Agenda - Charter Commission - 07/10/1997

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William K. Goodrich April 15, 1996 Page 3 "delivery of the draft" for purposes of establishing the time frame for an election. After tl{e petition papers have the necessary signatures, they "shall be assembled and filed with the charter commission as one instrument." See Section 410.12, Subd. 3. The petition, together with the proposed amendment, is then transmitted to the city council. Within ten days thereafter the city clerk determines "whether each paper of the petition is properly attested and whether the petition is signed by a sufficient number of voters." Id. If it is in compliance with the requiremen'~s of Chapter 410 t-~e clerk "shall certify the resu'lt of the examination to the council" (see Section 410.12, Subd. 3) and the council then fixes the form of the ballot (see Section 410.12, Subd. 4) and establishes the date of the election and orders the publication of the notice with the charter amendment "once a week for two successive weeks in the official newspaper of the city .... "(See Section 410.10, Subd. 2). If the petition is deemed not sufficient by the clerk, the clerk notifies the committee of petitioners who then have ten days to file a supplementary petition. The amended petition is reviewed by the city clerk within five days and if it is still insufficient no further action is required. Within this process you have asked when the 90 days begin to run for the special election. The question is answered simply when dealing with the original charter since "the date of delivery" in such instance probably occurs when delivery of the proposed charter is made to the city clerk as contemplated by Section 410.07. With an amendment, however," the petition papers may be transmitted from the charter commission directly to the city council (see Section 410.12, Subd. 3). The ten day time period within which the city clerk is to determine the sufficiency of the petition runs from that transmission. It is my opirdon that the "date of delivery" occurs when the city council receives the amendment. Presumably, the city clerk would receive the draft at the same time. The "delivery date" should be considered to have occurred at this time. However, there is no clear directive to deliver the petition to the city clerk from the charter commission. In cases where the clerk has not received the petition, and in order to advance the purpose of the procedural provisions and to establish an unambiguous date from which the' time frame begins, it would not be unreasonable in such case to begin counting the 90-day period from the council meeting at which the council acknowledges delivery of the petition. Thus, if a council only meets monthly or bi-monthly the time would run from the first date the council was convened to acknowledge delivery. This interpretation maintains the purpose of the statute in requiring dispatch in submission of the proposed