Charter Amendments/Ballot Questions

To the Editor:

DID YOU KNOW?: Fairmont’s operating system is formatted by a Charter.

DID YOU KNOW?: The City Council is mandated by State Statute to monitor and review the Charter at least once a year.

DID YOU KNOW?: Fairmont’s Charter has not been reviewed for 30 years.

DID YOU KNOW?: The Court appointed 15 Commissioners, independent of the City governing staff, to review the Charter and recommend amendments.

The Charter Commission has met, pondered, reviewed, debated, and recommended 10 updates for amending the Charter.

DID YOU KNOW?: The Charter is comparable to the U.S. Constitution, when compared to its relevance to the citizens of Fairmont.

All of the court appointed Commissioners have accepted their appointments and come to the task wanting to do what’s best for Fairmont.

There are 12 chapters in the City Charter. It took the commission 18 months to work through the first two chapters.

The recommendation to change from a four ward with an at large council position to a five ward system seems to be the most controversial. The debate was long and contested. However, when people understood that the 4 plus 1 council arrangement worked well in homogeneous communities…and thirty years have witnessed the demographic changes in Fairmont…the Commission recognized, by a 9-3 vote, that recommending a 5 ward system was the way to provide more equal representation for the citizens of Fairmont.

Further, it should be noted that in 30 years Fairmont continues to show areas of opulent wealth, while also hosting areas of abject poverty. When considering continuing with a 4 plus 1 council format, you could possibly see 3 Council positions in the same ward…the mayor, the ward electee, and the at large position. This was heavily considered in our debates and led to our recommendation of 5 wards.

Yes there are 10 amendments to the Charter that will be on the ballot. We support YES VOTES on all of them. We believe they are needed updates for our City Charter to close the gap of 30 years of neglect.

Michael J. Katzenmeyer

Chair

Fairmont Charter Commission