Vancouver residents will consider five city charter amendments on the November ballot, mostly regarding minor tweaks to outdated language and procedures.
The charter must be updated every five years and requires a committee of 15 citizens to review the charter and recommend changes to city council. Those changes only move forward to the ballot by city council vote.
From October 2023 to June 2024, a charter review committee recommended six total changes to the city’s charter (a legal document that outlines how the city is governed, similar to a constitution). The Vancouver City Council voted to push five of those amendments to the ballot.
Proposed Charter Amendment No. 8 concerns charter language on vacancies in elected or appointed positions. It would erase a section that says a city official’s job becomes vacant “upon adjudication of insanity; by virtue of a mental health condition that renders the person substantially incapable of doing their duty; by a conviction of drunkenness or by any permanent disability, preventing the proper discharge of duty.”
The proposed change clarifies that an office is deemed vacant if the office holder cannot “discharge their duty with or without a reasonable accommodation,” or if they are absent from the city for 60 consecutive days without permission from city council.
“This language was come to through the committee and working with city employees, and I believe it is satisfactory and more up to date and doesn’t sound like it was written by pirates,” said Jonathan DeBellis, Charter Review Committee board member, at a May 20 city council workshop.
Proposed Charter Amendment No. 9 clarifies that the city will use an external economic indicator called the Consumer Price Index to calculate adjustments to city councilors’ salaries. It also adjusts the date by which a biennial salary schedule must be adopted by the city’s Salary Review Commission by two months.
Proposed Charter Amendment No. 10 clarifies the city manager must submit a two-year budget as required by state law, not a one-year-budget, and a complete report on the city’s finances at the end of each fiscal year.
Proposed Charter Amendment No. 11 eliminates a procedural requirement that city contracts with a term of more than five years must be approved by an ordinance.
The procedure isn’t required by statute (no other comparable cities include the provision in its charter), and longer contracting periods are more common since the charter was enacted, said Tricia Juettemeyer, an assistant city attorney in the city’s civil division.
“This section creates an administrative burden for staff and council that is no longer necessary,” Juettemeyer said at the May 20 meeting.
Proposed Charter Amendment No. 12 would let the city council accept electronic signatures on petitions by removing language referencing physical paper and signatures written in ink.
“If we can eliminate any barriers for people to access their democracy, I’m all for that,” Councilor Kim Harless said at the May 20 meeting.
