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Page 1 of 2 Kurt Ulrich From: Jonathan J Thomas [jthomas@usinternet.com] Sent: Friday, February 04, 2005 3:01 PM To: Kurt Ulrich Subject: Charter issues Kurt. At our Jan 13, 2005 meeting we discussed the following issues and determined they need to coordinated with the Attorney for careful consideration of a couple issue. The discussions we have had over the past several months relating to the specification of and amount of teh fee for "Filing for Office" seemed to indicate the the fee was being dictated by our Charter and therefor should be actually stated specifically in the Charter. However, on more careful examination, the Charter language was intended to show that the Charter is defering that item to the MN State Statute language and proceedure and in fact is a direct quote from teh MN Statute to indicate the intention. We feel that it is then done properly as stated, but would welcome a recommendation to modify the wording if a change would make understandability better. The result is that we feel the intent was and should remain that the City set the fee by Ordinance as long as the MN Statute specifies that is the proper method and if the Statute is changed in the future, the new Statute language would be the directive in this matter. Regarding the changes requested to the proposed revisions to chapter 5, in section 5.03 there was a request to add a new requirement for the Clerk-Administrator to notify the City Council with 5 working days of receipt of a petition that it had been received and is being reviewed in regard to its sufficiency. The Charter Commission feels that request is redundant with the 10 day requirement to notify the City Council of the determination of sufficiency and may create a legal difficulty due to a possible misinterpretation as a notice of sufficiency that could later be challenged. It also results in a problem of definition of the meaning of"notify the City Council" since there are many instances of 5 working days during which there is no normal opportunity to notify the City Council. We do think it would be reasonable to expect the Clerk-Administrator to inform the City Council of any such events that occur at any regularly scheduled meeting but do not think the language to produce that result is required in this case. Section 5.03. Determination of Petition Sufficiency. The committee must file the completed petition in the office of the Clerk-Administrator. 2/9/2005