Cedar Park City Council is considering calling a charter election in November for residents to consider several amendments to the document that defines how the city is governed.
City Council established a charter review committee in January to evaluate the city charter and propose recommendations. The committee met seven times from April through July, and committee chair Jeff Kikel presented a list of recommended amendments ranked by priority to City Council during a July 27 meeting.
Kikel said Cedar Park’s charter is now almost 30 to 40 years old, and he said the committee parsed through the city document line by line.
“Our job really going into this, we wanted to try to thin the document slightly, make it more current in its language and prepare it for the future as the city continues to grow,” he said.
The committee recommended 37 revisions to council members and also made recommendations on which sections should remain unchanged.
Some recommended changes included establishing a procedure to fill vacant City Council positions. According to the current city charter, a vacant City Council position must be filled within 30 days by the remaining council members. The appointee serves until the position is filled during the next election, but the practice has drawn criticism in the past.
Council Member Heather Jefts criticized the appointment policy while running for the Place 5 seat during an election in May. In a Q&A with Community Impact Newspaper, she said after residents were appointed by council members to fill a vacancy on City Council, they were able to run in a future election with the label of incumbent without being voted into office.
In August, City Council debated an amendment to keep an appointee from running in an election for 12 months from when they were appointed. Jefts said she was in favor of the idea.
Another recommendation included updating pronouns to be gender-neutral when defining the duties of the city manager throughout the charter. City Manager Brenda Eivens has led city staff in the position for more than 10 years.
Council Member Corbin Van Arsdale requested making that amendment a higher priority. He said the city does not do charter reviews often, and the gender pronouns currently used make the charter sound dated.
“I wanted to personally bring up that I don’t like having a charter that sounds old-fashioned,” he said.
Another recommendation included revising the department of police section to include one or more departments. Currently, Cedar Park’s charter establishes a police department but says nothing about a fire department.
“I had a conversation with the fire chief; he was very pleased to know that he now has a job, and it’s official,” Kikel said.
The committee recommended leaving council terms at two years instead of moving to three, and recommended leaving City Council as an unpaid position.
City Attorney J.P. LeCompte said City Council will have until Aug. 21 to call for a charter amendment election that would be on the November ballot. The second reading and consideration of an ordinance calling the special election is on the agenda for tonight's meeting.
