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City of Lino Lakes September 8, 2008 Page 2 of 8 Subdivision 1 of Section 410.12 is an independent method of initiating a charter amendment, under which the charter commission, rather than the City Council, initiates the process. Amendments initiated under that subdivision must be submitted to the City Council at least 12 weeks before the general election. If that deadline is met, the amendment must be submitted to the voters (with limited exceptions), and the City Council's only role is to approve the form of the ballot. However, there is no authority for the proposition that a charter commission may, after the fact, tum its responsive substitute amendment under subdivision 5 into a commission - initiated amendment under Subdivision 1. If that were possible, the council's discretion regarding its own amendment under Subdivision 5 would be meaningless, and the 12 -week submittal requirement under subdivision 1 would be easily evaded. Further, nothing in any communications from the Charter Commission regarding its prior amendments suggested that they were intended as independent proposals under Section 410.12, subdivision 1. The first time that intention was stated was in the letter from the chair on September 4, 2008. At the very least, the Charter Commission would have needed to notify the City Council by August 12, 2008 (the 12 -week deadline) that it intended to treat one of its prior amendments (and identify which one) as a charter -initiated amendment under Section 410.12, subdivision 1. Without such notice, there is simply no basis for a claim that one (or both) of the prior substitute amendments should now be treated as a Subdivision 1 submittal. Finally, the text of the proposed amendment included in the chair's letter on September 4, 2008 is not identical to the text of the December 2007 proposal (which included revisions to Section 8.07 of the Charter that are absent in the current proposal) or the July 2008 proposal (which called only for repeal of Section 8.07). It is difficult to understand how those proposals can be treated as meeting the 12 -week deadline for a different proposal submitted just days before the Council must act in order to approve ballots for the November 4 election. 2. Council approval of the amendment. The letter next argues, in effect, that the City Council has no power to "approve" the Charter Commission's amendment, as the Charter Commission itself has the power to decide whether its amendments go on the ballot. It is true that, in the case of commission -initiated amendments under Section 410.12, subdivision 1, the Council's only role is to approve the form of the ballot. However, subdivision 1 also contains a significant procedural requirement—the 12 -week submittal deadline. If the deadline is not met, the Council has no duty to approve the form of the ballot for the upcoming general election. Or, to put it another way, if the Charter Commission could force the council to approve the ballot form no matter when the amendment were submitted, the 12 -week submittal deadline would be meaningless. I think it's very clear that the council has no duty (and on these facts, no authority) to approve the ballot for an amendment submitted more than three weeks after the deadline. 339370v1 SJB LN140-86