{"id":146575,"date":"2021-09-30T00:27:01","date_gmt":"2021-09-30T05:27:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/?p=146575"},"modified":"2021-10-01T03:54:47","modified_gmt":"2021-10-01T08:54:47","slug":"few-people-attend-charter-issue-informational-meeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/2021\/09\/30\/few-people-attend-charter-issue-informational-meeting\/","title":{"rendered":"Few people attend charter issue meeting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

DAVE MOSIER\/<\/strong>independent editor<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While not many city residents attended a charter government informational meeting on Wednesday, those that did had plenty of questions about the process and its potential benefits and drawbacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Presenters for the meeting were Jerry Strozdas, a former law director for the cities of Springfield and New Carlisle and past president of the Ohio Municipal Attorneys Association, and Rod Davisson, a three-term mayor of the Ohio city of Obetz and currently its city manager, as well as an experienced trial attorney who has litigated cases in both Ohio and federal courts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Davisson began by exploring some of the reasons a community would be interested in having a charter form of government, while noting that it mostly comes down to who makes the decisions for a community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really about how do you want your town to run\u2026,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can either say \u2018we\u2019ll let the guys in Columbus with their grand wisdom tell us how they think it should run or we can decide ourselves\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Strozdas followed by talking about the uniqueness of Ohio\u2019s constitution, which, unlike most states where governing power is placed entirely in the hands of state legislatures, provides for \u201chome rule.” And the way for communities to fully implement self-rule governance, he said, is to create a municipal charter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Strozdas also explained the process municipalities must go through to develop a charter form of government, noting that the charter issue on the November 2 ballot in Van Wert is in two parts: 1. Shall a commission be chosen to frame a charter? 2. Select the 15 people you want to be on the charter commission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If both of those questions are \u201cyes\u201d, then those chosen to serve on the commission have, essentially, less than a year to develop a charter that will then come before the voters for their approval or rejection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Strozdas said the job is not an easy one and typically involves many hours of discussion and research by the unpaid commission members before a charter is completed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is a very, very difficult job,\u201d he noted \u201cIt is a lot of work; there are a lot of questions to answer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Davisson noted that a charter is like a \u201cmini constitution\u201d for a municipality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is a very broad framework for how you want to operate,\u201d he noted, adding that being too specific in how the charter is worded can be problematic for a community if conditions change and the charter is not flexible enough to deal with those changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Davisson said there are a number of governmental procedures that can be dealt with by means of a charter, including how many and what officeholders a community has, whether they are elected or appointed, whether municipal elections are partisan or non-partisan, whether a city follows the state’s complex bidding rules or makes its own, and what duties city employees must perform and what qualifications they must have to fill a position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A charter could also make changes to state civil service regulations, which are often onerous and involved, to give police and fire departments more flexibility in the way they operate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Strozdas said that, through a charter, municipalities can opt to do things differently than they do currently under state statutory law. Or not. It’s up to the voters to decide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s your choice; you determine whether (something) is broke, and you determine how you\u2019re going to fix it if you think it is broke,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both men stressed that communities can make as many, or as few, changes to the current statutory system as they feel are needed to improve city government. Often, charter changes are made to have more control over what are now elected positions, such as auditor and law director. Currently, there are no professional qualifications to be a city auditor in Ohio, while law directors, other than being admitted to the state bar, don\u2019t have to have any experience in city legal issues. That could be changed with a charter government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Davisson used as an example a young clerk-treasurer who was elected in his community, which was then a village, and, because of her inexperience, \u201cwrecked our finances.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both presenters also noted, though, that there were some areas of governance that are off-limits to charters, including the state legal system, which is under the sole control of the General Assembly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Strozdas also said that, if an issue is omitted from the charter, a municipality would simply follow state regulations dealing with that particular issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, no matter what happens in the long run, Davisson said the ballot question of whether to have a charter committee and should a charter be drafted should an easy \u201cyes\u201d for a community’s voters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhether you get that right for your town later and whether it is passed, that is fair game, that could be an easy yes, it could be an easy no . . . but to say ‘we don\u2019t want to try it,’ to me, is ridiculous,\u201d he added.  \u201cIt\u2019s in your interest to try to get yourselves a way to get some self-determination related to the things you can do.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DAVE MOSIER\/independent editor While not many city residents attended a charter government informational meeting on Wednesday, those that did had plenty of questions about the process and its potential benefits and drawbacks. Presenters for the meeting were Jerry Strozdas, a former law director for the cities of Springfield and New Carlisle and past president of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-10 10:36:01","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146575\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}