Council Approves New City Charter
Tuesday, November 7th, 2023
After more than a year of work, the work to draft a new charter for the City of Dalton is complete. On Monday night, the Mayor and Council voted to approve the final draft of the new charter and send it to the Georgia General Assembly to be enacted during the 2024 legislative session.
Caption: Members of the Dalton Mayor and Council listen during a presentation on the completion of the new City charter on Monday night
Click here to read the new City charter approved by the Mayor and Council
The City's leadership began the process to draft a new charter in 2022. The existing charter is more than 100 years old with some sections dating back to Dalton's founding in 1847. Many sections of the charter were out of date and no longer reflected current practices or current state laws. The City worked with its legal counsel from the Minor Firm as well as City department heads and staff to draft a new charter and then fine-tune the document after input from elected leaders and the public. The process involved a thorough review of City ordinances and state law to ensure that there were no conflicts with the new charter.
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.
"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 a February public meeting about the new charter. "It is not a list of each and every thing that (the City) can do or might want to do... this just gives (the City) the power, the power now and the power 50 years, 100 years from now that need to be done."
Because the changes to the charter are so extensive, they cannot be simply voted into effect by the Mayor and Council. Instead, with Monday night's approval by the Council the charter will now be introduced by Dalton's delegation to the Georgia General Assembly at the 2024 session where it can be voted into law. The new legislative session begins in January.
Dalton's citizens and businesses will likely not notice any changes once the new charter takes effect. Most of the changes simply impact the way the City operates. For example, one change in the new charter 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 operate in the same role as the board of directors for a corporation and the city administrator serves as the City's CEO.
"I think we’ve had probably five different work sessions and public meetings over the course of 2023 and along the way the draft has been fine-tuned and updated," City Administrator Andrew Parker said Monday night. "I want to recognize our department heads, too, because there was a lot of quality control work along the way to make sure that what we were doing was right so it is a project that we're all very pleased to have completed."
The Mayor and Council also commended City Clerk Bernadette Chattam and attorney Jonathan Bledsoe for the hard work they have put in to complete the new charter.
"We appreciate you letting us be involved and handle and we are very happy to see it to conclusion tonight," Bledsoe said.
The City Council voted unanimously 3-0 to approve the new charter and send it to the General Assembly. Mayor David Pennington typically votes only in the event of a tie and one seat on the council is vacant due to a resignation. Councilmember Dennis Mock attended Monday night's meeting virtually via video conference.
For more information on the process to revise the City charter, click here to read a series of updates throughout 2023.
Click play in the window below to watch the Mayor and Council discuss the charter during Monday night's meeting.
