Charter Review Committee - Regular Meeting

All right, we're recording. It is Monday, June 29th. It is 3.03 p.m., and the Charter Review Committee is meeting. Those present are Aaron Smith.

Roddy Phillips. Dallas Kennedy. Peggy Dean. Greta Saini.

James Parker.

We have a quorum of the committee present. All right. So I think we've basically gone through the whole thing. So I think maybe the, I think we decided that the last section we were going to look at was, what was it? It was article, the last couple.

Let's see.

I missed the recall part. That was last time, I guess. Yeah. The general provisions. Did you do that? Well.

They wanted to. We haven't done nothing yet.

Recall starting at was it 789? Was that our homework from the last meeting? Thanks. Okay. Do you want to start there? Do you just want to go back to the whole thing?

Okay, like on the recall, they actually made it easier. They moved it to 30% instead of 50%.

Okay, so because of 50% under Article seven recall.

Well, she was just asking about the recall. I was just telling her it was...

So does the recall only count in that councilman's district? Yes. Yeah, it has to be just in that district, right? Right, yeah. Okay. So somebody outstanding... Number two can't come to number five.

They would need to be qualified voters in that particular district.

I think we've done the math and like for the mayor, it would have taken like 15,000 signatures and that's just... I mean, that's just basically impossible.

That's bigger than an election. Well, I mean, it had to be 50% of the election.

About 30,000 people voted on mayor last time. So it's taking 15,000 signatures to do a recall. And that's still... 30%.

It reads 30%, like, for instance, with the mayor.

30% of the number.

30% of the number of the votes cast. But it still shall not be less than $7,500. That's the way of carrying the REITs.

I thought we'd change it to $6,000. Did we say $7,500? $7,500. Okay.

You should be able to get $7,500 in the town hall. For the mayor. For mayor or the at-large.

Yeah, yeah. Or the at-large, yeah.

Then $2,000 for each of the single-member districts.

Okay.

I think this side. I chuckled whenever I was reading this about the indelible pencil.

Because we had to Google it.

What does that mean?

It's a permanent pencil, basically.

I looked it up, and it's a certain kind of lead, and it can't be erased easily. But who's going to look for that pencil? So we just said take it out and make it a pen. You have to sign an ink.

It kind of felt all of a sudden like we were at Harry Potter.

Well, in 1927, that was probably a thing because ink was harder to get. So indelible pencil was probably a big deal in 1927.

And we're still probably using the feather in the ink well still.

Because you've got to think, I mean, what was it, 1920 when women got the right to vote?

Technically, this was still the wild, wild west.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Women got the right to vote in 1920 in our country. charter was written in 27.

So we're probably still having gunfights on the street.

Why would we take out the election? The precinct number?

Where were you on 80?

Section 85? B for the recall? Isn't it important to know what precinct they're in? So we know. I mean, don't they have to?

Precinct number? Well, their address would tell them that though.

Yeah, but if somebody's checking it, you know, if the number's there, nobody has to go look at the address and check the pre... I don't know. It may be a lot easier to check.

State law doesn't mention precinct, though.

District 5 skimmed around making it easier.

That's what I'm saying.

It seems like you have to have... Well, maybe people wouldn't know what their precinct number is. Yeah, that's what it was. Nobody knows their precinct number, and the city secretary has to review every signature anyway, so she's going to look it up.

So, I'm not even thinking... I'm thinking wrong. The election precinct number is not the district that you're in.

Yeah, and so it's really not needed for the voter to know that.

So is the district you're in needed? I mean, I know the paper that you're going to sign on the recall, I guess, would say the district.

Yeah, I think it's just at the address. I think the city secretary will know that. I think the idea was just to kind of make it more streamlined for everybody to fill out a pre-competition.

Yeah, okay.

because really it's on them. If somebody's getting signatures, it's kind of on them to know where people live to get the signatures.

One thing to keep in mind is the power of recall initiative and referendum are unique. You're not going to find anything in state law that uniquely writes that home goal cities. That's one of the advantages and authorities that home goal cities have over other forms of government is the initiative of petition and recall. That's like one of the number one things that that commonwealth cities have that other cities don't and it's all going to be driven by the charter so that's one thing that's probably one of the most important aspects of the charter is that referendum initiative and recall because general law cities can't do this counties can't do it nobody Yeah. It's only cities, right? Right. Hospital boards, school district, none of those. Exactly. That is one of the initiative and referendum in particular. That's super important to keep in mind. So it's all going to be, since it's only home rule cities, the sole authority is going to be found in a city's charter. As long as it doesn't conflict with anything in the election code, which it's not. There's not really anything in there. and the election code that talks about these concepts.

And on C and D of 85, I guess, did we decide that a reasonable time was better than some specific number of days?

Yes, ma'am, and the reason for that is inevitably when a petition comes to the city secretary, It is a substantial amount of work to make sure that it's done correctly. And this is all still under the recall. Double-check addresses. You know, check the registration. Right. I mean, well, I don't think we can check registration, but to check to see if there are 18, you know, if they're a qualified voter and things like that. Right. No, say that. Do you need to put age? No, we put DOB. Thank God. We do put DOB. It's a lot of work to go through a petition, and inevitably they're never done exactly the way they're supposed to be. It takes a lot of time.

Is there a way we could put maybe a... driver's license or something else in with this too that's what i was about to say we might want to i thought that kind of form of id i don't think that has been cleaned up yet by the courts no and also not everybody has a driver's license so you don't i'm about a state id everybody has a state id they're free

I like that not cleaned up yet.

I don't think it has been cleaned up.

It hasn't. Because I did think, I thought we had left it voter registration number or date of birth. No, you marked it voter registration.

There was a reason for that though because you have to be a qualified voter.

Yeah, but on the petitions you have to do now. like when you're getting signatures for candidates or anything, you have that option. But some people don't want to put their date of birth on the form, but they'll put their voter number. I mean, it doesn't really matter. I don't know if that's a big deal.

It is a big deal. I had to get a bunch of mine redone because it didn't have date of birth or something.

Yeah, you had to have one or the other. Yeah, I was running. Yeah, you had to have one or the other. And so could we just leave it voter registration number or date of birth? because that's what's on our petitions now anyway, the ones from the state that you have to do for the, in lieu of payment.

Any concern with that?

No, I think voter registration number or date of birth works, and that way it gives an option. Or both. Yeah.

Or both, yeah. So we'll just have a, basically there'll be a place for it, signature, address, date of birth, registration, if you got a break, but yeah.

I've seen people that will go get their voter registration card and give you that number because they don't want to put their date of birth on the form because they think you're going to steal it. There are people like that. They'll think you'll steal their ID, use it to sign up for credit cards or something. They'll sign your petition, and they'll go get their voter registration card and give you that number because they don't want to write their date of birth down.

I thought you were going to say it was people that didn't want you to know how old they were. No, no. I meant identity theft stuff.

Yeah, that's really easy.

Even if you just use the last four numbers on your driver's license, that should be more than enough because those are unique numbers too. Sir, we've already decided. Good. You can go home now.

But those driver license numbers? I don't know that the driver license number in the system that the city secretary uses to verify the registered voters. She could use that information. Yeah.

Craig Stoker arrived.

Late.

314. You're in.

So we're on the 86, the initiative.

That's my problem at city council too. Ask Aaron. It's the same change. Eat all the candy, whatever's there? I'll eat the candy bars. I'd rather have the Skittles up there because I like to just eat them one at a time. But we don't get them anymore, so... So I just break the candy bar in half and eat half of it. Then when nobody's looking, I'll eat the other half.

So this looks like we're just trying to conform to the same thing as the recall.

Keep it kind of consistent.

Because they were consistent anyway before. Yeah, they're pretty much identical in terms of their numbers.

I think that should be put back in there. Bring the word back? Just leave it. I'm being serious. You need to go find it. Somebody needs to make an indelible pencil. There you go. They're probably there somewhere.

I'm sure you can find it on Amazon.

I think that's what I give all the council members here. It's an indelible pencil. You can't erase it. So once you sign it, don't think you're going to erase it.

Isn't that the purpose of an ink pen?

Maybe that's what they called it then back then. It was an indelible pencil.

They could be signed in.

My gosh. I think architects use them.

That looks like an architect.

Yeah, that's kind of what it was.

Pencil. That way when the building collapses, you can't say, no, I didn't say put that in there.

This referendum looks like it's just trying to So these three are all very similar in that they're not the reason for time. Supermajority is one plus a majority. like I'm seven is a supermajority for three quarters. But if you've got seven people, and it says it requires a supermajority vote, is that four or five? Because of the supermajority?

And that, you know, the four fifths made sense when we had five, right? Of course, then the

Anyway, it changed to seven. The idea being more than just 51, more than just a single one.

That's what I'm saying. Is that one more than half?

Yeah, there's different ways to express it because all the government bodies move. Some people, you know, the statute has, you know, in Sometimes they'll do 60%. But overall, the intent is we want more than just a simple majority. So if we got seven and you get four, we want more than just barely half. Particularly for these.

Yeah.

I mean, there's precedent for that as well. For example, the tax code, when we adopt a tax rate that sees no new revenue rate, it requires what the statute calls 60% vote, which ends up being a supermajority in most cases. You're not going to get by with just a simple majority. We want more than a supermajority. So there's a precedent for imposing a little bit more.

Well, I think that's a good game.

There's been a couple of times when we've had to do it on the city council already, so...

Yeah, I think it's the tax, but it's the last time I saw that.

Yeah, that's the most consistent one out there. Okay.

So are we on 90 now?

I think so. Well, the next change is coming to a point.

Yeah, mineral provision is the one we really have to go north of.

So the six months, you don't have to live here six months anymore?

To be a qualified voter?

Yeah.

That's the way I would read.

I think we just stopped at, I mean, I think we just default to state law, who's qualified to vote in any kind of election. Isn't that what we stopped at? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, because we're not going to be able to trump what the election code says. Yeah, election code defines what a qualified voter is, so just defaulting over what state law says.

that there isn't a different, I mean,

that requirement to live in the city for six months so you're for to run for office you do have that six-month requirement but this is just a vote this would be a qualified motor and yeah i just always thought you had to be here six months to do that as long as you comply with the as long as you're able to be a part as long as you register to vote because remember if you notice every election cycle they run those advertisements that say Make certain that you update your voter registration to go to the Secretary of State and do that. And if you move, you've got to make certain there's a deadline by state law by which you must register to vote. We're subject to that, so that's out of our hands because that's a matter of state law. So that's why the people, they put out there the deadline to register to vote. It's for all the people who moved in here. So you can have, as long as they reach the statutory deadline and register to vote, in accordance with what the state law says and the Secretary of State, then we don't have a dog in that fight.

For the mayor back on 45 and then on the council members on 46, that six-month requirement is still there. It's still there. Okay.

Oh, that's just the definition.

Pretty much unnecessary now.

Yeah, yeah.

It is unnecessary.

Yeah.

I think that's probably a holdover to saying who could and could not be a juror back in the 1920s. And you have that freeholder, for instance, is a pretty old word there.

That makes sense to strike 94.

Present officers. It's certainly unnecessary now.

So the effect of any provision, I mean the vote. So do people, this whole thing is stricken. Do the people Do we have to vote on these changes?

They go to the ballot, yes. They go to the ballot. They have to go to the new one, doesn't it?

But I'm saying, where is that in here?

We don't have anything in the charter. We don't have anything in this current charter about that. Nothing really specific other than I think there's only one vague session on 93, Charter Median Minidate 20, Court's Provision 13, contained in state law. That's the only thing that we talk about. Charter amendments. That's what I'm talking about.

Oh, thank you.

That's for the initial vote to adopt the charter from the third day of 1945, which lets majority adoption. Under A, it's just the initial adoption of the charter.

So, is it in here now anywhere that we have to vote on these changes?

Well, we would have to under state law. Any change to a charter would have to go. Would have to be. Yes, ma'am. Okay.

Now that's what we need to do with districts next. I mean, not districts, but with all of these construction deals we have. You have this, what do you call it? Not ordinances, but... permitting stuff that we have going on all of the different like this section right here is an industrial district slash this and it's permitted to have like zoning districts zoning districts changing all the zones we got how many we got 53 zone maybe around 30 when it's all said and done we need to get those down to like 10 and lock them in.

We're gonna do like Houston and do no zoning. zoning zoning by ordinance. You can't have a smokestack within 500 feet of a residence and you can't have a a a storage facility within 250 feet of a residence and other than that pretty much go to town do what you want.

Because half a second street is considered an industrial district. You can put trailers in the subdivision that has houses right behind it. And I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait. You're devaluing the houses that are there.

We don't do it in the charter, but we do do that for ordinance. I mean, UDC's on its way. Yeah, UDC. Although it's going to take a lot of work to put it together, but yes. We're going to do public meetings for that and even town halls and districts by talking about what the UDC is. Your developers, a lot of times developers don't like UDCs because they don't get to do exactly what they want, when they want, how they want.

And what's that an acronym for?

unified development code basically just kind of puts everything into one simple read document one place to go for everything so it's not it's not over this little section of the code or over in this this ordinance is to see another other places that adopted it's exactly the same so there's consistency supposed to be so everything's more foreseeable

I do have a question on 96. It says a charter review commission of not less than five or more than 15 citizens of the city. So you'd have to have five citizens that aren't on city council, or does that include city council and...

Last time I checked, I'm a citizen.

Well, I know, but for a lot of these, the city council doesn't count as citizens for these kinds of boards.

I think it would. Okay. I mean, I feel that it would. I mean, what it would prevent you from doing is putting somebody on the charter commission who isn't a resident, even if it's a staff member like me, but although I live in the city.

We've got Mara, and do we have another person besides Mara? Orman. Orman.

there was no rule they just appointed that in the future that has to have at least five and no more than 15 so I just want to make sure that included non city people

Be sure to include the non-city people.

I meant city employers, city council members.

You could include them, I would say, as long as they're residents.

I may qualify as the oldest resident in the room. No, not age. I'm talking about residents living in Odessa, Texas.

Forty-eight.

I've lived here longer and he's been alive. That's okay, Greg. I say that to a lot of people. That's one of your backups. I've been doing this longer and you've been alive. That's an old man saying. And there's usually a boy in front of it.

So the process now would be These suggestions would now go to City Council as suggestions from this group.

Correct.

And then what happens?

Well, then they would decide whether or not those would, which ones would go forward as propositions.

Council would have to order an election. Council has the authority to say, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, no. Ultimately, we have to I don't know what the plan is, that you put them on, try to stretch across two work sessions.

I think you put it on a work session, maybe kind of one of those where you can come in a little bit earlier and maybe the work session is done.

Maybe off a regular meeting, and maybe they come in here, actually, still open to the public, because I think a whole four people might show up still. You've got to put it in a place, I think, where you can sit around the table and talk, rather than up at the dais.

It's going to be cumbersome to put it up there on the dais and stuff. But also, I guess we figure out if we're going to try to do something kind of public. meeting, discussion, town hall kind of thing.

I think you could come in here and then broadcast it right out there and have somebody changing. When you flip a page, you go into a new page, they would see it out there. I don't know.

We've got the technical capability to do that, but I don't think we do. Either way, it's just some kind of... Once we kind of get them in some Well, we'd probably do that after the council has ordered the elections, put those proposed amendments.

Because that's going to be a lot.

Because you'll have to order by August.

Yeah.

We were thinking August. Yeah, August. And Norma had it worked out to do a second meeting and an adoption to order the election by ordinance on August 11th meeting. So we're timely.

It has to be done by the 18th. Yeah. That's when everybody has to have, if they're going to run, for their name to be done by the 18th.

To avoid a special meeting of counsel, obviously.

In August the 18th.

So does the proposition look like, let's say, for instance, Health 27. Is that section... Then reduce to a proposition to include the screen.

Proposition 1 proposes to amend Section 27. What section is that? Section 27 of the city charter to read as follows. And it's the shortened proposed version.

and we don't have to show everything it was.

There's different ways to do it, but I think ultimately we have to do it in a clear manner. So if you show it as it was when you get something long like this, because I've been in this position before, when you get it long, another way you can do this is put the put the language and do strikeouts and underlines is added language but when you have a lot of provisions that can get very very cumbersome and very confusing by members of the public you know so ultimately it may be our language may be proposing to eliminate you know an obsolete language and and to amend Chapter 27 to read as follows. And when we put that on the city's website, everyone can go and see, and they can also go see what 27 says now. Part of the thing is voters have to kind of inform themselves. They don't just walk in stupid and totally ignorant. You want to vote. I mean, part of this is, go look what the charter says. It's there. You see what 27 says? This is what we're going to change. But that's all on us. We've got to put it on the website, and we've got to have that. This is a good representation right here. Yeah. Exactly. We can literally, this document can go as well. Then you can say what was stricken and what it became. That's all part of the public education part. And when they walk into the ballot, that way there's one ballot. Because the problem is with some of the changes that came in the last session or session before, a voter channel came in. Step it out. A voter can come in and say – they can ask the Secretary of State to review our charter proposition to determine whether it's too complicated or not. So we try to make things simple and clear, and I think that our two options are we put the whole thing on the ballot with strikethroughs and underlines. And we put in there strike-throughs are deleted, underlines are proposed added, and then help the voter figure it out. Or just say, here's our proposition. We're changing it to read this way. Now, there are certain times if we had just two or three amendments, if we had just a few, maybe we would do strikeouts. And I've done it. I did it one time for a charter election a handful of years ago, and we had like eight or nine propositions, and we did the strike, do, and underline. And the voters seemed to have got it. We know how they got it because they passed six of them and rejected two. They passed six or seven and rejected two. So obviously the voters understood it. They were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, yeah, yeah. And I think one of the propositions tied. So the voters understood it, but I just fear that if we have a whole lot of charter amendments.

I mean, this could be like 60 propositions.

And that's another question is as we go through it, does this council say, you know what, this is not a super important change and we want to limit the number of propositions. The council may say, we don't want a whole, we don't want this many propositions.

I don't know what's happened before. Everybody kicked it down the road all those years between this. And now we have 60 propositions. Now we have 60 propositions. The next council can change whatever they want to change in here because you can change it again. You can change it the next year, the next year, whatever it is.

And you've got every two years. So this could be something if council decided to limit the proposition. Council can decide to limit the proposition on what they wish. And they may decide to say, look, we don't want, we don't want to put the loaders back to no more than 30. Who knows?

So is there a way, there was something I read somewhere that made me believe there was a way to group things together. And, you know, looking through some of this, some of it's like minor corrections, like Eight, we're removing the word et cetera. Real estate, et cetera, over by the city. Is there a way that those either become a group where in sections eight, 13, 17, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, we are making...

non-substantive changes. Okay, we did have one of the provisions that Aaron has proposed to adopt a charter provision that allows the council to make non-substantive changes and if that passed, then council can come back and do that to existing charter to remove et cetera and misspelled words. So we can eliminate those from propositions. We may be able to drop 10 propositions just on word correction.

So like when the city annexed into Midland County, they could have voted at the same time to strike out in Hector County on the 1st?

page and made it yep taking care of that at the time you don't have to worry about it yeah basically the charter will expressly authorize the city council to make those kinds of changes changes as long as that there's no substantive changes to what the charter applied we can make the language so it's just grammatical and scrivener errors and those type or words there's a lot of substantive changes here yeah so but it's just a matter of this is why it's going to be important for council right but are there

Provisions to say that all of the places we are rolling back outdated language and now we're saying we're following state law. Yeah. And we may be able to do that because we've got to also farm... Like in the following 10 articles... We are removing language that is outdated, and we are updating it to say from now on we're following state law.

And that may be a way we can group it. That may be a potential way we can group some of these.

That's more what I mean about, you know, isn't there a way to group some of this to where it's not like, all right, in Section 8 we're removing 10 days and replacing it with following state law.

I've got to consult with Chapter 9 of the local government code because Chapter 9 has a provision there about it. subsume changes being in other words one proposition at a time so we've got a there may be a way to work it that way as long as we don't run afoul of chapter 9 and also as long as we don't run afoul of or create confusion we just have to be really clear like I said the more recent changes to the law allows a voter to go to the Secretary of State and say look at this is this clear if you don't think it's clear send a letter to the city to tell them to fix it there's sort of a provision in there now that gives the Secretary of State the ability to review our propositions and make a call on whether the proposition is vague or confusing. So we try to make it as clear as possible.

I think this makes it clear right here. I know this looks ugly to a lot of people.

I think your idea is putting that on the website.

I agree. It's a PDF document. Print and read it.

Because you couldn't do this on the ballot. Well, you could, but it's not colored.

That will educate them. But even looking through here, you know, black gun 53 mayor pro temp. Well, the word may has been changed to shell. Well, that's a pretty big.

Yeah, that's a substance change.

And but But that, I mean, there's just, there's a ton of this stuff in here. I just keep thinking, oh my God.

And I'm going to have to go through it and kind of make that call and make a certain, it's going to be on me to kind of go through there and clean that up before it gets to council. So I'm not going to, it's not going to be in this form. I've got to start really working on my, because... I don't think anybody in my office downstairs has done a charter election. Nothing close to this. I've done them, so I'm probably going to, this is going to be one where I'll do the ordinance and I'll probably do most of it. And so, because I've done these and this has got a lot of work to clean up to make it clear. But I think, yeah, everything's going to work together. That document. having it color-coded, putting a PDF, and having Monica put that on a website and make it prominent. I mean, make it super prominent on the city's website. A post-charter amendment. And she can send it out in her press release and just get the word out. That's going to be huge. Because it... If someone can click on that and print it out, they can read it themselves. And so it's just going to be one of those things. But it's going to have to be cleaned up. I've got to come up – I've got to put together a draft. I'm back. I'd like to have that – I can. I'd like to have that by-the-work session passed out for counseling so we can sort of see – this is – One more step closer to the final product. This is still a raw product that still needs to be converted into potential. Because what's going to happen is you're going to have an ordinance, and then you're going to have attachments. We don't normally do attachments to our ordinance, but this time we will, where it will be just proposition language. council can see, oh, this Proposition 1 is going to look this. Proposition 2 is going to look like this. It's going to be helpful. It may not be final draft, but it looks to me like it's going to be daunting to people.

It is. It's going to be, but... And that's what I was going to say. Is there a way in that, you know, even back to health, to say... Well...

How we've dumbed down our elections to make it to where if you don't care about getting out of bed and you want to vote, you can mail this in, but you don't have to get it in on time. We've dumbed down our elections so much now. I don't want to dumb it down anymore. That's exactly what I was saying.

Even voters should have to vote. That's fine. That's a balance.

That's fine, and I'm all for it.

But the reality is, back to my ever-present 29% of Exeter County residents agreed out above an eighth grade level.

You put this out there and somebody's like, City Council's getting rid of the health department.

Never mind the fact that we don't have one.

We don't have a health department. We're not even taking that away. That's our job. But that's what I'm trying to say. With some of these things, we're going to need a little thought bubble there or some video. when you click on it and say, hey, the change to this is actually because Hector County provides the health services. We don't need this anymore. The state licenses barbers. We don't need this anymore.

I mean, you almost could delete health from here. Right.

Yeah.

I don't believe in it. Just in case this county drops it, we could pick it back up.

They could one day, one day wake up and decide they don't want to do health.

Although I doubt that. I doubt it.

As an example. Well, my step right now is to take, is the Word version, are you going to have any updates to the Word document you sent Friday?

Yeah, there's a few. So we could resend those out. I'll save it kind of by date so you know which ones.

Yeah, if you could send me that, I'll start working on putting together some draft. Start making it look like, start getting a number. I'm kind of like, okay, how many propositions are we going to end up with?

I'm thinking it's like 60.

But we can then look at this, and what Councilman Stoker said is, I can work on, can we consolidate some of these?

Corrections of spelling on words.

And then council is going to say, do we really want to address this right now?

And to be honest with you, if this provision right here, if this one passes, the council shall have the power by ordinance after two readings, at least 30 days apart, with an affirmative supermajority vote to codify all articles, sections, and paragraphs, that are in conflict with Constitution and general law, then if that passes, then we can actually just go back and delete it.

So then some of those changes become moot if that is also Scribner's. Yeah.

So it's not like if that passed, then you could just go back and take Hector County out on the first.

category of these propositions that we went through that we can just take off because of that one provision. That's what I was mentioning earlier. Some of these may take care of themselves, but we had to go through this whole process to identify those.

This is definitely the first process. Just a straight red line version.

It was still necessary to identify what those are. Now we know that there's a good chunk of charter amendments that are nothing more than deleting old language or language that has no meaning or purpose anymore or like removing etc. Somehow ETC etc. made it into the charter, which to me is just right.

Of all the language, the abbreviation for etc.

You should go to our constitution and see. Rides, freedoms, etc.

The new language we're about to build is we're considering that the ETC on this.

Yes.

We don't have to have a vote on this because it says right here in the charter, it says ETC, et cetera, et cetera. So we're saying that's the et cetera.

You knew we were going to add stuff.

Well, here's one like 24, playgrounds, parks, et cetera.

Yeah, it just drives me crazy. And maybe I need to make it 24.

That actually means whatever they wanted to add to it. Exactly. Well, it says right here we could add to it. Anybody could have used that. Et cetera means whatever I wanted to do.

Yeah, I'm going to have my hands full. My job now is to take what Aaron has been maintaining and start trying to come up and put it. one step towards some kind of graph proposition and getting a number and start working on that way. Because this right here, I mean, it's going to, so for council to see, so they can see, they can just go through and they can just say, no, no, no, let's not do it this way. And we may come up with some different options to try to minimize. The idea would be to try to keep the proposition language as clear as possible at the same time not trying to overwhelm the voters with what we're trying to do otherwise they just won't vote if you don't they'll make you pay for it because they'll either not vote or they'll just say no because they feel no is a safe vote and like i said i mean i had one one city is we try to get rid of the second reading requirement and it it tied so it did not pass but a lot of voters didn't understand what reading meant they go yeah we want our council to read our ordinances before they pass them they didn't understand the second reading they don't nobody because that city i told them put it on your website explain it let's have a town hall and they wouldn't do any of those things and we only had like eight or nine propositions and Two got voted down. Two that they really wanted got totally shut down. And the one that probably the most important that everyone wanted to get rid of the second reading, it tied so it didn't pass at all. We still have second reading in this one, right? Or did we take it out? I thought we took second reading out. We did. We had the conversation about if you read it twice, that would have been... And our explanation to the people is just like, it just wastes time to bring it back a second time. You elect council members to take action on ordinances.

Well, this is really, I really appreciate the effort, because this is really, this document is very helpful to me.

That document's worth its weight in gold, in a sense, in this process, because we actually, that is going to save, because I was already telling my office, I said, that document will literally, that's the big sticking point. That's what makes us so we can go to that stage. If you don't have that, because I can use that as the basis for proposition language. And that's huge, because that gives me something to work with. And so that's going to be a, now it's just we've just got to put in a little bit better formatting. And it'll be a lot of propositions, but at that point, it's not my call to determine how to be, you know, what ultimately will go down. I don't know if we're going to have another meeting to go over anything, but the alternative, it'll be up to council to sit down and work through it in work session to say, 70 propositions? Are y'all crazy? And then they can just decide what they want to do.

This may be the only thing on our work session. Or you could... For two sessions, so this may be the only thing that's on the work session.

And then, you know, at the end of the day, they could decide to... Look how long it took us to go through it.

Right.

What are the most important things? What are the things you just can't live without? If you were to look at that as a council member, what would you say? What are the top five things you say you cannot live without? Yeah, the second reason is one.

I think that's one. And I think this goes to the council just the way it was so that they can see the actual what got cut out of it.

I can go ahead and share this with the council. I can BCC the rest of the council on this and just say, hey.

Yeah, don't CC that. I got my copy.

Just say, hey, by the way, this is kind of where we're at right now.

This is where we are, yeah.

That's kind of an update. We did one thing I don't think I saw. We added a conviction of a felony or a crime involving moral turpitude. 46G.

I saw that. Disqualification of city members.

because you can't run for office if you've been convicted of that but if you're in office it doesn't automatically take you out I don't believe it does because in Texas you can't run for office if you're a felon or been convicted of a crime of moral turpitude which gambling is not a crime of moral turpitude I've looked at it

Yeah, but you're right.

In terms of whether you'd be a qualified candidate, we're talking about what will act as an automatic renewal. A lot of charges have a big gap. It's like a gap. The worst part is when something happens to a city council member, we look at the charter and we're like, we're not certain. So we're trying to be real clear. So if you do have it happen, that way it takes it out of our hands to try to figure out if someone is indicted All right. So if they go to trial and they're convicted, we've got a judgment, and then we can say, you've been convicted. Our charter says you can no longer serve. And then we have that dated conviction as the effectiveness of basically no longer being a member of counsel and the vacancy created at that point.

So, guys, here's the leak. The term is notoriously subjective and doesn't have a single universal statutory definition. It doesn't text criminal. However, it generally encompass two main categories, dishonesty and fraud, recklessness, malice, or great harm.

Actually, in Texas, it is defined as murder, kidnapping, robbery. State bar actually can, for attorneys, we get disbarred if we're convicted of a crime of moral turpitude. And there's case law where they're fighting over what that means. I mean, years ago, attorneys had been brought up on disbarment for income tax evasion. They didn't pay taxes. Well, they say, well, if you just didn't pay taxes or you have a disrewarded IRS, that's not a crime of moral turpitude. But if you purposely lied on your income tax returns to try to hire money, that is a – because it's a fraud and dishonesty. We could just say no crime – I mean the crime of moral turpitude is used – it's used in the feds too because they use it on the basis to deport. Crime of moral turpitude. Or we can just say counsel wishes, or if we wish, we can just say fraud or dishonesty. If it involves fraud or dishonesty, then that's it. But ultimately, it's just whatever.

Well, does the word conviction, Anji, does that go with the felony and the crime? Or is the conviction of the felony or conviction? A crime involving moral turpitude.

I think the conviction would be to go with, in other words, not enough to be charged.

You see what my question is?

Not enough to be charged with a crime. You need to be convicted. Now, this brings up another issue. What if they get a deferral? I got one. For an adjudication, they're not convicted.

DUI says... DUIs are not considered to involve moral turpitude. So what happens if you have a DUI and you kill somebody?

That would be a felony.

It's still a DUI.

You don't have to be convicted of manslaughter.

Yeah, you'd get something worse than a DUI. But you know on a deferred adjudication, on a felony deferred adjudication, they're either pleading no contest or guilty to the offense. They're just conviction is deferred. So that conviction would not, the word conviction would not cover someone got brought up on fraud charges, something at the DA's office, and they worked out a deferred first offense, and they avoided a conviction, but they got a really good lawyer that worked out a deal at the DA's office. That would not... They wouldn't lose their seat because a deferred adjudication, by definition, is not a conviction.

Well, I mean, it's not a conviction according to our charter in that particular case. They get to keep rolling.

I guess I would think that for that to be clear, it would be upon conviction of a member of the city council of one, a felony, or two, a crime involving moral crime.

You can have a misdemeanor that involves moral turpitude. So if it got reduced to a misdemeanor, you can have misdemeanors that are moral turpitude. Yeah.

So a misdemeanor theft could kick you out.

But I'm saying a felony is one, and two is a crime involving moral turpitude.

When it shows on here, you look at it more and more, the three definitions are property, persons, and authority or society. That's the three. It breaks it down into three things. The property is fraud, theft, embezzlement, arson, persons as murder, rape and aggravated assault, authority and societies, perjury, tax evasion and bribery. That's federal. That's federal law.

They look at phrases used repeatedly throughout the codes, state and federal. Moral turpitude, it drives people crazy. I mean, at some point, everybody's trying to figure out what that is.

I'm still just trying to figure out if you have to be convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude. Yeah, so I'm thinking it's a felony, number one, or a crime of moral turpitude.

to show that you're convicted. Another way of looking at it is if you get convicted of a felony is bad enough, but if you get convicted of a misdemeanor, you don't lose your seat unless that misdemeanor is a crime of moral turpitude, which is a worse misdemeanor. So that way, felony gets you.

But if it doesn't, convicted...

But if it's a misdemeanor that involves moral turpitude, we don't care if it's a felony. We don't care the fact that it's only a misdemeanor. Like you said, misdemeanor theft is the best thing. You get convicted for misdemeanor theft, Class A theft, Class B theft. then that would be like, we don't want someone to say, you can't kick us out because it's not a felony, but we don't want a thief on council. That's just going to, I mean, you could always, you know, you could always adopt an approach of, you know what, let the voters sort it out and have nothing. The voters, you know, it encourages someone to run against them and they'll get, the voters will take care of it. Maybe. But it allows council, really ultimately what this does, it allows council to have some, it gives council some, control in a sense of the integrity of its own body. That way no counsel has to tolerate someone who's been convicted of a felony. Maybe the rest of the counsel doesn't want to wonder, but that's what it does. It really kind of helps counsel sort of regulate itself in a sense through the charter.

So I'm thinking if we number those one and two, it becomes clear that you have to be convicted.

Either one Either one or the other. Right. But yeah, conviction would modify both of those.

But you just put conviction, but you didn't. Never mind. I'm sorry. Never mind. I read too many things at once. That's me. That was me.

I've got these two little rabbits and two grackles that play on my front porch. And they set off my ring.

I made a change.

Well, I'm trying to figure out if it's a crime of moral turpitude if you shoot grackles or boys. No, it's not.

It's perfectly legal. Grackles, yes. Those are felonies. That's a felony. A grackle. Most of these are no rabbits either.

Yeah, you can get starlings, grackles, and what's the other one? Sparrows. Those are the only three birds you can shoot in Texas. Oh, that's right. Yeah, that's it. That's it. You can't shoot any other. Those European starlings, you can get rid of those all you want. Sparrows. And they hate grackles. Mother Nature hates grackles. But you can't touch robins. Well, robins are migratory, where you can't touch them. But blue jays, mockingbirds, you can't touch them.

Someone told me that if you shot or poisoned grackles, if you put a couple of them up on your roof towards the back where people in front don't see, that it keeps all the other grackles away.

I don't know about that.

Are grackles and desert ravens the same thing? A raven is like a crow. There's a lot of desert ravens that roll through here.

Yeah, but they don't destroy your car. The grackles destroy your car. What's that? I don't know the difference, I guess. Well, the grackles are the ones that... It's still a bad idea to shoot inside the city limits, too. The grackles are the ones that... There are thousands of them on your house, and they poop on everything, and destroy the paint on your car.

And if you go to the mall at night, the noise of them is crazy. It's like a movie, The Birds. If you go to the mall at night, it's like The Birds, because the noise from those grackles...

I watched a hawk the other day. A hawk, he came down and just, while the grackle was on the ground, he just came out and just pinned the grackle down with one, like, leg. And he took, he just de-feathered the whole thing. It was just a pile of feathers right next to it. He just reached down and took a whole mouthful of feathers. They stripped. I watched him kill this bird. He stripped. all the feathers off the grackle first, and then he starts eating the grackle, then he tears in the grackle alive, and then he flies off with it. Probably had a net if he was doing that. Yeah. And this. Took the whole, I mean, he def, I mean, it was a pile, people were walking by warfighting, it was a pile of feathers this big, and he was just ripping up beetfuls of feathers and tossing them off to the side. I had to look that up once because somebody wanted me to my wife wanted me to they brought off the barn swallows and I'm like those are migratory too you can't touch those they're annoying and they'll attack you they'll zoom you and hit you they're aggressive and mean little birds those mud daubers are awful too those ones that have that build those mud nests I don't know what they're

That was called Dirt Dobbers. Dirt Dobbers. Wasp.

Okay, so. What's our next step charge? We're going to get to at least see the propositions, right, after you work on those?

The question is, do we want to have another meeting here and start trying to get together a raw set of propositions? Or do we want to, it don't have to be Monday, but it could be before we go to work session. Because I need a little time to get propositions together. In other words, I guess the question is, do we want to bring a set in proposition form so we can kind of get an idea of proposition one, proposition two, proposition three?

That's fine. I would like to see them, but I think you've got to prepare them.

I think it would be futile for us to... Then I think the group can vote. We can have a formal vote at that point to say, hey, we'll take a vote to submit this proposal. These propositions to the council, basically, I think at that point, I think the purpose of the committee at that point has concluded. Yeah, yeah.

If you put something together like you were talking about, we can put all that lumped together. Are we trying to get it on this next week or no?

No. For Monday, it would be kind of tough, but it's not impossible. But I do need to start working on it. I mean, if y'all want to try to see if we can, it's a week. If y'all want to try.

Well, is it that critical for you to work through the holiday for a Monday? I mean.

It just depends on, just look at a calendar. I mean, because we're looking at trying to. Can we go pull the calendar? Yeah.

We have to have this on the calendar so that. that we have to vote on this and have it posted like on the 11th of August so that by the 18th we can get it on the ballot.

Norma has on here that she wants it on the work sessions for July 14th and 28th.

Yeah, so our next meeting would be the 6th. next week, right after the July 12th. Yes, you don't need to do that. The 14th is fine. July 13th would be the Monday before work session. Oh, I thought you were saying meet again. So that would be kind of pushing it to, we would want to get something, because if we get it on the work session for the 14th, we want to get it to council well before then so they have time to look at it. I'll start working on it. We can just go ahead and I'll start working on it and see if we can have something ready.

We don't have to do this at the council. We can do this like they do in the big old bills in Washington, D.C., We got a vote for it so you can see what's in it. Whatever you think.

Whatever you think. We're going to try to get it on a work session. We need to get something to council. The city council said we just got a call on this so you can see what's in it. Assuming, because when I talked to Norma Friday, she was wanting to get on the 14th. I sent her caption language for the agenda on Friday. I don't know if she put it in that new system or not. I gave her captain language so she could have it on the 14th work session. Today's the 29th. Yeah, I gave it to her. She didn't respond, so I don't know if she... She's on vacation. She's on vacation. As soon as we met Friday, I sent her a caption language Friday. It says, hey, this is the caption language for if you want this on the work session. Yeah, but her vacation started Monday.

She was already on vacation Friday.

So do we want to meet, I mean, can we meet seven days from now and then have the group at that point?

On the 6th? That's the sixth. To be honest, that's the best time to do it. I mean, it makes me have to do it, but it actually works out best. I mean, it would be best if we can have it.

Where do we need to do the seventh?

We can do the seventh if everybody can do Tuesday.

Does the seventh work for everyone here?

Tuesday before the city council meeting. Yeah, that way we can, if we vote and do something on the 7th, we have time to send it to council so council members have it by work session on the 14th.

Is there a meeting on the 7th? There's not a meeting on the 7th.

I thought you were saying there was. I just want council to have a set of propositions to take a look at before... the work session. I don't want that first time they see it in the work session.

Are we the first time we're going to see them? Is that going to be on the 7th?

Yeah, I'll get it done before the 7th.

The only thing I didn't see was that language I'd proposed. Oh, sorry.

Yes. Look at 21. Section 21. I meant to ask.

It just popped in my head.

That was... We thought about how we do that.

Power to buy and sell gas? Uh-uh. You're talking about the one that says we can't get it. How did I say 21?

21 is the power to buy and sell gas.

There you go.

No, it's in there. Basically, we call it sovereign immunity. Okay.

So there's something in there about sovereign immunity.

Okay, good. Well, I want to find it for you, though, because it's... We want to purchase the secret.

What you're talking about is sovereign immunity. Right. We stiffened up some of the language about sovereign immunity. Well, see... The city does not...

The city reserves all its... And the reason I started saying autonomy was because somebody told me we're not sovereign because states are sovereign, but cities aren't. So I stopped using that word.

I thought...

Yeah, yeah. I started saying autonomy.

You're right on point with it. You had to think about it. That's what Dallas is about, my sovereign immunity. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because at the end of the day, what we also didn't want to do was prohibit ourselves from entering into interlocal.

Exactly, and that's why I wasn't sure you could even really do it. No, I think you're right on point.

It's in there because I read it.

I just printed this out today. Oh, General Powers.

Five. How about five?

Not 21. Five.

Five and then the new D. Yeah. I mean that's that's how we think of this stuff and some of those problems we put in the mayor powers obviously yes as you know you know to expressly say that the mayor has no administrative powers right yeah you need to make it very consistent because it's a city mayor to form a government we're just trying to avoid

Look, I try to bring stuff that I've thought and things that I've encountered. In some of this language, you start seeing the same things, and I've seen the arguments and the fights. I don't know how many council meetings that I had in one city where I had to go into executive session and talk about what the ceremonial head of government meant for the mayor because I had one city where really what happened is the mayor – and the city manager were fighting over control. The city manager wasn't. The mayor was trying to be a city manager. And that, we don't have that now.

We don't need it.

Yeah, no, but the problem is when you have a mayor. We have had that. We have had that. I've had that. I've had to sit there. I've had language where the mayor is a ceremonial head of government and I've had the mayor... and that city come in and try to argue that that gives that mayor certain authorities to do this, certain authorities to do that, and I would have to explain no, because that same charter also created the office of city manager, and there's a chief administrative official of the city, so that would render that whole language.

Ceremonial leader gives you the right to declare this is Bob Will's day. Proclamations and stuff like that.

Right, yeah. Yes, exactly. What's wrong with Bob Will? I want Bob Wills there. That's why I said Bob Wills. I'd love to have Bob Wills there.

Is he still the king?

Well, and our mayor is not just ceremonial, but he's also not the city manager.

Right, right. different on this is different points and different different folds there so that's just a matter of just sort of clarifying it what we're doing just making certain what what you're really thinking of doing is in the future when issues come up it gives our council and city manager and even our mayor the ability to look at a charter and say oh see that's what the charter says it's very clean and concise we don't argue

It's really nice when you have something really clear in the charter that answers the question.

Sometimes I don't even care what the answer is. As long as the charter answers it, that's what it is. I don't even care. It's just when you get in the gray, you're like, well, I don't know. What do they mean by this? What do they mean by that? That's the whole idea. In my position, I get to not really... have a dog in that fight it's not my it's policy issue right it's good to say this is what you can or can't do i get i like clear and clarity you know and that's good for the council members as well our city secretary that was one of the things that we wanted on the uh reference initiative so she can point hey whether there's a time so she goes so she's not under the gun and blowing deadlines and having people can you imagine sifting through a document of 15 000

Crazy. You know, signatures in three days?

I mean, that's not... Half the signatures are in, or you can't read them? Can't read them, yeah. I've seen that before. And it took our city secretary for a lot more than 10 days. And she blew the deadlines on the charter, and her position was, there's just no way. And she goes, so sue me. That was her... I mean, I can't. I can't get through this because they can't write. It's just scribble. I don't know what that says.

And boy, you know, cursive has really become something that, I mean, it's hard to read anymore because so many people, their signature is,

What I had her do, in my opinion, in that circumstance, as I said, reject the signature. You can't tell what it is. It's not a signature. It could be scribble. And so what she did, and they actually didn't make their percentages. They didn't make their percentages. And that was after a charter amendment that reduced it down to 10%. Wow. It reduced it to 10%, the charter in that position. One of the charter amendments that had passed was reducing on the initiative referendum and a recall to 10%. And even with 10%, she rejected a recall petition because I said at the end of the day, can you determine whether you have 1045 signatures? She goes, I can't. And she didn't. And it was impossible. And it was rejected. You didn't make the 10%. They had a chance to fix it, just like our language had, and resubmit and amend. They submitted the same junk.

And again, that's why if you have that poor voter ID number, those people who do that petition can look up the voter ID number themselves. And you write all those voter ID numbers down there for her. It makes it easier for her and a better chance for you to get it passed.

It came out of here. Look at it. Look at the... Right, but they still must comply with all local regs, but...

His land draft, they even used in the bill analysis, middle of Odessa, back there in the highlighted portion. Right. But there is a section that I referenced in there. They still must comply.

Right, but the question is, if they've got their state license, do they have to get a fire inspection?

They have to comply with the fire code, and so they may not, if that's part of the fire code compliance. I don't think they can get a permit. I don't think we can charge them for a permit or anything like that.

I think we're good to adjourn and then meet up on the 7th at 3 p.m.? Yes. Okay. And I'll see you tomorrow.

Thank you.