The balance of power between Taylor’s elected officials and the people who put them in office has dominated the conversation as the Charter Review Commission finishes evaluating the city’s governing document.
During the most recent review session in May, attorney Charlie Zech, who is providing legal counsel to the group, likened a city’s charter to the U.S. Constitution.
“It lays out how the government operates. And if you’ve got a good operating form of government, in my mind, there’s no reason to be messing with it if it’s working,” Zech said. “And usually if something needs to be fixed, it becomes obvious and folks get petitions together.”
The commission is conducting the first full review of the city’s charter since 2012. One suggestion from the cross-section of members is to review the charter every 10 years.
Members also discussed requiring commission-recommended amendments to go directly before the voters, rather than first being vetted by the City Council.
Under the current method, the commission provides a list of charter recommendations to the council, and council members can delete, change or add to the amendments.
Once the council makes a determination, the final version goes to voters for approval.
However, not every member of the panel supported taking that power away from the city’s elected leaders.
Zech said he would write a sample amendment for the commission to discuss at the next meeting.
The commission also took on a previously tabled topic: council members’ compensation. In 2024, a charter amendment passed by voters set the figure at $125 per meeting, not to exceed two meetings per month.
Before the referendum two years ago, the council had been able to establish its own compensation simply by approving a resolution. Members used that power in 2023 to increase a stipend from $25 per meeting to $1,000 a month for council members and $1,500 for the mayor.
They collected that higher pay for eight months until voters OK’d the charter amendment.
Commission members decided reviewing the pay whenever the charter was scrutinized would be sufficient.
“The money is not going to make someone run for City Council. If it is the reason they run, we probably don’t want them,” said commission Vice-chairman Gary Gola, credited as being instrumental in getting the council compensation charter amendment passed in 2024. “I think right now we’re in a very sweet place where we’re giving them a token of our appreciation if they want to be a council member, but we’re not bribing them to be a council member.”
Other topics included an amendment to how the council fills vacant positions on boards and commissions to increase fairness.
Zech will return with new charter-language proposals at the next commission meeting, but the date had not been posted on the city’s calendar by press time.
Meetings are held in the Taylor Public Library, 801 Vance St., starting at 6 p.m.
Any charter amendments which are approved by the council could come before voters in the Nov. 3 election.
