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Canfield will not put charter amendment on November ballot
By ROBERT CONNELLY
CANFIELD
Because of so-called legal flaws, city council will not be submitting for the November ballot another charter amendment circulated by resident Frank Micchia.
While candidate and tax issues had to be approved for the ballot earlier this month, charter amendments have a deadline of Sept. 4.
City Attorney Mark Fortunato wrote a legal opinion for council and city officials explaining the flaws with a charter amendment circulated by Micchia that 520 city residents signed.
Mahoning County Board of Elections officials said Micchia needed 252 signatures, which is 10 percent of the voter turnout in the 2013 general election.
“This petition, generally, is materially flawed. It doesn’t meet the statutory requirements in terms of providing a title, and that’s a fatal defect,” Fortunato said. “If that charter amendment were to pass, you would have six to seven remaining inconsistencies with the charter ... if you’re going to amend section 5.01 and 5.02, you have to amend” other sections.
Micchia’s charter amendment sought to make the city manager position an elected position, with two- year terms, no term limit, no requirement for residency in the city and that council would “fix the compensation” for the role.
The person would also “refrain from participation in the election of the members of Council or Mayor and from all City partisan political activities which would impair the professional administration of the duties of the office.”
“We’re in court now cleaning up the problems created by the previous charter amendments by asking the court to clarify those issues. This goes beyond that,” Fortunato said.
The charter “says it would be at the general election but doesn’t say when,” said Joe Warino, current city manager. “It didn’t state any mechanism for removing the manager. Council, under the current charter, has rules to appoint and to remove” so if council removes the city manager, would there be a special election?
Warino also said, “There’s a lot of unanswered questions ... it bothers me that people didn’t ask those questions when they saw the petition or signed the petition.”
Micchia received the opinion letter on Monday and said he wasn’t surprised by the city’s position. If the city were to change its opinion, it would need to advertise a special meeting and then take a vote on placing it on the ballot before Sept. 4.
The next regularly scheduled Canfield City Council meeting is Sept. 9.
“I expected they would do that because ... they don’t want to see this issue on the ballot and to prevent it by throwing up some legal fluff,” Micchia said. “I’m exploring my options to see what we can do to get this on the ballot and I don’t know what the outcome of that will be.
“I’m disappointed they did something like that, but in the past they’ve done the same thing and I chose to challenge it.”
That was at Micchia’s own expense and he said the decision on what to do will need to be made soon due to the Sept. 4 ballot deadline.
“We always have the option to do it again next year and address the issues that have been brought forth. That’s another option we have,” he said.