Editorial | Charter review gets under way
Cape Coral City Council provided some parameters for the scope of work its appointed Charter Review Commission will perform through the rest of the year.
The seven-member panel plus its two alternates will begin meeting next Tuesday and will meet at least monthly until Dec. 10 at which time their recommendations for possible amendments to the city’s charter will be due to Council.
Their task is a serious one, mandated by the very document they will review article by article to see if updates or modifications may be warranted.
The city’s charter is its bedrock governing document, similar in some respects to the federal or state constitution.
A charter essentially establishes the rules for local governance. Articles include the entity’s “corporate name,” its boundaries and its powers and authority along with how the city is to be governed, everything from its form of government, financial procedures and how and when it will hold elections to how it must handle citizen initiatives and referendums and more, including how the charter itself may be amended or changed.
In Cape Coral, the charter established that ours is a Council-manager form of government with an eight-member elected board comprised of seven Council members and a mayor, who collectively set policy and a Council-appointed manager, who runs the city’s day-to-day operations.
The charter dictates that members of council must be continuous full-time residents of the city for the entire calendar year before they qualify for office and also dictates that they must reside in the geographic district they seek to represent.
The charter outlines election parameters, how vacancies shall be handled, Council member compensation and allowable expenses and forfeiture of office.
There are provisions for how a city manager is appointed, outlines the position’s powers and duties and establishes other administrative positions including legal office and auditor, and provides the rules that must be followed in the course of conducting city business.
The charter itself calls for the appointment of a review commission at least every six years and so here we are with a citizen board of volunteers ready to get to work with the task at hand: To examine the document and possibly propose changes to be considered by Council.
Council then will decide whether to bring those changes — or any of Council’s own — to the voters, the only body that has the authority to actually amend the document.
We wish the Charter Review Commission well as it undertakes this duty, and we thank them in advance for their service.
Council put some of its goals on the table Wednesday night, targeting “inconsistencies,” Council compensation, qualifications for office and whether the city might want to change to a “strong mayor” form of government where an elected mayor, and not an appointed manager, would run day-to-day operations.
Let us suggest two: Council compensation specifically to eliminate the loophole the past elected board used to more than double their renumeration by adding a “stipend” to their charter-vested compensation and expenses, and residency requirements, which were deemed abridged by a former member of the board.
These are must-dos.
Meanwhile, we, like others who live or have businesses in the Cape, will follow the open-to-the-public process.
We commit to keeping you informed. And we urge you to take part.
Breeze editorial