Charter Review Commission Meeting
June 3, 2005

Members in attendance were: Pat Jordan, Jim Rice, Alice Ellison, Terry Ward, Jack Holland, Dan Porrevecchio, Aggie Stackhaus, Kelly Martin, Mike White and Calvin Williford. Staff members in attendance were: Bill Geary and Mark Funkhouser.

The meeting started at 8:05 a.m. Mr. Ward stated that all community meetings had been concluded. Although there were only approximately 100 citizens total to show up for the meetings there were still good feedback from the citizens. Only one letter had been received. Henry Lyons opposed term limits. The next meeting of the commission will be on June 21st and is scheduled to last up to four hours with the hope of getting the entire draft charter done. July 8th is scheduled to be the last meeting with no additional meetings scheduled afterward.

Mayor Barnes returned to speak before the commission. She wanted to share some additional thoughts and answer any questions the commission might have. Steve Glorioso was also on hand to talk about and answer any questions regarding elections.

The Mayor stated that she supported the recommendations of the City Manager regarding the codification of departments. She disagreed with his thoughts on the role that Boards and Commissions paid in the scope of services provided the city. The work they do is exceptional and is greatly appreciated. The quality of the work and the experience and knowledge they bring to the table is remarkable.

Mayor Barnes also recommended continuing term limits up to three terms. She believes that it is the right thing to do. To continue the momentum of what council members have accomplished and are accomplishing. She suggested that the commission should work separately from any influence of council members. For that reason she wasn’t sure that the lack of influence could be accomplished through having a work session with council members prior to the Commission recommendation. She was however looking forward to seeing the recommendations of the commission.

Aggie Stackhaus talked about previous work on petitions regarding term limits. Her problem was “for life”. Even if you make it three terms for life you still have some council members with no competition when running for office. With the time frames and expense involved some people who are interested in running for office will set out until the incumbent can no longer run for office.

Mayor Barnes stated that her preference was no term limits. She suggested putting item on the ballot as a separate issue from other charter change items.

Ms. Stackhaus stated that she thought that the public had a better grasp of what is going on with ballot items.

Jim Rice said that he appreciated the Mayor’s comments on Boards and Commissions. He agreed with Mayor on the comments made. He also agreed with Aggie on term limits. However he could see problems arising with a work session.

Mayor Barnes said that she thought that individually council members would be more proactive to meeting with the commission rather than with a work session. She had hoped that the commission would have achieved more input individually than with a group session.

Terry Ward replied that the commission had heard from about half of the council members. That was a more modest response than hoped for . The last charter review recommendations for separate issues were consolidated by the Council. The reason for wanting to have dialogue with the council members was to get a feel for how receptive the council members were to this commission’s recommendations. However, the commission needs to reach a point of closure before meeting with council on those recommendations. It was clearly acknowledged that the decision on what to present to the voters was the Council’s.

Mayor Barnes suggested having a workshop where the commission would be presenting the recommendations to the council and explaining the context and the reasons why the recommendations are being made. She stated that if the commission felt that a work session was needed she would support it. However, she would take any decisions made by the commission seriously.

Pat Jordan asked other than term limits if there were any other issues that were being set aside.

Mr. Ward answered that presently initiative was the only other point to be recommended to be placed as a separate item. However, there are about half dozen issues left and those thought to be of a contentious nature would be considered for separation.

Kelly Martin said he was opposed to eliminating any Boards. The history of Kansas City shows citizen involvement. Efficiency does not equate with effectiveness. The Boards help promote understanding of different groups. If promotes diversity. It helps people understand other individual’s beliefs.

Mayor Barnes agreed with Mr. Martin. The City doesn’t have enough staff to do things that Boards and Commissions do.

Mr. Martin stated that he was not in favor of term limits. Lots of people are interested in running for office but don’t do so because of the commitment involved.

Mayor Barnes stated that the election process would weed out people that the citizens didn’t want in office.

Aggie Stackhaus commended Bill Geary, Greg Williams and all staff members for the wonderful jobs they have done for the commission. She felt that their dedication and service had been maligned.

Steve Glorioso spoke on elections and election problems. Mr. Glorioso talked about taking part in both charter change campaigns and seeing both fail at the polls. The reason, he felt, was that there was no real campaign to promote the charter changes. He suggested that the members commit themselves to getting the word out regarding the charter changes because what they are collectively doing will affect the entire city.

Other items Mr. Glorioso talked about were:
Ø The amount of time between the primary and general elections should somehow be addressed and lengthened.
Ø Consider having an April primary and June general election.
Ø Raising the requirements for initiatives and referendum petitions. The thresholds for initiative and referendum petitions drives are too low.
Ø Approach the state legislature with a request to change the election date for the city to Saturday. Statistics have shown that states and countries with Saturday elections have larger turnouts of voters.

The last item talked about was separating issues. Hot items need to be worded clearly on the ballot so that there would be no misunderstanding for voters.

Jim Rice stated that he thought that as a commission the members were precluded from campaigning about the charter.

Bill Geary clarified the issue. As a commission they can not campaign; but as individuals after the commission has disbanded there would be no problem.

Bond Issuing Process

Randall Landes and Heather Brown spoke before the commission on the current bonding process.

Terry Ward stated that the current bonding process is as stated by charter. He asked for an opinion of the recommendations made from 2001. The question was what should be the requirements as specified in the Charter?

Heather would talk about the specifics and Randy would talk about the particulars.

Mr. Landes talked about the current charter hinders the city from doing business. The city would like to do something different with structuring bond offerings. He would like to see a process that would allow for choosing what type of bonds the city wants to pursue. The City Auditor has recommended adopting a financial debt policy. This would allow the city to choose the form, time, etc. of bonds and what would work best.

Mr. Ward stated that the commission was interested in general comments. He referred to Section 831 of the Charter.
A brief discussion followed regarding bond practices and debt repayments.

Mr. Landes explained that the city had a Bond Advisory Board. However, with each new board the wording of interpretation of bond practices also differs. There is no consistency.

Mr. Ward said that the commission had been suggesting that the Council develop and adopt a financial policy. Mr. Ward asked if the current charter revision recommendations were left in the proposed charter, would that meet the City Treasurer’s requests.

Mr. Landes replied yes.

Jack Holland asked Mr. Landes his views on extending the period from five years on contracts with Parks concessions.

Mr. Landes agreed that there were lots of advantages for the city to extend contract periods for contracts. However he was not familiar enough with the Parks Department operations to comment further.

Heather Brown stated that the current Charter is not reflective of how the process of handling revenue is done today. Electronic processing, wire transfers or anything connected with electronics is not addressed. The Hancock Amendment also comes into play.

Mr. Landes talked about negotiated bonds sales.

Dan Porrevecchio asked whether the current debt policy allowed the city to push its debt to the end of the debt period.

Mr. Landes answered that the city was already doing that.

Kelley Martin asked about Section 814- Special Assessments. He asked for clarification of that section.

Ms. Brown answered that would be dependant on what is being done. She hadn’t had an opportunity to review charter changes so she wasn’t sure what recommended changes there were. But the special assessment could be done without a vote of the people.

Mr. Ward stated that the provision was not being changed.

Ms. Stackhaus said that Mr. Landes had eluded to transparency a one point. She asked if he would elaborate on that. Would he like to see debt policy as a part of the charter?

Mr. Landes replied that it didn’t matter whether it was by charter or ordinance as long as the policy was in place prior to bond negotiations.

According to Mr. Ward there is no debt recommendation in the charter draft and no policy in the charter recommendations. The draft is just stating that there should be a policy adopted by council. There are no specifics of what the policy should encompass.

It was agreed that the provisions that were in the draft were acceptable.

There was also discussion on Sections 836 and 837.

Wanda Gunter, Acting Director of Finance, talked about the City’s accounting practices and accounting methods.

There was discussion on a provision for the City Council to waive the penalty and interest on special assessments.

Mr. Ward reviewed the remaining agenda items for discussion. Election dates had been briefly discussed. Moving the elections from March to April – have conformity with other elections. Also a suggestion to change time period for primary and general was discussed.

Bill Geary stated that the state statutes indicated when elections can be held. That would be something that needed to be researched further.

Mike White wanted to know how often the city put issues put on an election ballot. How many elections do you have in April?

Terry Ward answered that the school board elections are in April. By state statute the Kansas City School District has elections every 2 years. Other school district’s elections are annually.

Mr. White asked if there was a possibility of changing to April and June for elections.

Mr. Ward asked that the commission wait to see what type of constraints there were before proceeding with the idea of changing the elections to other months.

Mr. Porrevecchio asked if it were not possible to change the months, why change the times. How would it affect voter turnout?

Mr. Ward replied that campaigning in December can be brutal. The key is do you want to have final city elections during the same period as school board elections. Most municipalities are having an election in April.

Mr. White asked if the city could get away with not having a primary since the government structure is non-partisan.

It was agreed, that for the time being Saturday elections were a state legislative issue and the Commission was not going to suggest pursuit of that issue..

Mr. Ward asked Bill Geary to investigate two things for the commission.
1. What does June look like?
2. Are there any other restrictions in place?