Voters to decide meeting flexibility rule, lifting citymanager residence restriction

Amendments by charter reviewgroup will be on Nov. 3 ballot.

West Carrollton residents going to the polls Nov. 3 will be asked to vote on two charter amendments, one aimed at providing flexibility in scheduling city council meetings and the other loosening restrictions onwhere a city managermust eventually reside.

The Charter Review Commission held four meetings in May where it discussed potential changes to the charter and made recommendations to city councilmembers, who approved both amendments.

Onemeasuredealingwithmeetings of councilwould provide city council members the flexibility to schedule and/or cancel their meetings, particularly in times of emergency or when the agenda would warrant doing so.

City council is now scheduled to meet on the second and fourth Tuesday of every month. That will remain the same, but if the amendment is approved by voters, council would be required to meet only once per month.

“With the pandemic situation, a lot of timeswewere (required) to meet and we didn’t have anything to discuss or talk about,” said West Carrollton Mayor Jeff Sanner. “So, the Charter Review

Commission decided one meeting a month would be mandatory. Wedidn’tneedto do this twice amonthwhen we have situations like this.”

Thatwill occur onlywhen city council has nothing to put on an agenda. When it does, it has the flexibility to add a meeting, Sanner said.

Additionally, the provision for a public notice of a special meeting is proposed to be increased to 24 hours in advance of the meeting from the current 12 hours advance notice to comply with the current Ohio Sunshine Law, city officials said.

AResidencyRequirement amendment, if approved, would remove wording in the charter that requires the city manager to be a resident of the city of West Carrollton to comply with a 2009

Ohio Supreme Court ruling prohibiting requiring residency as a condition of employment.

“Our CharterReviewCommission meets every five years,” Sannersaid.“They’ve had five years to talk about it and it was something that was not put on the ballot becausewe didn’t have anything to put on the ballot to speak of. This year, with other things going on, we decided itwasbest to... clean up our charter because the charter was not correct in saying that the city manager had to live within the city when we have an Ohio Supreme Court ruling that that’s illegal to do.”

The remainder of that section of the charter remains unchanged, cityofficials said.