take on um items either from uh
citizens a citizen petition or um in this case the mayor which I is is a is a citizen to take a look at that and uh decide what we would want to do with it. So, um it's separate committees and I would note for newer members, um
if you would like to join uh e either committee, if you're not on either committee or would like to be on both committees, uh simply send an email to the clerk and copy me on it and we tend to say yes. Um uh and so um so they are
separate committees um and they have separate tasks. uh they typically will not join together. >> Awesome. I have noticed that many of us are on many committees. Um so follow-up comment and question. Um and this
is taking us a little bit off track but I think is relevant. Um do we know when we need to have an amendment decision made by for the upcoming election? >> You know what we do, Mr. Carl uh through
the chair, Commissioner Hulquist, the timeline for a ballot question initiated by this body would be roughly mid July. The statutory deadline requires it to be so many weeks before the date of the election, which puts us at the beginning of August. You have to back up from that
because it's the council's responsibility to draft the actual language that goes on the ballot. So this body, if it's going to submit a question to the voters, would need to have its work concluded by about mid July in order to give the council sufficient time to create the ballot language and finalize that so that I can get that to the county by the statutory
deadline. >> Thank you so much. Um again, new here. Um the language we give you can be like we want amendment on this or does it have to be like legally structured already? Yes, we we um the the when we propose an amendment, we
will have it laid out in all of its wonderful format with strikeouts and uh ads underlined and everything. We'll have the proposed amendment in its entirety. Um and so for example, as we're getting close on um department
heads, u one of the things I will have the I would like to see the government structure do is actually draft the language. It will come back to us then for final discussion, necessary public hearing, and then forward on if we decide to put it on a ballot or not. And
so, um, yes, it it's it's it's a lawyer's delight. >> Commissioner Schneider, >> microphone. >> Sorry. Could you please refresh my memory about isn't there a um a step
where the council gets an opportunity to revise the language that this body >> No, not from this body. >> And I'm going to take a pause here because our discussion is leading into our next item. And so um u so where
we're at on the on the next item since we've we've referred this amendment review committee, the next item is new commissioner orientation. Um, we haven't had one for a number of years. I think actually 2018 might have been the last formal presentation on uh
an or new commissioner orientation. And so I asked Mr. Carl to put something together again on this because we have a number of new members and it's also a good checkpoint for members that have been around for a while. And so I know that he's taken a lot of work that he's done for the city council for new
members of city council put it into this um so he's going to address amendments charter amendments our role and also get into you know typically fund stuff like open meeting law briefly or data practices which we are all subject to.
And so um for those of you who work for the legislature where you're not subject to data practices uh to um a bit maybe, but this body is subject to daily practice and open meeting law. So, it's nice to get just a brief overview
of what that means. So, with that, u Mr. Carl, thank you. Uh, thank you, Mr. Chair, and to members, uh, my name is Casey Carl. The privilege of serving as the clerk for the city of Minneapolis, as you know, it's my pleasure to present to you the 2026 Charter Commissioner
Handbook. Hopefully each one of you has a copy of this brand new hot off the presses a few hours ago. Um the goal for this was to provide for this body in one place relevant information about the charter co the city charter the charter commission as well as the authority and
core duties of the charter commission and as chair gender indicated uh being a both a reference manual ongoing but also an opportunity for us to uh provide an orientation. So again hopefully each of you has a copy of this. I did email it also to our group email address. So you have both a printed copy and a soft copy
or digital copy. If you didn't get the email today, let me or Michael know and we'll make sure that you have a copy of that. And of course, we'll upload it into the file for this meeting so that it could also be accessed there. As my first slide indicates, uh tonight using this handbook, I plan to go over the
contents uh summarizing it as best I can knowing that I'm a talker. We're going to cover the different chapters which include municipal government in the state of Minnesota, the city charter itself as well as generally home rule authority, uh the role of the charter commission, how to amend the city charter. And then there is a final
chapter in there that we won't have to talk about for a little bit, about two more years, and that's redistricting, another job that is assigned to this body based on an amendment in 2010. So, I'll start uh by addressing how
cities are classified under the law in the state of Minnesota. Um, and as you can see in the lower right corner of this slide, and in future slides, I've included uh reference to the pages in the handbook if you want to follow along or tonight if you find yourself unable to sleep, feel free to grab your
handbook um and enjoy that. Uh essentially Minnesota classifies cities which are legally structured as municipal corporations uh according to a combination of two factors. Those are on the slide here. First the governing authority under which the city is
established and in which it operates and then second the city's population as certified by the US census bureau. So with respect to governing authority that first category or or criterion uh cities in Minnesota are either created under the opaces of a home rule charter
provided under Minnesota statutes chapter 410 or they are created under and are subject to the statutory code for cities found under Minnesota statutes chapter 412. Of the 853 cities in Minnesota, 746 are
classified as statutory cities. And that's about 87% of all cities in the state. That means the majority of the states cities are created by and operate under the direct control of the state legislature through that statutory code for municipalities. And that means that
um those cities operate and are structured according to the code provided for them. 107 cities in Minnesota including min Minneapolis are charter cities. Those cities operate under their own home rule charters. That accounts for about 13% of
all the cities in the state. A charter city has more local control and authority over its own organization and its own operations than does a statutory city since a charter essentially functions as a type of city constitution. Minnesota was the fourth state in the
nation to permit home rule authority when voters approved an amendment to the state constitution in 1896. As you know, Minneapolis is a charter city and our home rule charter was the was first adopted in 1920. That was about 24 years after home rule authority
was amended in the constitution. Uh Minneapolis was the 62nd city in the state to establish a home rule charter. We were not first to the game. In fact, we were rather late to uh the process of getting a home roll charter and that followed several failed attempts. The
other factor used to classify cities shown here as population. Uh in Minnesota, state law says there are four classes of city which are based on certified population totals shown on this slide. So you can see there's the first class, second, third, and fourth. First class being those that have a
population of at least 100,000 residents or more. So according to those two criteria, then Minneapolis is a city of the first class which operates under the opaces of home rule charter. Uh as already mentioned, the home roll charter is like the city's constitution.
Uh through the home world charter, a community leverages the constitutional provision to exercise greater local control over the creation, formation, and operation of a municipal government. And that means that through the home world charter, residents of a city can claim greater powers of self-governance
to provide for the common health, safety, and welfare of their community. And while it does many things, I say this frequently, the charter does essentially three components of a city government. First, it defines the powers and the authority that the city has as a municipal corporation in the state of
Minnesota. Every city, as you know, is a creation of the state government, whether they're organized under a charter or under the statutory code. So, the state retains ultimate authority over all cities. However, as I've said, charter cities have a bit more freedom
and derive their governing authority from their charters, which are themselves derived directly from the state's constitutional provision for home rule authority and by those statutory provisions codified under chapter 410. Second, the charter prescribes a city's
operating structure. Uh that includes identifying its principal officers and their powers and duties. For Minneapolis, the city charter prescribes an executive mayor legislative council structure, which as you know was approved by voters in the 2021 municipal general election. And I'll speak more
about that in just a moment. Finally, the city charter specifies the formal processes by which the city as a municipal corporation takes its official action um and how those actions are then implemented and enforced. Some examples of the types of official actions that
are prescribed in the council here in Minneapolis include the way in which the city council enacts public policies through its ordinances that is prescribed in the charter. Also the manner in which the mayor proposes a budget to finance the operations of the city proposed or detailed in the budget
and then also the way in which certain department heads are appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the council as we have already discussed. Uh where the city charter is often referred to as a constitution. And then on the other side of this slide, the charter commission is the city's standing constitutional
convention. Chapter two of your handbook is really focused on the charter commission and it provides information about how the charter commission is appointed, how it's organized, and how it operates. As our city's constitutional convention, the charter commission holds the charter in trust
for the people of Minneapolis. It is the charter commission that is vested with authority to propose amendments aimed at improving the city's core governance from a constitutional perspective. It is not the charter commission's duty, nor does it have the authority to set city
policy direction. And that's a proper function of the council of course, but it is the charter commission's core duty to ensure that the foundational governing document of the city remains responsive to the needs, the priorities, and the preferences of the community now
and into the future. In this capacity, the charter commission not only has the authority to propose any amendments to the city charter, but it also plays a key role in proposals to amend the city city charter that originate from other sources permitted by law. And I'll talk about those in a
little bit. In this regard, the charter commission exercises a unique form of quasi constitutional authority which doesn't really neatly fit within the sort of known legislative, executive, and judicial functions of government.
Uh, a bit of history. When the Minnesota Constitution was amended in 1896 to provide for home rule authority, the state legislature at that time considered their options for how to create local charter commissions. First, they considered that the state legislators who represent the city could
and possibly should serve as that city's charter commission. That was one option. Second, they considered that the city council should be the charter commission for its own city or that the city council should appoint the charter commission. That was a second option. And then third, they considered
appointment by the by the judicial district through the district court uh placing charter commissions within the judicial branch of the state government. In considering those options, the state legislature rejected options to have charter commissions appointed by state legislatores or city councils due to the
potential for actual or perceived political conflicts or abuses, especially the concept of leaving the matter to the city's governing body itself to act as a charter commission. That option was deemed the equivalent legally of leaving the fox to guard the chicken coupe. So by the process of
elimination, the preference was to delegate the appointment authority for charter commissions to the judicial branch, empowering the district courts in each case to decide those appointments, which was deemed by the legislature at that time to be the most palatable political choice and the one least likely to present conflicts
between the regular functions and duties of the courts and that quasi constitutional work of charter commissions in framing up a charter. And so, as a consequence, judicial officials are disqualified from serving as members of charter commissions. I noted that a
charter commission's authority uh in terms of framing and amending charters is extensive. Under Minnesota law, a charter commission is imbued with broad discretion in both drafting and submitting an original charter as well as any amendments to the voters. It may
provide for any form of government that is not in conflict with the state constitution. And it may also provide for the structure, the distribution of powers within that structure and the essential procedures for the municipal corporation as I've already highlighted. Uh it also may create departments and
assign their functions and responsibilities. And it may regulate all municipal functions as fully as if the same had been done by the state legislature prior to the constitutional home rule amendment in 1896. And I'm pulling all of that directly from chapter 410. And I've cited some of that
in your handbook if you want to cross reference that. Again, here it shows that's from uh chapter 1 uh or and chapter 2 and the relevant pages. So, this slide then presents the formal table of organization for the city of Minneapolis. I'm sure you've seen this
before. Uh this shows the executive mayor legislative council form of government dictated by the city charter as well as its further implementation by the government structure omnibus ordinance that was enacted by the council and mayor in October 2022. With
respect to government structure, I'm referring to the content in chapter 1 of your handbook in section 3, which begins on page 8. As you know, the form of government is based on the strong mayor council system, which is itself then modeled on the government structures
found at both federal and state levels. It is a system of shared powers that are separated into different modes or what we also refer to as branches of government. This structure was adopted by voters at the 2021 municipal general election. It was codified as charter
amendment number 184. The city council as shown here is the legislative body of the city in which the legislative the primary policym and oversight authority resides. It has the authority to enact, amend or repeal local laws and public policies. Its
official functions, although not formally expressed in the charter, are focused on translating public will and priorities and values into codified laws, rules, and regulations. In addition to its legislative responsibilities, the council is also
designated by state law concurrently to serve as the Minneapolis Community Health Board, the board of equalization, the municipal canvasing board, the board of commissioners for the Minneapolis Community Development Agency, and as the Minneapolis Port Authority. So in
addition to being council, they hold the responsibility for those five uh legal uh capacities and have the powers to exercise the duties of those separate bodies. And also finally under state law and city charter, the council holds any and all general or residual powers that
belong to a municipal corporation under the state and can take action on the city's behalf in any matter that's required except where those specific powers, duties, or functions have been assigned to the mayor or to others by law. As part of the legislative branch of the
city too, the charter also provides for two elected policymaking bodies. Those are the board of estimation which is created under article five of the charter and the park and recreation board of commissioners created under article six. And you can see those on the same row with the mayor and council.
Both of these elected policymaking bodies are considered separate independent departments within the overall city enterprise. Balancing that multi-pronged legislative branch is the mayor who is elected by voters to be the chief executive officer
of the city and its chief elected official. Uh the court has held that the duties of a mayor designated as a city's chief executive officer are similar to those of a governor in relationship to the state. Thus, the mayor of Minneapolis is the head of its executive
branch uh and of the administration occupies the highest office in the municipal government. Where the council, the board of estimation, and the park board are all primarily focused on policymaking, the mayor's official functions then are focused primarily on
the implementation, administration, and enforcement of the city's priorities, policies, and programs. The charter places the mayor between the three elected policymaking bodies. The mayor has the authority to approve or veto the official acts of the council and the
park board and is a voting member with a seat on the board of vestment and taxation. Minneapolis no longer has its own municipal court system, although it did years ago. Instead, the judicial functions of the city government are addressed by the state's fourth judicial district, which covers all of Henipin
County. The city's administration refers to those operating departments in the executive branch that are under the direction, supervision and control of the mayor. You can see that on this chart. Uh these ex uh the chart shows that there are three direct reports to the mayor. Uh these executive officers
form the mayor's cabinet and they are responsible for overseeing and directing the operations of a portion of the municipal corporation under the mayor's leadership. The three executive officers are the city attorney. The city attorney is the city's chief legal officer,
attorney, and counselor at law. In that broad capacity, the attorney serves the mayor, the city council, and all of its committees, all municipal officers, boards, and commissions and departments with the one exception of the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Commission when they act in their official capacities. The city attorney
is the head of the office of city attorney, which is the city's legal department. And I would point out and I'm sure Mr. Ginder and also our own assigned attorney will concur with this one and point out it is the city as the municipal corporation who is the client
of the city attorney. Not the mayor, not the council, not specific departments, the entire enterprise. The municipal corporation is the city attorney's client. Um, and that client is served both by the appointed city attorney and by the attorneys who work under her designation within the office of city
attorney. The city operations officer is the city's chief operations and administrative officer. This position is very similar in other organizations to a city manager or a city's administrative officer. Um under the mayor's leadership and direction, the city operations
officer, we've shortened that to COO, plans, organizes, coordinates, and ensures the effective operation of the entire city enterprise. uh the COO is head of the office of public service which provides a unified chain of command for 17 of the 25 operating
departments. So you can see under the office of public service there uh a lighter shaded blue box with all of those departments within it. So all of those departments report up ultimately to the city operations officer who reports directly to the mayor. And then
the third executive officer is the community safety commissioner. That position provides a unified chain of command for the five departments involved in community safety functions. You can see that off to the far left of the chart. Those five departments are of course police and fire departments, the
neighborhood safety department, as well as emergency management and emergency communications or 911. Uh there has been discussion about which department heads are appointed by the mayor um or others and who are appointed by the mayor subject to confirmation by the city council. We've had that
conversation tonight and I have included in your handbook a chart that shows this hopefully in a very simple straightforward manner on page 14. I'm going to dive a little bit into the charter commission now. Um, as already noted, the charter commission is an
agency of the state. It is not a body appointed by the city, nor is it subject to the city's control. It has very broad authority with respect to framing, maintaining, and amending the charter. Uh, I already said quasi constitutional powers. The Minneapolis Charter Commission is composed of 15 members.
That's the highest amount of commissioners that a charter commission the state of Minnesota can have. So, we have a very large charter commission in Minneapolis. All of those seats are appointed by the district court acting by and through its chief judge. All members are appointed to four-year terms
with no restriction on the number of terms that may be served. To be appointed, an individual must be a resident and a qualified voter of the city. By law, charter commissioners are not paid for their service. I'm sorry. Uh, any charter commissioner may resign
their seat and a commissioner can be removed for any reason by order of the court for failing to perform their official duties um or for missing four consecutive meetings without excuse. A charter commission can be terminated also following the process prescribed by
state law. Essentially, that's the reverse of creating a charter commission. So, if a petition were filed that we no longer want to have a charter commission, we would go through that process and in the end, if that question passed by the voters, then the charter commission would be terminated. Uniquely though, you can't have a charter without
a charter commission. So, the motion to undo the charter commission automatically voids the charter and we would revert back to a statutory city and be under the thumb of the state. Details about the charter commission are found in the handbook on pages 15 through 17.
Uh the charter commission is empowered to determine its own structure within the 15 members appointed by the judge and it has done so through its rules primarily as shown on this slide and we did the election tonight. Congratulations again. Charter commission elects its own officers a chair, a vice chair and a secretary.
These officers are elected at the organizational meeting each January and they serve a term of one year. These officers have the usual and customary duties that are assigned to those positions. The chair uh being the central officer of the body is really the first amongst the body of equals. I
think that's very important to reiterate. The chair is not the supervisor of the body. The chair is not the director of the body. All powers of the charter commission are vested in the body in the 15 members. The chair is the servant, the primary servant of the body and the chief amongst the equal body. Uh
the position of chair is primarily focused on planning, preparing and presiding at meetings of the full body and for serving as the body spokesperson in interactions with the chief judge, for example, the mayor and city council, news media, and the general public. Uh
and as a consequence, of course, then much of the charter commission's work is planned and organized by or through the chair. The chair is also the primary contact with your support staff and generally directs and oversees their work on behalf of the charter commission.
Uh, as required by the Minnesota Open Meeting Law, the Charter Commission is required to adopt a calendar of its regular meetings, and that calendar then serves as public notice of all of those regular meetings for the year. State law requires only that the charter commission convene once each year, that
they organize its membership, and consider any proposals at that time to amend the city charter. In practice, though, the commission meets on a more frequent basis. Uh, as some of you long-term members know, in the past, uh, the charter commission had regular meetings on a monthly basis. Uh,
more recently, we've scaled that back to having regular meetings on a quarterly basis with the option to call special meetings if needed. Special meetings are called either by the chair or by five commissioners. That's according to the rules. Uh, the charter commission is authorized to adopt its own rules to govern its
operations and its proceedings, which it has done. Uh the latest revision to those rules was made in 2022 and a copy of those rules are posted in limbs. In its rules, the charter commission has also further adopted Robert's rules of order newly revised as a parliamentary authority to address procedural
questions not first addressed by your rules. So of course Roberts is the last line of defense when our rules don't cover how we operate. The commission also may organize committees and workg groups to meet its needs. We've talked about that a little bit tonight. In 2021, it established its first standing
committee and that is the amendment review committee. Uh originally that committee was tasked with taking the responsibility for reviewing, evaluating and making recommendations on amendment proposals that were submitted by citizen petitions. Um so that was its original purpose. So that there was a a group of
people who really looked at those citizen petitions and uh evaluated those that has ex expanded to considering um I I would leave it to the chair to correct me if I'm wrong here but it sort of is the refining group. Work groups come up with proposals and and develop them and then if there is a need for refinement
the amendment review committee can consider those. >> That's correct. And also I think we've expanded it to um take on uh some items that have been generated internally as well as for example some uh citizen
petitions um for example in this case the mayors that we we talked about today. Uh so the commission also has a long-standing practice of forming workg groupoups uh to give focused attention to various amendment proposals. So for example currently the commission has an
evenear elections workg group. We have a government structure work group and we have an appointments workg group. Uh those work groups then are responsible for developing, reviewing, refining and making recommendations about specific amendment proposals to the full body. Work groups are usually but not always
co-chared by two commissioners who are identified by the commission chair subject to some ratification by this body. As the chair indicated earlier, membership on workg groupoups is a very difficult bar to raise. You raise your hand and you're probably on a work group. Um, finally, in terms of
resources and support, the city clerk and the city attorney's offices are the primary staff resources that have been allocated to support the charter commission and its work. Um, although I would point out the city clerk and the city attorney are not employees of the charter commission. We work with you,
not for you. Uh, the city clerk is responsible for marshalling the resources internally necessary to support the commission's work. works very closely with the chair to facilitate communications uh with the judge, with the mayor and the council and with departments within the city enterprise. In addition, the city clerk
or their design serves as your recording secretary and maintains the records and files of the charter commission. The city attorney assigns an assistant city attorney. We have Andrea Nef at the dis. Uh and that assistant city attorney then serves as legal counsel and adviser to the charter commission. It's their job
to advise on interpreting the charter and also providing legal drafting services. So, as you get into the work of drafting amendment proposals, uh, Miss Nef or the city attorney's office through her connection will help on that regard. This is the um dry part but essential
part. Uh, operations and legal requirements. So, in addition to those organizational issues, I summarized the commission's operations are covered in the handbook in chapter 2, I wanted to highlight at least three uh state laws that do impact the charter commission. And these three state laws shown on the
slide are sometimes also described as sunshine laws um because they are focused on government accessibility and accountability. And they are intended to assure that government works in full view of the public and to protect the public's right to know what its government is doing. The first of these
shown is the Minnesota Open Meeting Law. It's codified as chapter 13D in the Minnesota statutes. Uh the charter commission is subject as the chair has pointed out to the Minnesota Open Meeting Law. Uh, this law defines the various types of meetings that public bodies, and that's the phrase I'm going
to use, uh, because that's what the statute refers to them as, public bodies, the types of meetings they can conduct, as well as the notice requirements for those meetings. The law was enacted to benefit the public, not us, to benefit the public. And it includes a presumption of openness
subject to very limited and carefully restrained exceptions. The Minnesota Supreme Court has noted that the purpose of this law is deeply rooted in the found in the fundamental proposition that a well-informed populace is essential to the vitality of our
democratic form of government. Um, and as the Minnesota Court of Appeals stated in 1985, the open meeting law has three primary purposes. first to prohibit action taken at a secret meeting where it is not possible for the interested public to become fully informed
concerning the public body's decisions or to detect improper influences. So under the law, meetings of bodies that are subject to its regulation must be open to public observation and they must be conducted in a public place that's within the ter territorial confines of
that body. What that means for us is prior notice of every meeting has to go out. The meeting has to be uh open to public observation whether in person. We broadcast these meetings because that's a way of extending that um ability to observe proceedings for those who aren't here in person. And it must be within
the limits of the city government, the city's corporate limits. Second, to assure the public's right to be informed about the work of public bodies. We talked about that. and third to afford the public the opportunity to present its views to the body. So one of the reasons you have a public comment period
at the end of each of your regular meetings. Interestingly the law does not itself define what a meeting is. Instead the Supreme Court in interpreting the law has concluded that a meeting under the meaning of the open meeting law refers to any gathering of a
quorum or more of the members of a public body who is subject to the law's regulation. And that also applies to any committee, subcommittee, working group of the body. Um, at which the members discuss, decide or receive information as a group about any issues that relate
to the official business of this body. That's a very broad definition. It means anytime a quorum of the body or any subgrouping of this body are meeting and talking about, receiving information about or deciding issues, that's a meeting and there should have been a
prior notice. there needs to be the opportunity for the public to observe um and hear and also an opportunity to participate if that's allowed by law. So um a meeting is considered to be open when the following conditions are all met. One, proper advanced notice is
given. Two, the public can observe. And three, copies of all of the materials that you have at your desk, the agenda, the reports, and anything else that are at the meeting need to be available to public inspection during the meeting. It's one of the reasons the clerk spends a lot of time making sure that we put
extra copies out. The law only requires us to provide one copy for public inspection. If you've noticed, um, here in Minneapolis, we make multiple copies. People will walk off with the agenda and copies of reports. We want that. We want our public to be engaged. So, we always keep one here, but we make multiple copies. At least one copy has to be
available in the room for public inspection. There are penalties for violations of the open meeting law. Um, I'm going to summarize that because it's important. It applies to you personally. Any individual who's found to have violated the open meeting law is subject to personal liability in the form of a
civil pen penalty in an amount not to exceed $300 for the first occurrence. Um, it can't be paid by the public body. Individuals found guilty of violating dopamine law must pay for it themselves. Um on the third violation that's found and upheld,
the vi the individual will forfeit any right to serve on the public body and in addition they can't serve for a period equal to the full term of office for that body. So there are pretty stiff legal consequences or penalties for people who are found guilty of violating
the open meeting law. The second law on here I want to talk about is the uh Minnesota Official Records Act. This is codified under Minnesota statute section 15.17. It requires that all government entities make and preserve the records necessary
to a full and accurate knowledge of their official activities. Very broadly, the city clerk is the designated custodian of the city's official records and is then responsible for ensuring compliance with this law. Through my office's work as your recording secretary, we also handle this
requirement for the charter commission. Primarily, official records of the charter commission would include its meeting agendas, its minutes, any formal reports that you receive, and any official communications or correspondence related to official functions. Official records are
different than government data, which I'm going to cover in a bit. So, I wanted to make sure to cover official records. official records belong to the commission and they are the kinds of records I've already identified. Your agendas and minutes are the biggest um example of that. But the final act that
I put on here, my personal favorite, the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act, which is codified under Minnesota Statutes Chapter 13, also impacts the Charter Commission and all local governments um except surprisingly the state legislature, which operates under its own act, which is not nearly as
restrictive. It's a very complex law and it changes with almost every single legislative session. The government data practices act establishes a system to classify government data to define what information is public and what information is not public. Uh it also
specifies who may access that data and under what conditions or criteria. uh imposes a duty on the city to and any uh agency that's subject to its regulation to keep its public data separate from its private or confidential or not public data and to preserve uh the two
in a way that public uh data is able to be accessed but that not public confidential or private data is not released. The act also establishes a presumption that all government data is public unless there is a specific statutory exemption provided in the law.
So we start excuse me with the presumption that any government data is public. The thing that's uh important to remember here is data is not necessarily an official record. An official record is data but data can be more than an official record. And so your emails are
government data when it concerns your work as the charter commission and the work of the charter commission. My emails to you are considered government data. Um, a draft of an agenda that never gets published and might not even make it in a public meeting is also considered government data. So, we have
a duty to make sure that all government data is classified and is accessible if it's classified by public as public data um and doesn't meet one of those statutory exemptions for making that data public. It's a very burdensome law
that uh applies to all local governments. And here again because we act uh in a capacity to support the charter commission to a large extent requests for government data by the charter commission are handled by my office uh just like we do the official
records act. I will conclude my very dry synopsis of these three laws by uh offering what I think would be very good advice. If you have questions or concerns about any of these laws or any other laws I didn't cover that affect this body or if you have questions about
other laws that may apply to this body, please see the office of city attorney. Please contact Miss Nef and she will follow up with you and give you the inner workings of the law and how it does or doesn't apply to you and what uh advice she would give for your next steps. I think I've been clear on the
law. Correct. Talk to the city attorney. And and if I can interject one thing in that this body has been subject to data practices requests and um and when when you get them you will find out that they are burdensome um so for example if you keep your
agenda with all your handwritten notes on it um and it's applicable to the topic that they request on you're required to turn these over. Um, it's also useful, for example, if you're conducting business on this, to try and use the city email system as much as
possible, unless you like going through your own phone and computer for charter commission related um data. Um, it's uh Mr. Carl is the responsible authority for the city. So, his office is the
overarching uh has the overarching responsibility for that. But I will tell you, having been involved in a number of these things, um stuff that you don't need, you don't need. And so the more you like to hold on to stuff, the more data you have that
might be responsive to a request. Um so, uh again, I try to as much as I can use the city email for charter business instead of my own, um personal email or my own laptop or whatever. So, um, just kind of a bit of advice
>> echoing on your comments, Mr. Chair, I would say that's one of the reasons we created email accounts, city email accounts for this body, is so that you could make use of that for strictly city business and not have your personal email um, become embroiled in data practices requests or made public data
itself. Um, and so yes, I would encourage you to use those city provided email accounts. And the second thing I would encourage all of us to do is to maintain good um data hygiene. If it's not required to be kept, you shouldn't keep it. >> Yes.
Uh uh just a really quick question. Uh man, it's getting late. Sorry. Uh with regard to uh uh hybrid meetings, um what is the requirement for uh either hybrid
or um online uh meeting requirements and and posting of notices and um and ensuring the public has access to that. I'm on other uh councils where um at
least one person has to be in the room and notices have to be published a certain number of days in advance. Is is that true for um uh for our work as well >> through the chair commissioner and I? Yes. The the easy answer here is that a
meeting is a meeting and still has to be noticed to the public. Um the requirements for interactive technology is how the statute refers to a hybrid or an online meeting whether it's 100% remote or a version a hybrid of in-person and remote. Um the technical
requirements of the law. So they they eased the state legislature eased the burden that allowed the use of remote or hybrid during the pandemic. Uh there were certain allowances made. The original statute would not have allowed uh hybrid meetings coming out of the
pandemic. And so the state legislature acted to ease that requirement in many ways, but there still is the burden that there must be one member of the body in the normal meeting space and that every member of the body and every member of the public who wishes to observe whether
in person in this room or remotely have to be able to simultaneously see and hear all members of the body. And so sadly uh we don't have a system that supports that. Um so our city systems which is teams which we used for remote
or hybrid meetings uh especially when you combine it with broadcast which we do for this body uh do not allow that mixture of uh remote access in-person access broadcast capability captioning support and simultaneous
uh visual and audible uh participation by all members of the body. So, it's permissive, but you have to meet those technical requirements. >> Uh, Mr. Chair, move forward. >> Yes. >> Okay, good. Uh, apologize for taking so long. I'm going to slide into amending
the city charter. Uh this slide shows that there are two pathways and I took the content for this section which is admittedly the longest in your membership or your member handbook because it is the most complex but I tried to boil that down in this chart uh to show you there are two pathways.
There is the primary pathway shown in green on this chart. Um it involves submitting a proposal to amend the charter to the electorate for a decision. This path involves a ballot question to the voters. It was originally the only means of amending a city charter. um in line with the
concept that a charter is our constitution and only the voter should decide whether or not to amend a constitution. So as you can see this law provides for three different ways for a ballot question to be formulated. First by this body the charter commission in its capacity as our constitutional
convention. The charter commission always has the ability to propose an amendment that should be referred to the voters. That's noted here as 1a. The second way is for a citizen petition proposing an amendment to be fully processed according to state law, which then would result in a ballot question
referred to voters. That's identified as two on this slide. And then the third way for a ballot question to be referred to voters is for the proposal to be generated by the city council and then submitted to the electorate for a decision identified as number three, all in green here under that primary
pathway. Regardless of where a proposed amendment originates, there are some preliminary factors to consider. First, any proposed charter amendment must be harmonized and in alignment with state law. No proposed amendment may stand which is found to be contrary to or in
conflict with state law. In such instances, the statutory provisions prevail and the charter provision is deemed ineffective either in whole or in part to the extent that it conflicts with established state policy. For this reason, proposed amendments are
subject to a legal analysis by the office of city attorney to verify its constitutionality. Uh what I mean by that is that the subject matter is not in conflict with nor is it contrary to applicable existing state law or policy and it is
considered a proper subject matter for a home rule charter. Unless the subject matter of a proposed amendment is authorized by law, the city is under no legal obligation to refer the ballot question to the electorate. Second, all statutory requirements and
timelines for submitting a ballot question must be satisfied or the matter may not be referred to voters. The city clerk's office prepares an amendment timeline each year to help guide the procedures related to ballot questions for citizen petitions. I mentioned this
a little bit earlier. The proposal must be received by May 1st each year. Otherwise, it will not meet the statutory deadline to submit a ballot question to voters. For ballot questions initiated by the charter commission or by the city council, there's a bit more
leeway because we don't have to uh look at the legal requirements related to processing petitions, for example, validating the signatures that are required for ballot questions initiated by the charter commission or by the city council. The deadline uh set by state
law is no later than 84 days before the date of the election. 84 days works out to being approximately 12 weeks. So if you look at that first Tuesday in November and count back 12 weeks, that puts you up to August. And then as I said earlier, in order for the council
to do its work to formalize a ballot question, we need to add a little bit of time. So that means the deadline would be about mid July each year for a ballot question that would be originated by either this body or by the city council. Uh this slide describes the charter
commission's authority with respect to ballot questions. Obviously you as I mentioned have the authority to present a ballot question at any time. So I don't detail your authority here. That's your authority. But with respect to um in the first instance those that are proposed by a citizen's petition, you can see here that the charter commission
plays a ministerial role. Um the charter commission has no legal authority to consider the merits of the underlying proposal or to provide any check against the ability of citizens to petition uh a ballot question for the electorate. In this case, the charter commission's role
is restricted solely to approving a summary of the amendment proposal itself that needs to be included in the petition pages if the proposal exceeds a thousand words. If the proposal is less than a,000 words, then that full
proposal has to be on the petition pages to be circulated and signed by voters. So other than this ministerial duty, the charter commission doesn't have a further role with respect to citizen petitions. However, in the second instance shown here, and that's amendment proposals
initiated by the council as ballot questions, the charter commission does play a very significant and substantive role. In this instance, the charter commission considers the merits of the proposed amendment and it has up to a total of 150 days to review the
council's proposed amendment. At the end of that review period, the charter commission can take one of three actions or has three options shown on this slide. First, it can approve that proposed amendment submitted by the council and refer it back with its recommendation that that should be
submitted to the electorate as a ballot question. Second, it could reject the proposed amendment as it was submitted and refer back to the city council its recommendation not to have the matter referred to the voters and its reasons for not having that question submitted
to the electorate. And then third, it could offer a substitute proposal of its own design on the same subject matter and refer that proposal back to the city council with the recommendation that its proposal uh should be referred to the voters. Ultimately, however, in this
case, regardless of which action this body takes, whether to approve, reject, or offer a substitute, it is up to the city council to decide what action it will take. So, after this body acts and gives its recommendation, the city council can take whatever action it wants to do. It can refer its original
proposal, whether you agree or not. It can concur not to submit the question that year, maybe further refine the proposal for a future year, or it could submit the proposal from this body as a ballot question to voters. So, all of those details are addressed in your manual, and I'm showing that on pages 30
to 41. Finally, with respect to those proposals to amend the city charter by ordinance, this slide addresses that. This was shown in blue in that previous slide. I'll go back just to reference it. So on the right side of this chart, you'll see
by ordinance can be done 1B by the charter commission or four by the city council. And the reason those numbers are on there, if you do look in your manual, this model is reproduced. And underneath the model, it refers to 1 A, 1B as the charter commission's role, two the
citizen petition, three the city council by ballot referendum, and four city council by ordinance. And then for each of those numbers, I've referenced the specific state statute um how that pathway is determined. So that's why the numbers are on that slide. So back to
here, uh charter amendments by ordinance. This secondary pathway was developed by the state legislature as a secondary means of amending municipal charters without going directly to voters. So it bypasses the electorate. Um, it was designed to handle amendments
to charters that are highly technical, that are largely administrative and non-controversial. So, for that reason, sometimes these amendments are also referred to as housekeeping amendments. It's cleaning up the charter to make it easier to bring it into modern times and to address uh very very technical things
that potentially the voters would not have enough information to make that decision. Amendments by ordinance can originate either with the charter commission or the city council. Either way, regardless of where it originates, the law requires that amendments by ordinance meet several criteria, which
I've put on this slide. First, the charter commission has to agree that the proposed amendment is appropriate to be made by ordinance, thereby bypassing the electorate. Second, after that determination, the commission gives its amendment back to the council. Uh, the council has to pass
an ordinance with a unanimous vote of the entire membership. So that means that the ordinance has to be adopted 130. All 13 council members have to vote in support. It is the highest vote threshold required by law for a city council in Minnesota. If even one member
of the body objects, the amendment fails. After the council acts, assuming they get the unanimous vote, the ordinance is referred to the mayor and the mayor must approve the ordinance and and then it's enacted. If the mayor vetos the ordinance, it fails.
Finally, because the ordinance this pathway bypasses the electorate, uh the city charter as the constitution provides that there is a 60-day protest period. So during that first 60 days after the ordinance is enacted, if a protest petition is filed and found to
be sufficient, then the matter must be referred to voters. Remember, as a constitution, voters should always have the final say on the city charter. So although this initially bypasses the voters, a petition if filed and found sufficient within that 60-day window requires an automatic referral to the
voters to make that decision. Again, details about this process are in your handbook, pages 41 to 43. And then finally, I wanted to highlight some standards for considering proposed amendments. Uh for those of you who are around, you'll recall that several years ago, in fact, I believe it was October
of 2020, uh then chair uh Kle had suggested that this body should develop. We were in the middle of getting a lot of amendments at that point. It went from an amendment every few years, once a decade, to multiples per year. And the chair said we should have some standards
by which to evaluate and and consider these proposals. and uh he brought these forward and the body in October of 2020 adopted those standards. Um I've included them in your supplemental notes uh in the last two pages. So if you turn to the last two pages of your handbook
in an appendix, I've not only put these standards, but when they adopted these, the body, the charter commission adopted a series of supplemental notes explaining each one of these six standards. So I would refer you to that appendix for a lot more detail, but here they are. Uh first is the amendment
gerine to the charter. Again that lens of constitutionality. A constitution should be brief and should only address those matters required to frame up the government. It should not address matters of policy or operations. So is the amendment gerine to the charter? Is
the amendment well considered? Might also be called welltimed. Is it is it appropriate to consider that now? Um third is the amendment clear and is it specific? Obviously, we don't want vague charter amendments that create um problems later on with interpretation or what was the meaning of that or internal
conflicts uh within the charter. Fourth, does the proposed amendment interfere with or take away any rights of voters? I think that's obviously a very clear standard. We don't want our constitution to remove the rights of voters. Uh fifth, is the proposed amendment consistent with state law? I already
told you it must be, so that's an easy, it's a yes or no question. Yes or no. And then finally, number six, is the proposed amendment necessary to accomplish its intended objective? Here again, many things might be achieved by ordinance or by city policy and don't
necessarily require a charter amendment. So that's a balancing question. Is this truly a constitutional issue or is it something that could be handled in a different way? And thankfully, I have reached the end of talking at you. Um, I know you're all
tired. Uh, I want to thank you for your attention. I hope that you find the member handbook helpful and informative. I think it's a great resource. Um, I encourage you to submit any questions as you're looking through it. We want to make sure we maintain it going forward. If there are questions, Mr. Chair, I'd
stand for them, but I know it's late. >> Thank you, Mr. Carl. Um, I do I don't see any questions at this time. There is a lot of information in the packet. I think the value of the packet is that it's in it's in one place and Mr. Carl
kind of went quickly over a lot of the charter stuff. Um he didn't go over the redistricting stuff information um >> which is also fun >> which is also fun but it's it's it's it's something that when you have time take a look at um and so um without
further discussion I'm going to ask the clerk to file that presentation. Um, the next item on the agenda is public comment. But before I get to it, um, I understand from the clerk that it was not clear if I actually referred the
mayor's letter to the amendment review committee. So, without objection, I'm going to refer that to the amendment review committee. And then the final issue is public comment. Um, and if you're here to submit public comment, please either sign up or hope you've
signed up. And Mr. Clerk, has anybody signed up for public comment? >> Chair Gender, there are no members of the public signed up at this time. >> And is there anyone here that would like to do public comment? >> No, I don't see anyone. Um, with that,
we've concluded all of our business to come before the Charter Commission. And without objection, we stand adjourned. Thank you.