Charter Review Commission Recommends Eight Changes

The Brecksville Charter is the most important documents in the city’s local government. In more than 50 years, there have only been 15 amendments to the city’s charter to date.

Once every 10 years, the city forms a charter review commission to look over the document to see whether changes need to be made.

The commission has worked for months to examine the charter, and decided that a few changes need to be made. 

Eight, to be exact.

Brecksville City Council discussed the recently proposed changes on Monday night, and voted to place them before voters on Nov. 5.

Here are the charter changes proposed, but in the coming days, Brecksville Patch will break down each measure, one-by-one.

• Article V – Section 2(a): Finance Department assistants – right to appoint by City Council
• Article V – Section 3(a): Police, Fire, and Building Department personnel appointment process by Mayor and Council, or by Director of Public Safety and Council
• Article V – Section 3(c): Director of Public Safety position vacant and appointment process
• Article V – Section 4(d): Appointment of Public Service Department’s assistants and employees to be approved by the Mayor
• Article V – Section 5: Adding “and/or by the Mayor” at end of provision on assignment of duties to Law Director
• Article IV -  Section 10: Form of legislative action: to provide that legislation may be read by title only unless otherwise determined.
• Article IV - Section 12 Mandatory Referral, and Article V, Section 8(C): Planning Commission Mandatory Referral: Some classifications of commercial zoning (non-residential) to be removed from mandatory referral and decisions relating to them made by City Council.
• Article XI – Charter Review Commission: Change membership of Charter Review Commission and date of appointment.

“The only thing that will change is the language and explanations to make sure everything is clear and consistent,” said councilwoman Laura Redinger. “It will be a good source document for people to go to.”

 The nine commission members, plus an alternate, are private citizens who are not currently involved in the government. The members are appointed by the mayor and approved by council.

This year, the administration tried to choose members who represented average citizens, but also had different skill sets, Hruby recently said. There are members with specialties in finance, business, law and technology on this commission.