Tuesday, January 24, 2012
YOUNGSTOWN
At its first meeting, the city’s charter-review committee already is under the gun.
Mayor Charles Sammarone told the committee Monday he wants proposed changes to the city charter no later than June 1 for city council and the administration to review the recommendations and place them on the November ballot for a vote.
Council has to approve the recommendations before they can be put in front of voters.
The 11-member committee plans to meet weekly — and possibly twice a week, if needed — to come up with ideas.
The members will spend the next week reviewing the charter, a document established in 1923.
But some members already are thinking of a significant change.
Jacqueline Taylor said she wants to redraw new lines for the city’s seven wards in order for each council member to represent about the same number of people.
Others agreed with some mulling the possibility of reducing the number of ward council members and adding at-large members.
The charter said council may redistrict the city after each federal census. Redistricting hasn’t been done in decades despite steep declines in the city’s population that have left council members representing wards of unequal numbers of people.
“It was a controversial topic during the last charter-review committee,” said Bill Carter, a member of the new committee and the last one formed in 2004.
The city charter calls for “a charter review committee [to] be convened by the mayor every four years to review and consider recommending amendments” to the document.
The committee elected Jerome Williams, a Mahoning County deputy sheriff and real-estate broker, as its chairman, and Scott Schulick, vice president of Farmers Trust Co., as vice chairman.
“The charter committee hasn’t met for several years, and the city has changed significantly in those years,” Schulick said. “We need to review the charter. I’m optimistic that a good group of citizens can come up with good recommendations for the city.”