Charter commissioners agree to clarify reapportionment timing, set 30‑day fallback to mayor appointment

The Charter Revision Commission moved on May 20 to remove ambiguous language about "timely" designation in reapportionment procedures and replace it with a specific 30‑day deadline and an appointment fallback.

Commissioner Sopranick raised a textual concern about a sentence that said three of four members "failed to kindly designate a 5th member," calling the adverb "kindly" "not a legal term" and noting the contradiction between a fixed 30‑day window and the adjective "timely." Commissioners agreed to change the language to require designation within 30 days, and to specify that if the panel fails to designate the fifth member in that period "the 5th member shall be appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the city council at the next regular meeting."

Legal and staff counsel confirmed their reading of the reapportionment paragraph and acknowledged the text could be cleaned up to avoid confusion about how minority leadership is selected if more than two political parties are present on the council. Commissioners asked counsel to return with alternate phrasings that resolve corner cases, including how a minority caucus would select a leader to make appointments under the provision.

The commission also identified a typographic date error in Section 2‑4 where a date should read '2031' instead of '2021' and asked staff to correct it in the next redline.

Next steps: counsel will prepare drafting options that replace the ambiguous term with a 30‑day requirement and language spelling out the mayoral fallback and confirmation process for the next meeting.