Thursday, July 02 2009 - 02:07 AM
Chartering Palmdale
Tonight’s Palmdale City Council meeting included a preliminary discussion on converting from a general law city to a charter city.

Few people realize how frustratingly little power local governing bodies actually have. Council members are frequently blamed for issues that are the result of laws or mandates from the federal, state, and county government entities. Becoming a charter city will bring control over a limited number of these issues back to the ones we directly hold accountable. It won’t make us immune to all of the dysfunction of higher government, but it will help some.

Questions arise in first of all, should we do this, and secondly, how should we do this. There are a number of provisions we can write into the charter from the beginning. My comments at the meeting tonight centered on including a “hire local” stipulation for city projects.

What I don’t want to see is a “strong mayor” type of charter because I like the mayor being one of us, the way it is now. In a “strong mayor” type of charter the mayor essentially becomes the city manager, which would require education and experience limitations.

The City of Palmdale will be placing information about charter cities on the website (www.cityofpalmdale.org) in a few days and will also schedule a public meeting where they will be inviting input from the residents on how we want to answer those questions.

There are currently 116 charter cities in California and staff is looking at all of them to see what can be gleaned in order to write ours the best way possible.

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