Fennville residents will soon decide on whether to revise the city’s charter, following a commissioner vote July 7.
Officials passed a resolution that calls for a yes-or-no ballot question on Nov. 5. The question is: “Shall there be a general revision of the charter of (Fennville)?”
If the measure passes, the charter would be revised by a committee — also elected Nov. 5 — and the revised document would then be subject to another public election before being implemented.
Revising the charter is the next step in a multi-year plan to update the city’s guiding documents, according to City Administrator Katie Beemer.
“As we look at how we do things, we recognized that a lot of our laws and governing documents were out of date,” Beemer said.
Updating documents began with a review of the city’s zoning ordinance, which the Fennville Planning Commission ended up rewriting essentially from scratch, Beemer said, before adoption in April 2024.
The next step was updating and codifying the city’s ordinances, expected to wrap up in August.
“We went through our general ordinances and re-edited them,” Beemer said. “We made some changes, adjusted things, made things more streamlined.”
Now, attention turns to the city’s charter, originally written in 1961 and last revised in the 1990s. A general revision would “bring our charter into the modern age,” Beemer said.
“By the end of it, we’re going to have a really good set of laws and governing documents,” she said.
Beemer said there are some areas officials have in mind for edits, including revising a purchasing policy that requires staff to get commission approval for anything over $1,000, as well as clarifying city positions and organizational charts.
“When you’re running a water utility or a sewer utility, sometimes when you need a part, you’re not going to find one for less than $1,000,” Beemer said. “We’d (also) like to formally add (the city administrator) position into the charter.”
The resolution approved July 7 calls for the conditional election of a nine-member “Charter Commission.” Those positions will also be elected Nov. 5, but will be voided if the revision question is voted down.
Members of the commission must be residents who aren’t officers or employees of the city. According to a memo in the packet July 7, they also can’t be directly related to current city commissioners.
Residents have until 4 p.m. July 22 to file a nominating petition for the non-partisan position. If fewer than nine people are elected, the remaining positions will be filled by appointment.
Beemer said serving on the commission won’t be a “huge time commitment,” with members only meeting for a few months, rather than multiple years.
If the vote to revise the charter passes, the new commission will first convene the second Tuesday after the election. Members will frame a draft of the charter within 90 days, which will be sent to the Michigan Attorney General’s Office for approval.
If the document were approved at the state level, it would return to the ballot for approval in a city-wide election.
— Contact reporter Mitchell Boatman at mboatman@hollandsentinel.com.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Fennville sets sights on revising city charter, assuming residents approve
Reporting by Mitchell Boatman, Holland Sentinel / The Holland Sentinel
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