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Gordon Heitke January 28, 2008 Page 6 of 13 Assume the area "proposed to be assessed" contain 100 lots, 77 of which are owned by one person. Each of the remaining 23 lots is owned by a different person. If the owner of the 77 signs a petition, that signature is counted only once. But what does that mean? One possibility is that, even though this person owns 77 lots, he or she gets only one vote out of 100. If 22 of the remaining 23 lots also sign the petition, there are a total of 23 votes out of 100 lots. The petition fails even though the owners of 99 out of 100 lots approve. Likewise, the petition fails if the owners of all 23 separate lots sign the petition but the owner of 77 lots does not. Another interpretation is that when a person owns multiple lots, those lots are "collapsed" into one, and the petition becomes measured by the percentage of owners. In our example, the result would be a total of 24 owners. If the owner of 77 lots signs the petition, that would be one out of 24, or 4.2% of the total. Unless another 5 lot owners sign (in order to reach the 6 votes needed to reach 25 %), the petition would fail even though the owner of 77 lots approves. Or, if all 23 separate owners sign and the owner of 77 lots does not, the 23 would make up 95.8% of the 24 total owners. The petition succeeds even though the signers own only 23% of the actual number of lots. (This is the result under the existing charter as well, but is opposite the result under the interpretation of the proposed amendment described in the previous paragraph). Both interpretations raise questions of fairness, but it is more troubling that the rules are so unclear. As a practical matter, the City would probably need to treat all projects as City - initiated (and thus approved with a 4/5 vote) unless this matter were resolved judicially. Third, clause (4) is simply difficult to understand. It seems to describe a situation where a lot is owned by a group of joint tenants, and the same group owns another lot. In that case, the apparent intent is to clarify that the lots will be treated as one —that is, it will not matter if one owner sign for one lot and different owner signs for a different lot. This result would already be implied by clauses (2) and (3) and could be more easily handled by revising those clauses accordingly. Another interpretation is that this clause describes one lot owned by a group of joint tenants, and another lot owned by some of those joint tenants but also an unrelated party. In that case, this clause might require that the two lots are treated as one, despite the fact that ownership is not identical. In sum, the intent of this clause is unclear, leaving uncertainty about the validity of a petition under this subdivision. Further, the second sentence of Clause (4) is a commentary that is inadvisable in the body of a city charter. Section 8.05. Feasibility Study. Subdivision 1. This subdivision describes the feasibility study process for projects initiated by 25% petition or by the Council. We observe one technical problem and one practical. The technical problem is that the subdivision begins by stating that the City 327632v3 SJB LN140 -86 • • •