Charter passes in split-decision

After more than 20 months of arguments and delays, the Waynesboro City Council has finally signed off on their new charter.

Only four of the six council members are behind the adoption, however, making rejection from local legislators a likely scenario.

With only six days separating Monday’s meeting and the deadline for submitting the charter to the General Assembly, city officials opted to send it on without unanimous approval.

They tried the same thing more than a year ago when the charter passed 4-0 but State Representative Gloria Frazier and Senator J.B. Powell sent it back, requesting the approval of every single councilman.

City Administrator Jerry Coalson said if the charter is rejected a second time, tax payers will have to shell out more than $10,000 to cover a recodification overhaul. Besides that, he said, delays have already created a virtual log jam of ordinances and zoning changes that are all hinged on the adoption of the charter.

Over the past year, the charter has been the subject of regular opposition at city meetings, mostly from council member Willie Roy Williams who was particularly bothered by a new paragraph that called for a council member’s abstention to be counted with the majority vote unless there was a pre-disclosed conflict of interest. City Attorney Chris Dube said he added it to prevent council members from sitting out on high-pressure issues and using the practice of abstaining to prevent a motion from getting the minimum number of votes to pass, as has happened routinely to the Augusta- Richmond County Commission.

In an effort to get a unanimous vote on the charter, Dube was asked to remove the entire paragraph.

“That was removed against the advice of counsel,” he said during the meeting. “Let the record reflect that.”

It wouldn’t be enough for the unanimous vote, however. Although it had never come up in council meetings before, Williams’ new sticking point was a revised section he said stripped the mayor of all his power.

“The mayor is just here. He has no power,” he said. “In the next election the mayor might want to get involved … I don’t think this should be stamped in stone. Who would want to be mayor with his hands tied?”

Dube disagreed, noting the mayor has the power to veto anything passed by council and to lineitem veto anything in the budget. The mayor also has absolute power to appoint and remove council members from committees. “That’s quite a bit of power and authority for one person,” Dube said.

The revised charter does differ from the existing 1971 draft in which the mayor was responsible for preparing the budget and overseeing the department heads. In the charter before that one, the mayor was also responsible for acting as the judge of city court.

Newly elected Portia Washington agreed with Williams, saying the changes “upset the balance of power” and gave it to one employee – the city administrator.

“It’s our job to keep democracy working for you,” she said to the audience.

A number of those audience members have since penned letters to Rep. Frazier and Senator Powell, chiding the two council members for holding up the charter and asking it be adopted without council’s unanimous approval.

If the charter is rejected a second time, the city council will have to begin all over again in hopes of getting it adopted in 2011.