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Honorable Mayor and City Council Members February 17, 2022 Page 2 DOCSOPEN\MU210\4\780657.v4-2/17/22 to the City, including a reference to the appropriate form for a petition that is to be circulated. This information was shared with the Petitioners on February 4, 2022. In addition, the submitted petition signatures were determined to be unverifiable by the City Clerk, as verification could not be made as to valid petition signators under Minnesota Rules Chapter 8205, when no birth year for each signature to the petition was provided. The City Clerk’s certificate provided notice of these deficiencies and the insufficiency of the petition on February 4, 2022 to the Petitioners as required by Minnesota law. Upon further review of the petition after receipt of the Perry Letter, it also appears that the petition circulated and submitted by Petitioners failed to meet the requisite requirements of Minnesota Statutes, Section 410.12, subdivision 1, as Ordinance 984 was not attached to the petition3 to be reviewed by signators at the time of circulation of the petition for signatures.4 II. Perry Letter It is difficult to determine the purpose of the Perry letter in light of the Minnesota Legislature’s statutory process set forth in both Minnesota Statutes and Minnesota Rules for submitted petitions. The Perry Letter does not follow the Minnesota statutory process regarding petitions, and as such, it is unclear what the City should do with the Perry Letter. In attempting to give deference to Petitioners’ intent, the City attempted to process the Perry Letter (essentially, asking reconsideration of the originally-submitted petition) as an amended petition as was previously referenced in the City Clerk’s certificate dated February 4, 2022. However, it must be clearly stated that there was no amended nor new petition submitted to the City with the Perry Letter; thus, such review attempts appear to be without merit. The Perry Letter is lengthy and makes many allegations about the City’s process, including that the Petitioners object to, seek reconsideration of, and otherwise appeal the notice of insufficiency; however, the only request made in the Perry Letter is for the City Clerk to “immediately reverse the February 4, 2022 Insufficiency Letter and accept the Citizens’ Petition as sufficient.” Perry Letter, page 11. The Perry Letter includes references to cases to support the purported argument that the City acted improperly. Exhibit B to this memorandum is included in an effort to provide some additional information on what each of these cases addresses using less legal terminology, along with providing a brief overview of the basic facts and outcomes of each case. Only one of the cases cited in the Perry Letter involves a petition that was similarly deficient to the Petitioner’s submission and lacked the necessary information used to validate signatures. In that case, the district court provided the petitioner two days to amend the petition and the petitioner was able to do so. The main issue in that case was that the petitioner was not given time to amend the petition, the city’s clerk missed a response deadline altogether which resulted in the response to the petitioners after the deadline to submit a petition, and the statute under which the petition was brought did not include any mechanism or 3 Minnesota Statutes, Section 410.12, subdivision 1 requires that any amendment that is less than 1,000 words shall include the text of the proposed amendment. Based upon the petition received January 25, 2022, no evidence exists that the text of the proposed ordinance amendment was attached to the petition in full. Providing any written summary of the charter amendment is improper. Opinion of the Attorney General 58-C, May 7, 1946. 4 In addition to the required information in the affidavit in the Petition, the Petitioners have also added the phrase “and each signed did see the full subject of the petition.” This is unnecessary and not required under Minnesota Statutes, Section 410.12, but is still part of their affidavits submitted by the Petitioners. It is unclear why this additional language has been added by Petitioners.