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Page 2 One final point is that under the system you outlined the newly elected Councilmen could wind up being held responsible for a fiscal year for which he had no input on. This is bad enough when it runs from January to December, but it is equally bad to come into fourth quarter of a given year to take over a position. (Note: under Minnesota Statutes 200.02, subdivision 24; the law provide that the officers for the state and county will take office on the first Monday of the new year. The Model Charter also suggests the installation in January to concide with the fiscal year. ) /i2,0 Section 4.02: Minnesota Statutes 205.13 state that filing for an election cannot occur before six weeks before the election nor less than four weeks before. Although, the timing provided in the Charter is not out of line with the aforementioned time period. It would be helpful to clarify whether the days are for total number days or working days before the election. Section 4.03: Minnesota Statutes subdivision 204A.17 require that election judges be appointed 25 days before an election. Because of the training involved in the elections due to the electronic equipment that the City uses, this time would be greatly appreciated for the training of the election judges. Section 4.04: This appears to be an ambiguous comment. Unless the Commission is referring to the nomination of persons by petition it's not understood what is intended for the Council to further regulate the election. If this is not the intention of the Charter Commission then the language that was dropped from the Model should be restated, "Except as otherwise , general state laws on elections shall apply " This would be more meaningful to public and to the officers in the election period. f_ Section 4.05: Canvassing. There appears to be no problem under the election laws statutes, however, it should be noted that this would cause the City Council to meet on Friday evening to do the canvassing. Section 4.06: There seems to be no problem with this section. Section 4.07: There are several problems with this section. First, there seems to be insufficient time made available for the applications to be made due to vacancies. Under the provisions of subdivision 1 if a vacancy occurs with a year or more remaining special elections shall be held within 45 days after the vacancy occurs. With this in mind the Clerk has the responsibility of publishing at least 37 days prior to the special election. Given the situation where a resignation would occur on a Wednesday the first time the publication could be know would be nine days after the resignation occurred. Thus , 37 + 9 would be 46 days which thus causes an inconsistency with the language in subdivision 1 . Furthermore, if you refer back to section 4.02 this leaves approximately 6 days for somebody to make up their mind on running for office. This maybe further diminished by the fact the newspaper comes out on Thursday whichcauses two days to be lost over the weekend.