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Two groups want to put charter amendments on the November ballot in Youngstown
YOUNGSTOWN
City voters could see several amendments and changes to Youngstown’s charter on the Nov. 8 election ballot, and not all of them will come from the commission reviewing the charter document.
Backers of the anti-fracking Community Bill of Rights, which has failed five times, and those supporting a “Part-Time Workers Bill of Rights” have submitted language for charter amendments to the city council clerk’s office. The groups don’t need to submit the charter amendment proposals with the required minimum number of valid signatures for at least three months, but already have provided the proposed language to Valencia Marrow, city council clerk.
The charter amendment to ban fracking has failed twice in 2013, twice in 2014, and in the Nov. 4, 2015, general election. The results for last year’s issue loss was the closest: 2.5 percentage points.
This would be the first effort to get a part-time workers bill of rights on the city ballot.
The proposal would require employers paying the same starting hourly wage it gives full-time workers to part-timers for jobs that require “equal skill, effort and responsibility, and that are performed under similar working conditions,” and require part-timers with “proportional access” to full-time workers in “the same job classification.”
City council would have to create a five-member commission that would assure compliance with the policies.
When asked if the city could legally enforce the proposal should it get on the ballot and be approved, Law Director Martin Hume said, “I won’t scrutinize it now, because the time to challenge the constitutionality is after and not before it passes. It’s not even on the ballot yet.”
Documents from both committees seeking charter amendments state that to get on the ballot, they need the signatures of at least 10 percent of those who voted in the last general election. With 12,587 voters in the November 2015 general election, that would be 1,259 valid signatures.
That 10-percent threshold has been used for years. But Hume said he reads the city charter as requiring only 3 percent of the total voters in the last general election. That would be 378 valid signatures.
Meanwhile, the seven-member charter review commission, appointed by Mayor John A. McNally, has met four times reviewing the document.
The commission plans to recommend city council consider put three to six proposed changes to the charter on the November ballot for voters to consider.
While the commission hasn’t agreed on any proposals, its members are discussing language to change the make-up of city council, said Christopher Travers, the commission’s chairman.
Instead of having all seven elected by wards, two council members could run citywide with the top vote-getter being appointed council president and the person who comes in second serving as council pro tempore, he said.
That would eliminate a separate election for council president, Travers said, but some commission members “don’t feel as comfortable [about] these ideas as I do,” Travers said.
Any proposals to change the charter from the commission must be approved by city council before being put in front of voters in November.
Four years ago, council refused several recommendations from a previous commission including the elimination of the council president job.