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m v City of <br /> Mounds <br />View <br />Charter Commission <br />Chair <br />Jonathan J Thomas <br />763-784-5205 <br />Vice Chair <br />Michele Sandback <br />763-783-1770 <br />2nd Vice Chair <br />Daniel Freimuth <br />763-780-3371 <br />Secretary <br />Brian Amundsen <br />763-786-5699 <br />Bill Doty <br />763-786-3421 <br />Matthew Eenigenburg <br />763-783-7216 <br />Jean Miller <br />763-786-3959 <br />William Mori <br />763-784-3645 <br />Barbara Thomas <br />763-780-6226 <br />William Werner Sr <br />763-784-3603 <br />December 6, 2003 <br />Response to City Council comments of Nov. 24th regarding requests from the Mounds <br />View Charter Commission, Jonathan J Thomas, Chair. <br />First, I would like to apologize for not being able to attend the meeting where the Charter <br />issues were discussed. It was a very great disappointment to watch a replay of the <br />meeting after having been called by a resident and asked to do so, because it seemed that <br />the members of the City Council were apparently not given the necessary information to <br />be able to reasonably discuss and proceed on the items the Charter commission had sent <br />them for review. For the record, there were no issues raised that had not been clearly and <br />publicly presented already. I will attempt to list the issues that seemed to be raised and <br />state a simple brief response. All of the actions and many comments regarding these <br />issues are recorded in the minutes that are filed in the Charter Commission Public Book <br />which is available for review to the public at City Hall, and at every meeting of the <br />Charter Commission. <br />Has the Charter Commission done any business without a quorum ? <br />No; the Charter Commission operates according to its Bylaws that state in <br />Article III section 3: <br />“A majority of qualified and acting members shall constitute a quorum for the <br />purpose of conducting the Commission’s business and exercising its powers and <br />for all other purposes, but a smaller number of members may adjourn from time <br />to time.” To clarify this, the number of members required to vote on issues must <br />be more than half the number of currently active members. This means that if <br />there are 9 active members, a quorum would be 5. We currently have 10 active <br />members so a quorum is 6. <br /> <br />Was changing the number of members from 15 to 11 done properly ? <br />Due to the difficulty in maintaining a roster of 15 members a significant amount <br />of discussion with the current and previous District Court Judges and Clerk of the <br />District Court was used to evaluate the proper consideration and process, which <br />ended up in the recommendation that the Charter Commission amend its Bylaws <br />and send a copy of the amendment to the District Court which would then change <br />its records to reflect the new roster requirements. As we had less than the 11 <br />acting members at the time it did not impact any members serving at the time. <br />The amendment was Adopted by unanimous approval of the nine members <br />present at the June 12, 2003 meeting of the Charter Commission. <br />Is it proper to use “replacement language” for a portion of the Charter, and if so <br />does the entire text need to be underlined ? <br />Where the order and association of ideas is substantial enough to make the <br />“Strikeout/Underline” method confusing, it is common practice to use the <br />“Replacement Language” method. As to the question of style, it is stated in the <br />header and there is no statute requirement or suggestion for the style to be used.