Council passes proposed charter changes knowing they probably will be killed in two weeks

The political term for this is “kicking the can.”

In a strictly parliamentary move, the City Council voted Tuesday on first reading to let voters decide on whether they want to allow voter initiatives and police/community collaboration language to be included in the city charter, even though neither of those changes may ever actually get placed on the ballot.

What the council effectively said was “Why kill these items now when we can think about killing them during the next two weeks and then kill them at our next meeting.”

This may sound a lot more Machiavellian than it actually was. And a lot of it came to pass because, quite frankly, the ballot language for the charter changes in question wasn’t in a form that council members felt really comfortable voting on Tuesday evening. They figured the wording on these items will be in much better shape in two weeks so why not just wait until then to give them a lethal injection.

All this came about as a result of the recommendations of the most recently formed Charter Review Commission. The commission recommended a series of changes to the charter and the City Council last Saturday agreed to pass along three of them — items on annexations, voting locations for special elections and the aforementioned police/community involvement change. The first two are small, non-controversial changes that may leave many voters wondering why a change is even needed and the third was supposed to be reworded from what the commission recommended to new wording drafted by council members Dex Ellison, Michael Tobias and Alex Villalobos.

The fourth item — arguably the most interesting one — was the brainchild of Mayor Travis Mitchell who said that between the time he first brought up the idea on Saturday and Tuesday’s council meeting “I have sort of cooled on the entire idea.” His plan was to include language in the charter which would grant the council the authority to call non-binding referendums so that voters could voice their opinion at the ballot box on … well, any subject five council members agreed the voters should be allowed to voice their opinion on. I know that sounds a tad ambiguous, but that was essentially the idea.

Apparently what happened between Saturday and Tuesday was that City Attorney Page Saenz sought feedback from other municipalities who use citizen ballot initiatives and that feedback wasn’t as positive as anticipated.

“I got your email about the various cities you tracked down and they way they deal with these items and it was very helpful,” Mayor Mitchell told Saenz during Tuesday’s council meeting. “I will say that it cooled me off toward the idea of initiatives because the feedback seemed fairly reserved.”

Saenz also said more changes were needed in the police/community ballot language.

Mitchell said it might be better if the council approved all four potential changes Tuesday on first reading so that they could be looked at more carefully on second reading during a special meeting the council has scheduled for Aug. 17.

“I’m thinking we won’t recommend all four during the second reading,” Mitchell said. “But if we take them out now, they will be completely lost to us. I know the police provision is due for revision and possible elimination, along with the ballot initiative, so it would be my preference to send the whole thing forward for second reading so on the 17th we can decide what we want to put on and what we want to take off.”