Panel Solicits Public Feedback on City Charter

A charter review committee that has made several potentially volatile suggestions to amending the City Charter will begin soliciting public comments to the recommendations Wednesday.

The review of the charter is Anaheim’s third since the charter’s adoption in 1965, the others taking place in 1978 and 1989. The bulk of changes currently proposed by the council-appointed seven-member committee will eliminate language or articles no longer appropriate for the city’s operations, City Atty. Jack White said. For example, one proposal would make the charter’s language gender-neutral, he said.

However, several proposals stand out as possibly controversial. The committee recommends salary increases that would raise the mayor’s salary from $1,000 to $2,500 and council members’ salaries from $1,000 to $2,000. The $1,000 salary has been in effect since April 1991. White, who attended the committee’s 12 public meetings during the past year, said “there was a feeling that the $1,000 limit was inadequate for a city the size of Anaheim.”

The committee also suggests a suspension of term limits for the mayor and council members. Anaheim voters added term limits to the charter in 1992. With term limits, the mayor and council members can only serve eight consecutive years. Before running again for reelection, the mayor and council members must then take a break for two years.

Another proposed amendment would limit the Anaheim Firefighters Assn.’s ability to use binding interest arbitration, which uses a neutral third party to make decisions about issues on which the two sides cannot agree. Frustrated over a contract dispute that began in 1996, firefighters gathered enough signatures to put Measure A--a charter amendment making binding arbitration a legal option--on the ballot in 1998. After the firefighters declared an impasse in March 1999, a neutral arbitrator heard testimony from both sides in October and November. A ruling has yet to be issued by the arbitrator.

The charter committee has recommended changing the provisions of Measure A, so that before either the city or firefighters can request an arbitrator’s intervention, the two sides must submit to a legal process called mediation. David Hill, Anaheim’s personnel director, said mediation is a faster process than arbitration and could help speed a lengthy process and eliminate some costs.

However, Mike Feeney, president of the Anaheim Firefighters Assn., said the firefighters resent any changes to modify Measure A when “we haven’t even gotten through the first arbitration process.”

*

Judy Silber can be reached at (714) 966-5988.