Agenda - Council - 02/27/2001 - Laserfiche WebLink

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I '1 I I I i I I I I I I I I I I Ramsey City Council Page 4 referendum to ordinances, without granting the sweeping authority which 23(b) purports to confer. Accordingly, we affirm the trial court's holding that 23(b) is invalid. Housing & Redevelopment Auth. ofMpls, v. City of Mpl~., 198 N.W.2d 531,527 (1972), Hanson v. City of Granite .Falls, 529 N.W.2d 485 (Minn. App. 1995). Mi~m. Stat. 410.20 cited by the HRA court above, expressly provides that only ordinances are subject to referendum as opposed to "any action" as stated in the Proposed Amendment. It could be argued that perhaps only the offending sentence in Section 5.1 .should be deleted and the balance of the Proposed Amendment be submitted to the voters. However, in a'similar proposal this severability argument was presented and rejected. It was rejected by the court even though there was a provision in the proposed charter amendment which provided that its sections are severable and the invalidity of any one provision should not affect the validity of the remainder. In HRA, the court held on this subject: We cannot search the minds of those who signed the petition to ascertain their intent. In the absence of such prescience, we feel compelled to hold that the proposal which would be submitted to the voters is not the one which the petitioners sought to have adopted. * * * Nevertheless, as a matter of judicial policy, we think the better rule is to prevent an election directed only at a proposal which has been substantially emasculated. 198 N.W.2d 538. While this opinion speaks more specifically to the "any action" clause, the Proposed Amendment appears, to also be in conflict with the directive of Minn. Stat. {}410.12 which provides in part as follows: All petitions circulated with respect to a charter amendment shall be uniform in character and shall have attached thereto the text of the proposed amendment in full; except that in the case of a proposed amendment containing more than 1,000 words, a true and correct copy of the same may be filed with the citY clerk, and the petition shall then contain a summary of not less than 50 nor more than 300 words setting forth in substance the nature of the proposed amendment (emphasis added). The Proposed Amendment purports to replace existing city charter Section 5 with the "...state law for amending the charter." However, the petition circulated did not have affixed to it a copy of the referenced "state law" nor was a summary circulated with the petition. Therefore, the obvious conclusion is that signers of the petition did not have before them the text or summary of the provisions they petitioned for and presumably may not have been aware of said provisions, and more importantly, the voters at an election would have no opportunity to know what they are -191-