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Page 2 4111 September 23 , 1994 If it is the Charter Commission's wish to prohibit the City from utilizing Minnesota Statute, Section 429 for assessments, the Charter Commission should realize that there is significant economic benefit to the use of the statute because of the large body of law that has been developed in interpreting that statute. The City in setting its own standards and procedures, would be faced with a situation in which any interpretation questions would be specific to the City's Charter, and would likely involve more litigation to obtain interpretations of those questions. In allowing petitions against public improvements, Section 8 . 05, subdivision 1, the Charter would have a significant dampening affect on public improvement projects. If the Commission is interested in imposing this limitation, some thought should be given to limiting the scope of this limitation. There may very well be circumstances in which the City is obligated to enter into a public improvement project. If there is a public health and safety concern necessitating a project and 51% of the affective property owners petition against the project, the City may very well be faced with a situation in which it would have to commence the improvement project and would be prohibited from assessing property owners for the cost. Additionally, the section refers to the number of owners of adjacent property and 1111 does not take into account the amount of property owned by each owner. This provision could result in situations in which the owners of a small portion of affected property could prevent owners of larger parcels from obtaining public improvement projects. The petition process, if intended to be a safety outlet for runaway city spending, does not protect those individuals who initiated a special assessment program by a petition. Petitioners seeking a special assessment improvement may very well, after reviewing the numbers, decide that the assessment they are facing is much too high. The language does not give those individuals the opportunity to petition against the project. Subdivision 2 of Section 8 . 05 allows a petition to veto a public works project when any portion of the cost is to be paid by the City rather than being assessed against property owners. The requirement provides that the petition must be signed by a majority of the number of electors who voted for mayor in the last municipal election. The way this language is written, the City clerk would have to verify that every name listed on the petition was a voter who actually voted in the last election. If this is what is intended, it may very well be an extremely expensive proposition to require the City clerk to verify the names of the petitioners against a list of those individuals who • voted in the last election. This provision would preclude anyone