City Council Studies Charter Draft At Work Session
Tuesday, February 7th, 2023
(Video of Monday's work session is included at the bottom of the page)
The City of Dalton's charter is more than 100 years old. Some parts of the city government's framing document are in fact even older than that, dating back to Dalton's original incorporation in 1847. The bulk of the document was drafted in 1874 with some revisions coming in the years since. It makes sense, then, that the time has come for a major overhaul of the charter to reflect the modern practices and operation of the government.
"The existing charter has served the city well, but the problem is we’ve got so many current practices that we’ve all accepted as norms that our charter doesn’t reconcile with," said Andrew Parker, Dalton's city administrator. "One example is that it mentions how residents will be taxed based upon their road frontage and not the actual value of their property... there’s a tremendous need to update it."
Caption: City councilmembers Dennis Mock, Annalee Sams, Mayor David Pennington, and Steve Farrow listen during a work session Monday at the Mack Gaston Community Center
City leaders initiated the process of creating a new charter in 2022. The city's attorneys have been working to draft the new document using state law, a model charter created by the Georgia Municipal Association and also reviewing city charters of some of Dalton's peer cities including Gainesville, Rome, and Ringgold. The team working on the draft charter also worked with city staff to be sure to memorialize current practices and operations in the new charter. The current draft has been circulated among city leaders for review and on Monday, the mayor and council held their first public work session to study the document. It's one of the first steps in what is expected to be at least a year-long process to have an updated city charter passed into law by the state legislature.
"The good news is we’ve charted out a course that gives us 11 months to get this right," Parker said. "We need to be wrapped up by the end of the year so we can present it to the General Assembly for consideration in the (2024) session. And we hope over the next 30 days, by the beginning of March, we’ll be able to receive any public comments or concerns or questions we can respond to. That will put the council in the position where they can make some of the decisions that they need to make as it relates to a few of the policy items that were reviewed (Monday)."
The changes are necessary because the charter is the foundation document for the city government. The Georgia Municipal Association has encouraged cities across Georgia to review their charters to make sure that they reflect current practices in the 21st century. Not surprisingly given their age, many do not.
Caption: City administrator Andrew Parker speaks to the mayor and council during Monday's work session
"A charter is a broad grant of powers to a city. It’s a skeletal outline of how a city is supposed to work," attorney Jonathan Bledsoe said during his presentation to the council. "It is not a list of each and every thing that you can do or might want to do... this just gives you the power, the power now and the power 50 years, 100 years from now that need to be done."
During Monday night's presentation, Bledsoe outlined some of the bigger adjustments that are part of the new charter draft. One change is that the power to appoint and terminate department heads for the city's departments would be uniformly given to the mayor and council. Under the current charter, some department heads are appointed or terminated by the council while others such as the public safety department chiefs are appointed and terminated by the Public Safety Commission. While the department heads would be selected by the mayor and council, they would report to and be supervised by the city administrator.
"The mayor and council are to be the board of directors of the city like a corporation’s board of directors and the administrator functions really as the CEO," Bledsoe said during Monday evening's meeting. "And that’s how we’ve got it structured."
"What we’ve drafted is sort of a hybrid version (of the current charter and the practices of other cities) where at the end of the day department heads serve at the pleasure of the mayor and council but they receive their operational direction from the city administrator," Parker said. "We feel like that’s a good checks and balances, and it would bring uniformity to the practices of the city."
In the next month, city leaders and staff will undertake a review of Dalton's full code of ordinances to ensure there are no conflicts with the new draft charter. There will be future public work sessions to further review the document and give residents a chance to comment or ask questions or present concerns about the charter. The current draft of the updated charter can be reviewed by clicking here. Comments, concerns, and questions about the draft charter can be sent to City Clerk Bernadette Chattam via email at bchattam@daltonga.gov and they will be forwarded to staff and council members.
Below: Video of Monday's work session
