Memo re Charter Decision - June 2011

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M EMORANDUM to: Mounds View City Council from: Jim Ericson, City Administrator re: Charter Commission Memo date: June 29, 2011 Today I received the attached memo from the Charter Commission relating to a request made earlier this year (or later last year) to make certain notification timeframes outlined in the City Charter all consistent. The request stemmed from a recent amendment to the City Charter which provided authority for the City to assess unpaid (property related) administrative offense fines to property owners’ taxes as a special assessment. (See City Charter Section 8.06, enacted in 2008 by approval of Ordinance 810.) The City requested the Charter Commission consider a revision so that the notification timeframes in Section 8.06 would be two weeks, the same notification timeframe as stated in City Charter sections 8.04 and 8.05. The two weeks relates to the amount of notice required to be provided to a property owner alerting them to the City’s intent to certify a special assessment against their property taxes. Section 8.04 relates to special assessments for a local improvement project, such as a street project or a sewer project. Typically, assessments of this kind can exceed two or three thousand dollars. Such an assessment would require a two-week notice. In section 8.05 of the Charter, unpaid utility bills or diseased tree removals can be assessed, again, with a two-week notice. These assessments can be many hundreds of dollars or even a thousand or more. In the case of Section 8.06, unpaid property based administrative offense fines, the typical assessment would be $150. Contrary to Sections 8.04 and 8.05, a THIRTY DAY notice is required. Aside from the inconsistency issue, staff argued that it seemed backwards to require the GREATEST notification period for the SMALLEST of assessments. The Charter Commission has responded that they are not willing to decrease the notification period stated in Section 8.06 but would be willing to INCREASE the periods in 8.04 and 8.05 to thirty days to achieve the staff-desired consistency. The Commission correctly presumed however that the City would prefer no change over making all notification periods thirty days. My only confusion with their decision was the following statement: “…we were not comfortable infringing on publicly voted notification requirements…” As I stated above, the notification period as outlined in Section 8.06 was enacted by ordinance after a recommendation by the Commission. The thirty-day requirement was chosen by the Commission without any vote of the public. In summary, while it would have been preferable to have the notification period in Section 8.06 reduced to two weeks, the thirty day requirement has not and will not pose any problems, especially given the limited frequency of such assessments.