Minutes - Charter Commission - 04/18/1996

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To bring out points I would like to make, I have about 10 mins of video. Let me start out this sermonete by offering an analogy to you, as a way of trying to shed light on the subject at hand. First, the state is organized with a Constitution and the Statutes. The Constitution should supercede or govern over conflict between the it and the statutes. And by design it is very difficult to modify or amend. The Minnesota State Constitution requires a vote of the people of the state to be modified, and the Legislature will not allow the people to propose the changes. That would be called Initiative, which is a right the legislature has not given the people. To modify the statutes the legislature of the state passes "Bills" which are referred to as a Senate file or a House file and once passed and signed by the governor they are bound together, in a book called Laws Minnesota, and filed by year, and organized by chapters. They are never modified as they are the history file of the action taken. The state statutes are modified to reflect the action taken by the "BILLS" as recorded in that book. In Ramsey the comparable documents are the Charter and the City Codes. The charter is a Home Rule Charter cities Constitution, And it was thought to be very hard to amend or modify. In Ramsey the City Codes are comparable to State Statutes. This terminology is set out in chapter 1 of the City Codes, which specifically states, this code of ordinances shall be know as the "City Code", and this recodification took place on October 23, 1990, by the passage of "Ordinance 90-22". By the way, this recodification took place to try to put the laws back in plain English form, which had vanished because of the many modifications since Ramsey had become a city. I was there and took part in that. Prior to this time the same rules were known as Ordinances and this is the common way to refer to a city laws in this state. Now in Chapter 2 of city codes it sets out the procedure by which to modify the city codes. The city decided that the "ordinance" was the vehicle and procedure to modify the city code. In Ramsey, the council passes Ordinances, which are numbered sequentially by year, and put in a binder. Once signed by the Mayor and notarized, they are never amended, but the City Codes are changed to reflect the action taken. It is possible to reconstruct the City Charter and that original copy of the City Codes from these "ordinances", by reverse reconstruction. When the Charter was drafted in 1984, that charter commission decided to allow a method to modify the Home Rule Charter, it used the word "ordinance" in chapter 5, so it seems that the references to ordinance in the charter are referring to the process, not the common usage of the word as the law, as is the interpretation of the outside attorneys offering opinions. This may be born out by the fact that the Mayor of Ramsey was on that charter commission, and he knew the difference. And also by the History file of Chapter 2, city codes, which shows that Ordinance 85-09 amended the city charter - which by the way, was the requirement to read all resolutions and ordinances in full in the charter. In all of the opinions that are being offered about the Ramsey Charter are the reliance on a presumed definition of "ordinance". If you look up ordinance in a dictionary, and a thesaurus you will find all of these uses listed. We are being told that modifying the charter is not included in chapter 5 because it refers to the city ordinances. The use of the term "ordinance" in terminology of the Charter, and the standard definition of the word "Ordinance" are part of the problem. You now have the situation of "all the opinions given from outside of the city do not have all of these facts in there possession, therefore they assume that the word "Ordinance" in the city charter refers to the "Law" that governs the city, not the process.to change the city charter and city code. Remember now that we don't amend the ordinances in this city, we amend the codes and charter. The ordinances must remain untouched to be a standard and to check against typographical errors and such.