Minutes - Charter Commission - 04/19/2012

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Commissioner Niederhaus stated that Mr. Surma seems very serious about his suggestions and he felt he deserved the courtesy of knowing what the Charter is doing. Let him know we seriously considered his matter. We are sensitive to it but we would like to see more specific sections that he would like to see fall under this process. We are concerned at this point about jeopardizing legal protection. Commissioner Bendtsen stated assuming you would find something worth changing, what do you have to do and how much time would it take. Chairperson Field stated that maybe staff should check to see if any other city has ever undertaken such a project. Commissioner Sherman asked if there was any limit of what we can do by ordinance. City Attorney Goodrich replied that we probably could not change the whole Charter but we can definitely make amendments. Chairperson Field stated that if we had statutory support for that it could be put in the letter as well. If we are precluded from doing that. Motion by Commissioner Niska, seconded by Commissioner Deemer to direct the City Attorney to draft a letter to Mr. Surma explaining what the Charter is doing. Motion carried. All present voted in favor. Another topic of discussion had been reviewing the City's newsletter options. Commissioner Anderson reported she has seen ads about being able to mail articles that you can have sent to every door. City Administrator Ulrich stated that we currently utilize bulk mailings for the Ramsey Resident. We have looked into some other mailing options. We are about as good as we can get with the US Postal service delivery. We are also tied to six issues per year. At the last meeting, the consensus was to stick with the number of issues listed in the Charter. That was something we wanted to consider for budget reasons. We can look at other ways of delivery. He suggested an option of full issues four times a year and a one page newsletter twice a year. We do have some administrative ways to try to interpret that so it does not cost as much. Commissioner Bendtsen inquired how often it is mailed and what does it cost. Discussion ensued relating to the cost but that advertising helped to offset that. Commissioner Niska expressed his feeling is that he would be fine with giving more flexibility with the number of issues. He feels it serves an important function and complete saturation is Charter Commission/ April 19, 2012 Page 8 of 10