GRACE KNIGHT CONFERENCE ROOM
MEMBERS PRESENT:
Summary:
After confirming a quorum, the meeting was called to order at approximately 5:30 p.m. by Chair Wootten. A motion was made by member Denton/Hanrahan to approve the agenda. The agenda was approved unanimously. After making several changes to the April 11, 2000 minutes, the minutes were approved unanimously after a motion was made by member Thomas/Glaeser. The letter to Commissioner Penelope Wheat from Chair Wootten concerning CRC’s opinions about the CRC’s appointment process was distributed.
Member Wright requested that the April 4, 2000 minutes reflect that Kathy Cantwell represents the Sierra Club and that Item 3 on page 2 is to read “Exceptions will not be prohibited”.
Chair Wootten recognized citizen Mike Byerly who addressed his support for putting County environmental ordinances prevailing over municipal ordinances on the ballot. He pointed out that most environmental ordinances can not be contained on arbitrary municipal boundaries.
After distributing a copy of an email, Member Wright presented citizen comments sent to her by email (Charlie Grapki) and phone call (Mayor of Micanopy) on the single member districts issue. She pointed out that the mayor was in clear support of single member districts, and that he proposed the adoption of nine single member districts based on geography (i.e. north, northeast, west, etc.).
Chair Wootten invited Buddy Irby to speak on the proposed independent auditor issue. Irby said that he sent some language on the issue to Mr. Nickerson and welcomes the idea of an auditor. He also asked Mr. Nickerson to address his concern on how the auditor under the county would reconcile with the Supreme Court opinion dealing with such an auditor. After distributing a packet which addressed amendment language listed as appendix A thru H, Mr. Nickerson asks the members to refer to his previous memo and the language in appendix D which was the drafted amendment to establish independent performance auditor. He said that the main concern he had with the independent auditor issue was the constitutional jury duty of the court. He also made it clear that it only relates to performance auditing, and not to intrude on pre-auditing or a recording audit. There was general agreement that the auditor could be contracted and managed by the County manager or County attorney. Member Wright requested clarification from Mr. Nickerson on number 8 ( conflicts in the charter) under Old Business. Mr. Nickerson advised the CRC to add residency of applicants, dissolution of CRC, and frequency of appointments under “Conflicts in the charter”, for purpose of ranking the issues.
There was discussion regarding the inclusion of County ordinances prevailing over municipal ordinances, and assessing a fee for all governmental services. Member Wright informed the CRC that they had previously decided to remove those issues from the voting list. There was consensus that those issues would not be voted on.
After some discussion on County Commission salaries controlled locally, Member Hanrahan suggested that the issue be split in two (plan 7A and plan 7B) because the issue includes Member Denton and Member Martin’s plans. Member Denton plan was that all salaries would remain the same and any decrease or increase would be voted on by the commission.
Mr. Nickerson requested that the CRC vote on a number for the population trigger which would engage the single-member districts plan in Appendix A and to change the semi-colon in Appendix B section 2.2 (salaries and other compensation). There were two proposals for a population trigger number of 250,000 or 300,000 people. The 250,000 number passed with a vote of 7 and the trigger of 300,000 failed with 5 votes. The number 250,000 replaced all [insert number] blanks of Appendix A.
There were changes made to Appendix C (amendment to authorize joint planning) and appendix G (amendment relating to frequency of CRC appointments. In appendix C, the sentence ending “...in portions of the incorporated area adjacent to such municipality”, “such” was replaced by “and, or, within such municipality”. In Appendix G, the changes were as follows in bold:
“A charter review commission consisting of not less then eleven (11) nor more than fifteen (15) electors of the county shall be appointed by the board of the county commissioners at least twelve (12) months but not before eighteen (18) months before the general election occurring in 1990 and at least twelve (12) months but not before eighteen (18) months before the general election occurring every ten (10) years thereafter,...”
Chair Wootten begins the voting process by reading the CRC voting procedures which stated:
“...A weighted vote will be taken to determine a ranked list. Followed that, CRC will then vote on each individual item on the rank list beginning with the highest ranked item deciding to see if that item will be selected. An affirmative vote by more than half of the total membership of CRC (8 people) will select the item(s) for the placement on the ballot and referral for public hearings. Following the votes on each proposed item, the CRC will then vote to determine if they will continue the selection process...” A total of 100 points can be distributed to 1 or more of the items on the ballot. Then the topics with the highest points will be voted on to go to the ballot. The results were as follows:
DJ Williams requested to be called via conference call in order to discuss the timeline of up-coming meetings. Ms. Williams reviewed the timeline item by item and it was agreed that meetings on May 9, 2000 and May 23, 2000 would be tentative. Additionally, there would be three public hearings (May 18, June 1, and 15) on Thursdays for the purpose of live or rebroadcast of the hearings, and ballot initiatives would be finalized on June 27, 2000.
Member Glaeser explained his reason for voting against county environmental ordinances prevailing over municipal ordinances. He stated that he thought it was unfair due to its clear favor to the decisions made by the government that benefit specific businesses.
The meeting was adjourned at approximately 8:10 pm.