Lifetime Citizen Portal Access — AI Briefings, Alerts & Unlimited Follows
Ithaca steering committee compiles housekeeping charter amendments for March 19 meeting
Loading...
Summary
The Ithaca City Charter Commission steering committee agreed to bundle several technical and administrative changes into Resolution No. 3—to be considered at the March 19 general meeting—including simplifying department-head searches, merging city attorney/prosecutor provisions, updating Article 4 borrowing rules to match state law, moving sick-leave rules out of the charter, and adding a supremacy clause. The city attorney will draft amendment language.
The Ithaca City Charter Commission steering committee on Thursday voted to compile a set of administrative and cleanup amendments into a single measure, Resolution No. 3, to be considered by the full commission at its March 19 meeting.
Chair (speaker 2) said the steering committee will "compile these amendments into a single resolution" and proceed at the commission meeting "by voting by paragraph," so each proposed change can be discussed and decided individually before the resolution is approved as a whole.
Clyde Letterman, who summarized the working-group work, said the groups have prepared material for a resolution that the city attorney's office will draft into formal amendment language and report back. "These amendments will ask the city attorney to draft proposed amendments or report back," Letterman said, noting the edits will be considered one by one at the next meeting.
The package the steering committee discussed includes a mix of largely technical items and a few substantive administrative changes: simplifying the prescriptive department-head search process (Section C26) to align with HR best practices while retaining council approval; collapsing separate charter provisions for the city attorney and city prosecutor into a single consolidated section; revising several Article 4 provisions on taxation and borrowing (including dates for borrowing in anticipation of tax revenue) to align with New York Local Finance Law, Chapter 33-a; relocating granular sick-leave provisions from the charter into the municipal code or collective bargaining framework; and adding a charter "supremacy" or construal clause to clarify that where local code conflicts with the charter the charter controls to the maximum extent permitted by state law.
Victor Kessler, who advised on legal and operational implications, urged that the merger of city-attorney and city-prosecutor language be handled as a consolidation rather than a removal of prosecutorial duties. "Those offices are functionally a single office," Kessler said, recommending the provisions be combined into one charter section while keeping paragraph B that describes prosecutorial functions.
On department-head searches, commissioners described the current nine-member, highly prescriptive search-committee requirement as unwieldy. One member summarized the proposed direction: give the city manager authority to form a smaller search committee guided by the HR director and best practices while preserving the common council's final approval of appointments.
Several members stressed that the steering committee would forward items that are ready, and that the city attorney's office will research and report on any proposals that may exceed legal authority before final drafting. Kessler said he would provide background information but would likely recuse from deliberations and voting on changes that directly implicate his own appointment lines.
The steering committee also agreed to correct several antiquated or ambiguous charter provisions—such as a clause that could be read to create special classes of voters in certain historic provisions—by clarifying voter eligibility language and removing inherited nineteenth-century phrasing.
Next steps: Clyde Letterman and others will provide drafter instructions and the city attorney’s office will prepare formal amendment language for the commission’s review ahead of the March 19 meeting, where the resolution will be considered paragraph-by-paragraph.
