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Nyle’s Notes - Mayor & Council
Following up on last week’s workshop meeting, specifically Charter Commission membership
This Issue dates back to when I first started as your interim
Council had serious concerns regarding turnover of members/functionality of Commission
I have attended every Commission meeting since I started
I have Endeavored to “recruit/retain current/new existing members
April/May of 2018 Commission experienced first full complement of members since 2002. Commission also elected a new chair in January 2019.
This was the Commissions first “new” chair in 17 years – that is, someone different than the two senior members.
The new chair met several times with myself as well as City Attorney Riggs to educate herself. She also requested and received pertinent literature and documents such as the League
of Minnesota Cities handbook and specifically the chapter dealing with Charter Commissions.
She requested we set up two training sessions for all the members prior to the March meeting with all but one member being able to attend at least one of the meetings. At the March
meeting, she led a discussion on purpose, rules of operation/treatment of each other, and process.
After her second meeting, held on May 21, 2019 from 7:00 PM to approximately 9:15 pm, she sent an email out about 90 minutes later to the Commission and myself informing all she was
resigning immediately from the Chair and the Commission.
That same evening, another commission members shared with me their intent to resign and the next day, a third shared their intent to resign. I requested from both their patience.
At your May 28, 2019 Council meeting I informed the council that I had grave concerns regarding the functionality of the Commission and the ability to find and retain members. At that
meeting, council consensus was to schedule discussion for the June 3, 2019 workshop.
At your workshop last week documents were provided showing the history of Commission membership back to 2002, number of meetings scheduled, number of meetings held, number of meetings
cancelled due to lack of quorum, number of meetings held despite not meeting the quorum requirements as articulated by Kennedy & Graven, and a list of members who have served along
with their dates of service and total time – again since 2002. All noted the significant turnover of members with only a fraction serving their entire four year term. At its lowest
point – 2014, 2015, and most of 2016 the commission had at numerous time only three members out of necessary 11.
At your workshop you all stated you had watched the tape, Attorney Riggs gave his opinion on the importance of having a full complement – functional charter commission and we outlined
options for you. Those options included exercising your statutory right to “petition” the judge to remove members which after discussion, you directed me to contact both Mr. Amundson
and Mr. Thomas to share your concern and request their resignation and absent that, inform them the Council via a unanimous consensus – directed myself and Attorney Riggs to compose
a letter that could be sent to the Judge expressing our concern and goal of having a functional Commission as defined by keeping a full complement of members.
I reached out via phone to Mr. Amundsen last Tuesday morning with Director Beer present and Mr. Thomas last Tuesday afternoon with Mayor Mueller present. They were informed of your
request, provided a deadline of last Friday, and I followed up with both via email. No resignations have been received.
To summarize, the issue is functionality of the Cities Charter Commission. For the first time in over 16 years the commission finally achieved a full complement of members about a year
ago (and I should add, the commission reduced their membership from 15 to 11 in 2003 and then from 11 to 9 in 2017 in order to achieve this) and in January of this year, a new chair
was elected and
took over at the March meeting. Now, just three short months later we are down one member and absent change, two more resignations are pending.
I believe Mr. Riggs has some additional commentary to add at this point.