Charter review commissioners debate signatures in an almost empty room

I take it all back. I’m talking about all those things I said about the city making sure its citizens had an opportunity to speak up and speak out about the way they are governed. I actually thought folks around here gave a damn. That they actually cared about things like that. What an innocent fool I was.

I saw that this morning when two individuals showed up at the Kyle Public Library to the first openly public meeting hosted by the Charter Review Commission, that august body charged with making changes to the city’s constitution. Two people. That’s roughly .00648 percent of the city’s population. To me, that’s sinful. That’s unpardonable. But then just call me naive. Maybe the truth is people here in Kyle don’t care. They don’t give a damn. "Hey, this is only the place where I spend the night. Why should I get all worked up about things? Besides, I heard plums are on sale at the H-E-B."

Yep. Two citizens came. One wanted to make sure exactly what the commission was doing – was it working on changes ordinances or something else. The other talked about whether married people should be allowed to work for the city or whether two persons living together should be allowed to … well, perhaps, that’s a discussion for another time.

So for most of the two hours the charter commission devoted to hearing the public weigh in on how they felt the charter should be changed, commissioners, instead, examined the first four sections of Article IV, with the very first section of that article receiving most of the scrutiny, particularly one phrase. The phrase in question was this: "The mayor shall have signatory authority for all legal contracts and commitments of the city, sign all ordinances and resolutions …"

The debate among the commissioners was whether to insert some form of these words "or the mayor’s designee" into that sentence so that, in the case of some emergency when the mayor wasn’t available and something needed to be signed right away, another city official could sign a particular document. Then the question became whether it should be someone on the city staff or another city council member, perhaps the mayor pro tem.

Some commissioners believed this language may have been changed five years ago, during the last charter review process, so it was decided that the city’s staff should produce a copy of the charter those commissioners were working from in 2011 to compare the language. Unfortunately, some commissioners referred to that document as the 2011 charter when, in fact, the current charter is the 2011 version, but I guess you can’t have all the ducks lined up and I’m sure staff understood what was intended.

For the two or three other concerned citizens who missed out on this workshop, fear not. Two more are on the horizon. There’s one scheduled for 10 a.m., Saturday, May 16, at a site still to be determined (the commissioners are hoping to secure a space in Chapa Middle School so at least one meeting would be held on the east side of I-35) and a third for set for 10 a.m., Saturday, June 20, in City Council Chambers at City Hall. Of course, the public may also attend one of the regularly scheduled meetings every other Tuesday in City Hall’s second floor conference room. The next one’s scheduled for this coming Tuesday and the third item on the agenda, right after opening the meeting and checking attendance, is "citizen comments."