By Liz McMahan
The City Council’s Charter Review Committee held its first meeting Tuesday and moved five lines closer to finalizing its recommendations for charter change.
Maybe five lines closer.
The committee spent about two minutes electing David Ragsdale as chairman and James Gulley as vice chairman, then the next 20 minutes or so deciding what to do next.
It was pointed out that the agenda called only for discussion of the various parts of Articles I and II. There was no provision for taking action on anything discussed.
That left the Council split on whether to discuss the items, then bring them back at the Dec. 8 committee meeting for a vote.
“We need to discuss it and move on,” Ragsdale said. “There’s no sense in coming back next week and opening a whole new can of worms.”
He said it would be best to delay the entire process until the agenda could be corrected.
Councilor David Jones said he saw no problem with discussing the issues, then deciding them at the next meeting.
Councilor Bob Luttrull said he just wants the charter change issue resolved.
“I’ve been here almost two years, and all we’ve been doing for that two years is trying to revise the charter,” Luttrull said. “I sure would like to get it out of the way so we can get on to something else.”
Talk of charter review began in September 2008 and has been through a committee of citizens and council members, but their recommendations have been shelved, and the Council is starting over on the process.
The council committee meeting was set for 5:30 p.m. to allow more citizens the opportunity to participate, either by attending the meeting or watching it on television.
There were about 20 citizens at Tuesday’s meeting, most of them members of the fire department or other city employees.
Eventually, the first section of Article I was read aloud.
There was no comment, either from the public or council members.
No vote could be taken.
The silence was finally broken with recognition there was nothing the Council could do about closing the item for discussion, and the meeting was adjourned with instructions to city officials that the next agenda should include discussion and action.
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