Clark County Charter Review Commission Town Hall

0:00 (upbeat music) Okay, okay, here we are. Good morning. - Good morning. - Good morning. - Thank you all for coming today to the Clark County Charter Review Commission's town hall for District One. We're gonna run through a short presentation and then we'll have some time for public comments. So we're going to try and keep public comments to about three minutes each if we can try and get us out here on time for all of us. My name is Patrick Elegweme. I'm the Commissioner for District One in Position One. - I'm Anne Donnelly. I'm Position Two. Good morning. - I'm Eric LeBrant, District One, Position Three. - We have some comment cards up by the front if you haven't gotten a chance to get any. We also have some light refreshments there as well as a packet containing the proposed amendments for this session, sorry, this cycle.

0:58 So without further ado, we'll dive into the presentation. - Here we do a Pledge of Allegiance. - And we can absolutely, before we do that, we'll do the Pledge of Allegiance. - I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. - Thank you. - And I would say that that's all the more appropriate given that it is the Memorial Day weekend. - Fair point. So the Charter Review Commission is comprised of 15 officials who were elected during the 2025 cycle. There are three from each county counselor district. We're in District One, so we've introduced ourselves already, Patrick, Anne, and Eric, Commissioners Adegwemi, Donnelly, and LeBrant.

1:58 The Clark County Charter is the county's primary governing document. So it's like a constitution or corporate bylaws. It really is meant to frame out how the county operates. It was first adopted in 2015 when the voters of Clark County chose to move to a home rule system of government. Most Washington counties use a form of government that's set by state law, but counties of the home rule charter can set their own rules in the form of government. They can't conflict with state law or be less restrictive then, but they can have their own rule sets that apply in addition to. Home rule counties must periodically elect a commission to consider and propose revisions to the charter. When our charter was created, that period was set at 10 years. The last Charter Review Commission changed it to five. And so it has been five years since then, and here we are again. So what does the Charter Review Commission do? It's a 15 member body that's empowered to propose,

2:56 consider, and place amendments on the ballot to revise the Clark County Charter. They can be placed on the general election ballot in 2026, which we'll see some of that this year, 2027 and 2028. No amendments to the charter may be adopted without a majority vote of the people. So just want to be really clear about that, that the proposals that you might see in the packet or that you can hear about will still have to go to the voters to be adopted. The commission doesn't determine what gets adopted, it only determines what's on the ballot for voters to approve or reject. So why are we here today? The purpose of the town hall is to inform the folks who choose to attend about the process and current proposals, answer questions about the commission's work, and receive your feedback about the process and current proposals. But just to be clear, we're not here to advocate for any specific proposal or against any specific proposals. We're not here to really give any commentary on suggestions, but we do want to get your feedback.

3:56 So during the public comment portion of the meeting, please, of course, state your comments, any questions that you might have. We will take that back to the full commission and then it will be considered in that forum. But today we won't be able to opine or give opinions on anything. So the charter commission process. So far, we've gone through a first reading, second reading, committee studying, committee presentations. So initial proposals are presented to the commission by commissioners. They needed five votes to move forward from that stage. That's our first reading. And the second reading, the commissioner would then revise, refine, and present a more detailed proposal. That needs eight votes of the commission to move forward. From there it goes to committee study. Think of it as sort of a working group to continue to refine that particular proposal. So they're analyzing it, revising it, seeking feedback from any stakeholders or those who are affected,

4:55 as well as feedback from the prosecuting attorney's office and the financial services office of the county auditor's department. Then from there, we have a committee presentation. So this is the final form, if you will, of the proposal. The commission debates and then a simple majority of the quorum present moves it forward. That goes to drafting committee. It's finalized into an appropriate format for review, once again, by the prosecuting attorney's office and placement on the ballot. We have some proposals that are now in the drafting committee stage. That's the furthest we've gone at this point. We will also have a final vote that's coming up. And then we'll have eight votes to send the ballot to the voters for their approval or rejection, as it were. There may be a limit to the number of proposal amendments that are on the ballot. We're still kind of in the process of narrowing down what's there. There are quite some number of proposals. We're hoping to not have the voters be overwhelmed

5:53 by how many things we're moving to the ballot, but we've still got some work to narrow things down. And then it gets to placement on the ballot. And this process will repeat for 2027. And there was a possibility of amendments being on the 2027 ballot or the 2028 ballot. So to give a bit of an overview of that timeline, a lot of that idea identification and sharing happened in February. First readings happened in March, second readings in April. And we're into the committee reports now in May and in June. And so our town halls have started. I believe we're the second or third one to go thus far. There'll be one in each district. Our public comment form is open on the website. We also have the printouts that you've seen here today. Proposals have begun to go to drafting. And our final vote of the commission will be July 8th. So throughout the process, we do wanna hear from the public. So we're collecting feedback. You can give public comment at our meetings, which are Wednesdays at 5 p.m. at the Public Service Center,

6:52 which is 1300 Franklin Street here in Vancouver. We're lucky to have the meetings here in District 1, so it's attainable for us District 1 folks. Town halls, such as the one that we're at here today, our online public comment form, and you can also email the commission charterreview@clark.wa.gov. That email goes to all the members of the commission. And of course, you can always email commissioners individually, but if you have a comment that's for the commission, it's better to send it to that one charter review email. You can also subscribe to our email newsletter. That's available on the website. And then that is a bit of a process. So I'm gonna flip to the next slide, which shows our proposed charter amendments, but I wanna pause so that my fellow commissioners can comment if I missed anything.

7:42 - No, that's excellent. I would ask if you make a comment. I'm keeping track for the public record of who makes what comment about what amendments. And if you could also fill out a comment card, that would make sure that I get your names filled correctly, et cetera. So that would be extremely helpful, thank you. - And then we do, also on that table, we have some instructions for if you wanna provide feedback online on the process as a whole or on specific amendments. And that way, we've got kind of a menu of options for how you can provide feedback. And that way, we're making sure that folks are getting heard. - Awesome, I'm going to just read out into the meeting the proposed charter amendments that we have before us, just so that they're available in the audio in case those who are seeing this presentation in the future might have any accessibility issues with the slides. So the 2026 proposed charter amendments are 2601,

8:40 clarifying non-partisan office selections. 2607, requiring land supply and construction cost analysis. 2608, requiring supermajority council approval for county taxes. 2610, revised budget transparency and process. 2620, limitation on consecutive terms for county council members. 2626, Clark County's requirement to support public safety. 2614, performance audits. 2615, ethics. 2640, amending the initiative, mini-initiative and referenda processes. 2623, revised council powers regarding boards and commissions. 2624, require annual report publication by the county manager. 2637, county council investigative authority. 2631, ethics review commission to consist of five members instead of the current number. 2632, whistleblower protections for county employees. 2613, legislative branch employees. Thank you for your patience while I write out that list.

9:40 Just try to be accessible as much as we can. So, how do we provide feedback? You can share your opinion here. We're aiming for a three minute time limit. Please don't make us have to enforce that. We wanna make sure that everyone gets a chance to speak today, who wants to? We will take a note of your response. Absolutely critical, as Commissioner Donnelly was saying. Please make sure you state your name for the record, as well as the proposed amendment that you wish to comment on. And it'd be really helpful if you could say if you're in favor, opposed, neutral, and your comments as to why. Also, really critical if you can fill out one of the forms that we have. That also makes it easy to make sure, as Commissioner Donnelly said, that A, we get your name right, and B, if there's anything that's too long for a few minutes that you didn't get to say, that's a great vehicle to make sure that your voice is still being heard and we're still getting that feedback. - Patrick, I would also like to suggest that if there's something we've missed, if there's a topic we have not addressed

10:38 that you believe needs to be addressed, go ahead and tell us about it. It may be that we can address it for next year, and at the very least, we do want to know about it, because we've been very thorough, I believe, but there's always a chance that something that a citizen brings up could be very important, and we have overlooked it. So please, don't be shy about suggesting other topics. - Okay, any other remarks, Commissioner Lebrat? - Yeah, if we could flip back to the list. Also want to highlight, as Commissioner Adegwemi mentioned, there's a number of stages that these amendment proposals have been going through. For the first run, it was, I think, around 40 that were initially submitted to the process. What we're seeing here is the list of what is still kind of active,

11:34 what's still alive, but it doesn't necessarily mean that this is all that's going on the ballot. So as we're working through those stages, some of those proposals are likely to drop off. Some may continue, depending on how much support they're getting within the commission. And so really, this is an excellent time to be providing feedback, because as we have these town halls around Clark County, we may find that some are getting more support within the community, and some are less, and maybe should wait. So this is really our chance to decide how that, what moves forward and what doesn't, based largely on feedback from the community. - That's a very good comment. I would also add that some are deferred until 2027 that aren't on this list, that started out as 2026 proposed charter amendments. So there are still some that they'll see in the future

12:32 that may have been ones that they've seen before. And so if you're wondering, oh, I saw that in 2026, now I'm seeing it again in 2027. Two things, one being it may have been deferred from 2026 to 2027, or it may be a resubmission, because there is part of our process that states that if something doesn't make it through the steps that we've covered as part of that process, it may be reproposed by a commissioner in subsequent years. So I think we have maybe our first question here. So we're lucky to have Commissioner Garber, who's here to help us out with handing out the microphone. So we'll take our first question, and please try and keep it to three minutes if we can. - Oh, I wasn't ready for my comment. This is literally just a quick question, if I may. Could you please describe what the process is for the study committees, what you do, how does the amendment get changed during that process?

13:30 What kind of inputs do you get before, like as you're putting together that study group, and then may I reserve the right to make a comment later? - You absolutely may, and thank you for the question. I think, Commissioner Dolley, do you want to take that one, or would you like me to take it? - Oh yes, I'd be happy to do that. I'm chair of a study committee, so I have been through the process. And as soon as a proposed amendment has passed reading two, it goes to the study committee. And the study committee consists of the chair as the original sponsor, maybe their co-sponsors, and several other members who are interested in supporting such an amendment. And that study committee sort of perfects it, perfects what the amendment is going to be, perfects the language, and then takes it through

14:29 to language that would be very similar to what would be on what is required by the auditor. And Commissioner Garber has offered to expand on that if we need to. But in essence, it's to take it from the concept to almost the reality of what might go on the ballot. So then you meet as a study committee, and then you bring it back to the full commission. - If I may also weigh in on that, part of it for me involves going and talking to the folks who might be affected by that change, because this is the moment where you're really supposed to, I think one of the documents that our study committees are supposed to submit is, did you talk to any of the stakeholders? What did they say? So what was the stakeholder feedback? That's a line on our resolution packet that we have. And so I have one proposal, for instance, that mostly is sort of an administrative change

15:28 at the county level, and so I talked to the person who's currently doing that work, and that informed what we brought back from the study committee. So this is really that critical stage of what are the ramifications? We have to also enumerate or list the benefits and trade-offs or the risks that we might see from our proposal being put into effect at that point in the process, and so this is the time to give that sort of deep dive, if you will, really fleshing out the idea. - So backing up to her question and your answer, so the study committee, what I've noticed is there's not, this is supposed to be a non-partisan commission, and I have not seen a lot of people

16:22 from, I would say, one persuasion helping on study committees of the other persuasion. There's been a few people who have done that. Commissioner Kline, Commissioner Gaskay, Commissioner Atagwame, and Commissioner LeBrant, I think you did too. So I like that idea, that if it's really non-partisan, that you have different perspectives on the study committee, but Commissioner Donnelly, you said the purpose of the study committee is to provide evidence of support. So how open are study committees to investigating more of the minuses or the negatives or the problems or whatever? Do you see what I'm saying? - Oh yes, and I think that we are,

17:19 all of our study committees are very interested in that, and in fact, the format requires those kinds of things. So for example, I just recently met with the Civil Service Commission, one of the agencies that would be impacted by one of my amendments, and listened to them as to what they do. I learned what they do, which, despite having studied all these matters for quite a while, I wasn't aware of the Civil Service Commission, and that was very helpful, and we haven't yet brought up the financial services department and their input, because while we're doing this, the financial services department is running the numbers on the cost impacts of all of these proposals. Some very little, some have substantial impacts, and so financial services is doing all that,

18:17 and we're waiting for their input. Furthermore, legal services, the prosecuting attorney, they are doing the same thing for the long list of amendments. So you're waiting for financial services, you're waiting for the prosecuting attorney, you're doing the best you can to make changes, suggested by the community and others, and it's really a very dynamic process. And in terms of the different political perspectives that are there, I think one of the things that's really surprised and delighted me is how many of our votes and the support of amendments do involve people who might be regarded as being from different political persuasions, and I think you'd be gratified. And I know that you're very familiar, because you have given public comment, thank you very much. And so you know that not everything,

19:16 in fact very little has turned out to be of a more partisan perspective. - Well, I might take it to a different room. - Okay. (laughs) No, well, that's what this is all about, and you know, because even in this room, there are different perspectives, and maybe even up on this table. So how about you, Eric? - Well, if I could zoom out just a little bit, the stated purpose of the charter is very kind of foundational, and probably less suited for specific partisan-type policy. And then ultimately, Clark County being a county that has a lot of diverse viewpoints across the political spectrum, I think when the things that go to the voters are going to be most successful if they are more nonpartisan. What I've seen, what I've observed from the steady committees

20:15 is that there's also a range of committees that maybe workshop their proposal with a little more nonpartisan or bipartisan lens. And then there are some that are maybe more focused on advocacy for a particular kind of ideological bet. That said, the ones that are coming out of steady committee and coming before the commission as a whole, I think the ones that are really aiming at refining the charter in a nonpartisan way are tending to get more traction within the commission. They're the ones that are getting 13, 14 votes out of the 15 commissioners. They're ones where we're getting broad buy-in from the commission saying, yeah, this is a clerical thing. We're honing it, we're refining it, that foundational document.

21:15 The ones that are maybe a little bit more policy, things around specific agendas that folks want to pursue are not getting as much support. And I think that's reflective of what's gonna happen in November when we get to that point, that my hope is that we will also see those kind of good policy things really resonate with the voters. And the ones that are maybe more ideologically motivated probably are going to get less traction because at the end of the day, it's a very purple county. - If I can chime in just a bit before we move on to the next question. I will also say as someone who had many proposals at the outset of this process, we've moved at quite a clip. We're moving pretty fast to get through this process. And so the study committee is truly meant to be the deep dive and to offload that work

22:13 from the full meeting of the commission. So to Commissioner LeBrun's point, different sponsors, different committees do differing levels of work and engagement and working through that process. So it really almost comes down to the particular sponsor of a particular proposal as opposed to the study committee process, if that makes sense. How much they're going to engage or not with a broad spectrum of input or not. Thank you. And just a quick note, if this is a public comment that you want to give to the commission, please make sure you state your name for the record. If it's just a question-- - No, this is actually just a question. I think I came to learn and probably one of the most least knowledgeable people in this room on what's happening with the charter right now. But people do ask me a lot about what's happening.

23:08 And so following on to what you just said, Eric, I would love to know in that first list of all the proposals, which ones do have broad support, 13, 14 votes of the charter review commission? - Oh, sorry, Holly Williams in Vancouver. - So I'm trying to find the page and I'll be honest, I struggle a bit with the county website sometimes. - But Eric, could I give an example of one that was overwhelmingly popular while you're doing that? And that was to increase the number of people on the ethics committee from three to five. And that's just like utopia because we all thought that that was a great idea.

24:05 So if that's on one part of the spectrum and then there'll be others on the other part of the spectrum where there's really a lot of issues to be concerned and discussion and all that sort of thing. So I just wanted to bring up one that was very popular. I think Commissioner Lebrun's gonna see if we can find some of those vote tallies that are on the Clark County website. But in the meantime, we'll take another question, but we will come back to that. - Kenneth Williams here looking for information. Is there a list somewhere of the problems that are being addressed? Why are we doing this proposed change? What's the problem statement? Is there a list enumerated that I can look at? To compare them, thank you. - To my knowledge and thank you for the question, there's not a concise list of what problems being solved by each amendment.

25:03 But what I will say is that many of the presentations, which it's unfortunate you'll have to maybe go and look at each proposal to see the particular presentation but a lot of the commissioners have a slide in there that says what problem are we solving? And then they've listed out what they think the problem is that they're solving. And so I know that many of my presentations have that, know Commissioner Garber's presentations have that many of the presentations that we've had before us say what problem are we solving? And then they list out what that is. Other questions or are we ready to move on to taking some comments? Maybe both. - Do you have your email open? If I email you the link and we can put it up on there? - Yeah, I might be able to make that work. - It's a journey. - Trying not to just put my email on the big screen. See how this goes.

25:57 While we're doing that, I'd like to take a moment to just thank you all for spending your Saturday morning with us. I know it's hard to go into a forum like this when it's a holiday weekend, but we really do appreciate your attendance, your care, and the fact that you're willing to show up for these processes that are happening in the county that we all live in. Okay. - Can I ask one more question? Julie Kep. Oh, Julie Kep. So you're having things move slowly but surely into the drafting committee. They have to pass with a majority of the quorum present.

26:55 But then there's one final vote at the end. Once everything's gone through study committee and moved into drafting, they come back to you. And then you have to vote eight votes. They have to get eight votes to move on to the ballot. And what if there's 12? Are you gonna put 12 of them on there? Or are you gonna like, well, this one got 14, that goes first. This one got 12. It'll be on there definitely. And then down to the eight voters. I mean, are you gonna cut it off at like six or seven? - Thank you for the question. That is something that we have spoken about in multiple meetings. At the outset, and Commissioner Garber, my fellow commissioners can correct me if I'm wrong. At the outset, we did say that one of the ways that we would consider what was going to make it to the ballot and what wasn't if we weren't able to prune that list down early enough, was to look at our vote counts.

27:52 And so something that has more votes to the commission might be more likely to make it to the ballot as opposed to things that don't. Because I know that we don't want to overwhelm everyone with way too many things on the ballot. So when we get to that stage, we'll probably have to talk a bit further about that. So I believe that might be correct, great. - Would we be able to get some opinions as to how many you would be willing to look at on your ballot? How many people would not want to see more than six? Oh really, oh gee. - Just for a quick count of the hands in the room, that was about most of the room. - How many people would go as high as 10? - No one in the room raised their hands for that. - Oh my gosh. - Okay, so just want to pivot back to the-- - That's really important. - A question we had earlier. So on the website, which thank you Commissioner LeBrent for finding this for us. You can find a list of all of our proposed amendments and then within each amendment, you can click into it

28:51 and see the resolution packet. As well as there should be a purpose and policy intent for each of them showing what the intent, which gets to that question of what problem are we solving. So this will be a lot easier to look at than having to go into each individual presentation. So that is available. And that's just clark.wa.gov/charter/charterreviewcommission proposed amendments, all with hyphens in between those words. Okay, and then we'll hop back into our presentation and take the next question. And if this is a comment, please state your name for the record. Another question, Ty Stover, this is going back to the previous question that Commissioner Donnelly just asked about how many would be willing to deal with.

29:51 I'm gonna put Commissioner Garber on the spot. You are no longer a member of the elections team, but you have experience with elections like we'll see in November. How long can we expect the ballot to be before we get to this, do you think? - Well, thank you. So the possibility of an 11, I mean, eight and a half by 17 ballot is a reality. And if we put eight on there, we could do an eight and a half by 17 ballot. If for some reason that every one of them that are still alive went to the ballot, we would have to create an 11 by 17 ballot, which would be more expensive, about $80,000 more expensive to do that.

30:48 And there's stubs on the top of those type of ballots that would have to be removed. And there's a chance of citizens accidentally tearing their ballots. So there'd be more ballots to be duplicated. I think it's more about, I know that the auditor's office, the elections office, they'll do whatever we propose and send forward, but we also wanna look at voter fatigue. That is a real concern. We wanna make sure we're not inundating everyone. So it is a discussion we're still having and we hope to make the right choice for that. - Any guess on the number of partisan? And then we also know there's gonna be a few statewide ballot measures. And then number of partisan or elected offices, 20, 30? - I am not into the thick of that anymore. I don't know how many,

31:45 I know there's a few unopposed races, but there'll be all the county races, legislative races. There might be state. They no longer do advisory votes anymore. So I'm just not sure on that. Thank you. - I thought I saw another question in the back there. - There was actually this one. - Oh, thank you for catching that. - This is a question. Who will be determining the verbiage for these measures on the ballot, for these amendments on the ballot? Sometimes it's so confusing. And it's a very simple, in the past say, it's been a very simple amendment, but you have to dig into the weeds to really know what it is. And I think that deters a lot of people from voting. - So there's a couple of answers to that. The first one being, in terms of the process for developing that language,

32:44 it starts out in the steady committee. Then it goes through the drafting committee and then also has to be reviewed by the prosecuting attorney's office. So that's the development of the language. The actual language of the amendment itself will also appear in the voter's guide. So I think what appears on the ballot is a summary and then the full text is actually in the voter's guide. And then of course, that'll be up on the county website as well. Some before and some after. - Also, to make a point about the specific verbiage, as it moves from the study committee to the drafting committee, the charter review commission has also engaged the services of a scrivener just to make sure that it is consistent with language that you would see from that sort of document.

33:43 And so between those three bodies will get that particular language ironed out. So the hope is that it's all plain enough to be understood and that the write-up will be plain enough to be understood. I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong, Commissioner Garber, there will also be the statements that are accompanying the resolution in the pamphlet as well, yes? - Yes, there will be statements for and against, but the actual language for on the ballot itself, on the ballot, will be written by the chief civil deputy prosecuting attorney's office. The commission does not have any ability to write that language, the caption and the language. - Thank you. - The ones that don't get the, well, that do get the eight votes, but they don't make it to the ballot,

34:41 will we ever know what those are? - So it's all public record. They're all available. - Is it on the website then, or will it be in the newspapers ever or anything like that? - I don't know that there will be much coverage in the newspaper. We've not seen, I think, that, as far as things that aren't making it through, but we should see. A lot of this is maintained in the county website. You can see where things have fallen off, things that didn't get voted all the way through. - Well, that's what I was wondering, though, the ones that make it to the eight votes and they get enough of the votes, but then will they ever come up again, like maybe the next time there's a chance for them to make it, or will we know that? - So I don't know if you're able to bring up the list again, but the link, and maybe we can put that link up later on just and leave it up there for folks to look at for a little while,

35:40 but if you scroll down a little bit, there's the ones that have been deferred, and then if you scroll down even further, there's the ones that didn't make it. - If they've been deferred, that means they did, excuse me, if it's been deferred, then that means they did get enough votes, they just didn't make it to the final run, then is that what you're saying? - So there's a few mechanisms by which one can be deferred, the primary one being that whoever brought it forward might say, well, we're constrained for time in terms of the different stages of review, each of those were having meetings and trying to cram those into a packed agenda. So the sponsor of those could say, I think it's okay if we defer this until next year so that we have time to circle back around, versus the ones further down that are withdrawn or didn't get the votes that they needed,

36:40 and they're done. In theory, someone could resubmit them the following year, and that's a possibility, but the ones that are deferred, they're still alive, they're just on hold until next year. - Nina Cabolla. And I'm interested on these, when they're printed, if they have financial impacts to the community, will that be clearly stated? - Can you open up the 2601, that first one? I think there's a, there's a fiscal analysis attached to, and this is attached to the ones that have received a fiscal analysis, so if that's not there, they may not have, we may not have heard back from the finance department yet.

37:38 But if there is one available, that's also attached there. And kind of gives you a breakdown of, my day job is in accounting and finance, so when I look at something like this, I'm thinking, okay, what assumptions did they make? What factors did they take into account? And they've been doing a good job of being very detailed about that. So here's the things that they considered, here's some things that maybe are still open-ended if it regards the budget somehow. They're pretty good about breaking that down. - I just wanna add to it, though, but actually, on the ballot itself, there is no requirement for an estimate of financial impact. This is just on our website, and it will not also be in the voters' pamphlet. - Right. - Thank you, Commissioner Garber. Let's go up here.

38:34 - My name is Ann Warren, and I'm gonna ask a question that's somewhat tongue-in-cheek so it becomes a comment, but is there any possibility that the supermajority proposal would require a supermajority to pass? (laughing) - Thank you for the question. I do believe that is not in our bylaws or work plan, and so it will be a simple majority. If that proceeds, it will be via a simple majority of the commission. - Glenn Young, for the record, I just have one comment really quick that I never caught onto, but reading 2607, which is the financial analysis for land use and code change, I don't know if this has been discussed, but I would highly recommend that you put language in there that does not require study on legislation that comes down from the state, 'cause when we do our biannual updates,

39:33 the vast majority of our code updates are from state direction, and we don't have any control over that. So I think the intent is to, the changes that we make at the county level that we evaluate, and I understand that thought pattern, but when we can't control it because it's driven by the state legislature, it seems a bit unnecessary. - Thank you. - Council Member Young, could you remind me what amendment that was? - 2607. - 2607. - 2607, okay. - Do we have any more questions before we maybe pivot to public comment? - Mine is a comment, so I can wait if there's other questions. - Okay, seeing no further questions,

40:31 we can move towards public comment. - Okay, yes. Do I need to stand up? - Just make sure you state your name for the record, please. - My name's Deanna Catan, I'm in District 2. So my main comment is that I'm concerned about the financial impacts for the total in different levels. Number one, the amount of amendments, each one costs money to go on the ballot, so that makes me concerned about having a lot of amendments that A, may or may not be popular, B, may lean more partisan than others, or C, may not be necessary. I have been following along, and I am a huge proponent of the ethics one, and I would love to see an increase in the number of the ethics in the commission,

41:28 but it sounds like that might be a code fix as well, and so I really would love for you all to be very cognizant of what can we do in different ways that isn't gonna cost extra money, so that's my first thing. The second thing is that some of these amendments, like for example, 2601 has passed to the drafting committee, but my understanding, and please correct me if I'm wrong, is that it didn't actually get that many votes, and I'm not completely sure why, because it saves taxpayers money, it's a simple type of an amendment, and so I guess I'm just not completely sure why something that would save the county money wouldn't be more well supported. 2608 to the supermajority point, I have a lot of financial concerns about that, and my favorite part is that in the presentation,

42:27 it said financial impact unknown, because the county council is unknowable, which is true, but it's not a helpful, it's not helpful when there's not really financial thought behind it. My other kind of quick concern is the financial restraint on the county when we really, you know, things are changing, we've had obviously COVID, but not even just COVID with, you know, I mentioned before with like the gas prices, I think it's not a reasonable thing to restrict the county council financially and not give them that flexibility, and I do tend obviously to be very mindful of our finances, so there's definitely some that I very much support, but I'm concerned that we're building in limitations when things are in fact unknowable,

43:25 and so I would really like for the commission to be more mindful of that. Yes. - Thank you, that was a good one, yeah, pretty good. - I will. Julie kept, I already spoke to the commission on this when it was being presented by Commissioner Jay, and it facts, piggybacks on Deanna's comment. So the supermajority council approval for county taxes, I don't have my comment with me, but basically it's centered around the fact that the last budget discussion in, I think it was passed in early December by the council, Matt Little made a point of stating when he voted to have the 1% tax increase adopted

44:23 plus some banked capacity, I think, the banked capacity. Did you guys do banked capacity? Yes, he made the point of making a rather lengthy comment about the fact that for the past 14 years, seven of those years, the council did not pass the 1% increase, and it ended up costing, over those 14 years, costed the county $42 million in lost revenue at a time when cost of living is just going berserko, and the fact that there are many things, parks, for example, and things like that that have not received the attention and care they need in order to maintain even basic levels. So the idea that you could have a council, there's only five people on the council,

45:23 there's not seven people like some counties have to vote, and you have to get four of those five, which they did last year and they've done several times, is just a big step to, in my point of view, could be a big step to bankruptcy of the council. And then when you add on some of these other things, like 2626, where you're gonna mandate public safety, the levels of the Clark County Sheriff's Office staffing, which will also have down the pike impacts on the jail, on the courts, on the public defenders, on the prosecuting attorney's office, and you throw that in there and you mandate staffing levels, it's like, what are you doing to the county? What are you doing to the county as far as maintaining its fiscal stability, is my comment.

46:23 - Thank you. - Hi, Ted Gaethje, Vancouver resident, former Vancouver city attorney, many years ago. My comments are on 2626, which the previous speaker just briefly addressed. I have significant legal and factual concerns about it, but I was pleased to hear commissioner Donnelly say that there's going to be a fiscal analysis done on 2626, which has not happened yet. So I'm gonna refrain from my critical comments about the lack of any fiscal information about this measure, other than to echo the previous speaker's comments, that there are primary and secondary costs associated with this measure. And those secondary costs include potential increases to the prosecuting attorney's office, public defense, which is in a crisis stage, not only in Clark County, but statewide. And then of course our jail,

47:20 which needs desperately to be rehabbed and remodeled at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. Those are my factual concerns. Other than I also would say, if this were to pass, this would, the funding would have to come from the general fund. And last week, council chair Marshall, in her state of the county address, mentioned that currently 80% of the general fund budget is going to law enforcement, to the sheriff's office, to judicial functions and to the jail. That leaves 20% of the general fund budget going to all the other departments that rely on that fund. So it's unclear to me where the funding would come from to fund 2626 were it to pass. Now with regard to the legal issues, this is no different than an initiative. A charter amendment proposed either by the charter review commission or by a group of citizens is the same as an initiative.

48:20 So it has to follow the same rules as an initiative. And under legal analysis, proposed charter amendment 2026 fails to meet the fundamental test of whether the subject of the proposed amendment is administrative rather than legislative. And it fails that test because three things are evident. One, it overrides elected officials in making budgeting decisions and it binds future council members. And second, it requires specific expenditures out of statutorily authorized budgeting processes. And last, it potentially undermines core governmental structures and operations because it's, again, you're taking the money out of the general fund, which is a limited source, which has, at this point, almost in a deficit position on an annual basis. And let me give you finally just one example of a similar measure that was proposed in the city of Seattle. Proposed charter amendment 29 would have required the city

49:20 to expend 12% of its annual budget, a general fund budget on homelessness programs. That proposed amendment was challenged in court and it was removed from, it was left off the ballot. And the judge who ruled against it said, "It is an unfunded mandate "improperly controlling city budgeting authorities." That case was appealed to division court, division one of the court of appeals, which upheld it. I predict the same thing would happen with this measure if it were legally challenged. And last but not least, the county charter has provisions that say what can and what cannot go on the ballot. And two elements of that county charter provision, 7.2(a) say, "What cannot go on the ballot "are ordinances providing for compensation "or working conditions of county employees "or elected officials, and ordinances authorizing "or repealing an appropriation of money

50:16 "or any portion thereof of an annual budget." This proposed charter amendment violates both of those subsections and it requires an appropriation of funding from the county's general fund for the compensation of employees for the county sheriff. So I would ask in conclusion, I know I've overrun my three minutes here. In conclusion, please have your prosecuting attorney do an in-depth legal analysis of 2626 and make a determination of whether it can go on the ballot. - Thank you.

50:54 (faint speaking) - Hi, my name is Nikolai Rozoff. I'm in Ellsworth Springs, District 1. I would say my top concern mirrors Ted's in terms of the financial constraints put on public safety regards notwithstanding. And then my other concerns would have to go with how that conflicts with the constrictive, the supermajority vote. Where we're talking about expanding budgets and decreasing the ability to expand revenue, how that can really conflict. Lastly, just something I noticed, I've done a lot of initiative petitioning work across the country, locally, depending on the cycles. And this previous cycle in California, for instance, there was a company called A Better California created by Peter Thiel, who many know

51:54 is the owner of Palantir or founder of Palantir and has bankrolled J.D. Vance's career and a tech guy from Silicon Valley. And the amendments that Peter Thiel put forward, Better California put forward, really seem to mirror the auditing amendments here. Not that audits are bad, but I assume that there's already some sort of auditing mechanisms in Clark County. So I guess just the general comment, it looks like there's a lot of mirrored language from other states, has there potentially been work done with groups out of state, out of county, et cetera, in the drafting process? - Thank you, I'm not certain if that was a question at the end, but I'll try to address what I can. Each amendment's sponsor has come up

52:51 with their proposed policy intent document, their proposal through their own processes, whether that involves engaging with community and seeing what the community wants, or just thinking up, here's what I think the county needs to be as a result of the modifications of the charter, right? And so there's a spectrum of people who ran for this office and had ideas that they wanted to push for, and people who maybe ran for the office and had ideas that they thought the community wanted based on their conversations with community, and all in between. And so I can't fully comment on each proposal or the specific proposals that you've mentioned, and whether or not they're pulled from things that we're doing right here, or things that are happening in other places, but each sponsor is really sort of the source of each proposal that's on there. So it comes down to what are their sources,

53:49 and what have they chosen to take inspiration from? Is that fair to say? - Yes, I'd like to also point out that I've noticed that many of those sponsoring proposals have looked at other counties in the state of Washington on their charter, if they're a home rule charter, or if they have other parts of their governance that are pertinent, and they bring those forth when they present their amendments as examples. I'm not, however, familiar with any who have sort of contacted outside groups. That's something that I haven't noted at all. But yes, they've done research with regard to other counties. - Thank you.

54:42 Holly Williams, District One. So it was what Ted Gaethje pointed out earlier, that it's important that what goes on the ballot be legislative changes, not administrative. Do I understand that correctly? - More administrative changes to the actual county charter, not necessarily policy changes or things that should be adopted at a policy level through the legislative arm. Isn't the charter really more of a legislative document? It's not really intended to tell the county how to do their business day-to-day? Or am I wrong on that? - Right, it's the framework of how the county operates at a high level, right? How many counselors, who are the executives, or what have you. - Exactly. Because some of the proposed changes are, in my mind, very administrative in nature.

55:42 For instance, requiring land supply and construction cost analysis. It feels like that's not something that goes into a charter, but maybe I'm just misunderstanding the objective of the charter document. - I would also like to bring up that the prosecuting attorney's office reviews every one of the proposed amendments. Now, they haven't completed that. They're in the process. They are doing their best to get them done quickly. But some have been completed and others have not. But all will be done. Financial services and the prosecuting attorney reviews everyone. Am I correct? - That is correct, that the prosecuting attorney's office will review every proposal that makes it to that stage in the process, yes.

56:39 - So if it's going through the review through prosecuting attorney's office, can they say outright this will not pass legal muster? Boom, and you can't do this amendment at all? Or do they just give their opinion like this is gonna be tough? - They give their opinion and I don't believe they can de facto exclude, but I don't believe an amendment would pass with eight votes if the prosecuting attorney had very critical remarks about that proposal. It would definitely weigh on the viability of the amendment.

57:36 - I think we've also heard in some of our meetings that at the end of the process, the prosecuting attorney's office does have to sign off on this as it goes to the ballot. I can't imagine that they would sign off on something that they did not find permissible, yes.

58:00 - This is just a two second comment about the ballot and how many to put on there. I have been paying attention and I've been going through these amendments and genuinely sometimes like some of them, just reading one, my eyes glaze over and I'm not a lawyer and so maybe I'm not used to the language, but compared to people who have not also been paying attention, I am more used to the language than just somebody who's reading that pamphlet for the first time and it's really tough and so I would also urge just the longer ones to just make them simpler so that they can have a better hope of passing if that's obviously the goal. - Thank you. Other questions, comments? - If I can, actually if I can piggyback on the previous question about the legal review,

58:58 the prosecuting attorney's office will, before something goes to the ballot, will provide approval as to form, but they're not necessarily giving a, they're not gonna give a clear thumbs up or thumbs down on the legality. The kinds of feedback that we might expect to get from that review are going to be more around risk. Like if we put this on the ballot, we run the risk of getting sued. If we put this on the ballot, we might, you know, the voters might, or there might be some other changes that come up where it might conflict with state law in this way, which again, you run the risk of getting sued and so that's the type of feedback that I think we're likely to see from those legal reviews rather than a clear like yes, do this, no, don't do that

59:54 and pretty focused on just the functional aspects of it, not necessarily whether something is a good idea or whether they have personal opinions. They're approaching it purely from a legal standpoint. - And actually while we're here, Commissioner Libert, were you able to find anywhere on the county website that had those vote totals for each of the proposals? Is that in, you were saying? - I have not been able to find the vote totals. I think there was some discussion around appending those to the meeting minutes, but I haven't seen those with the-- - They are in the meeting minutes. I just wasn't sure if there was one central location that someone could go to find. You know, here are the proposals and they've gotten X number of votes or what have you since we heard that question from the audience. - Yeah, unfortunately not that I'm aware of. - Thank you. - I have a question here. - Oh, sorry, so Holly Williams, District One again.

1:00:52 So one, 2640, amending the initiative, many initiative and referenda process. This is more just a, it's pretty in, I don't know, intricate's the right word, but it would be, since we have the subject matter experts here, I'd love to hear more about sort of what the problem solves with this change and yeah, just a little more information would be helpful. - Looking to Commissioner Garber, not certain how far you want us to get into those particular topics in the town hall. - I think it would be appropriate to at least, you could read the summary that we have provided. It is intricate, but there, yeah. - Let's go back and do that. - And also I would recommend, in addition to what we're gonna do now, to take a look at the presentation that goes with that amendment,

1:01:51 because in the presentation, pretty much all your questions are going to be answered. You may not agree with them, but they'll be there. It's well worth looking at. - Where is that, is that at the bottom or is that at the top? - It could be here. - Oh, so, okay. I can zoom in a bit if that's a bit too small, but that is the current write up as to that proposal. - You're not telling us what's, you're not telling folks with disabilities what's on this slide. - Thank you, appreciate that. - Let me try and read this. So currently on the slide, we have the 2640 resolution package,

1:02:51 which includes ballot language. We're looking at a brief narrative describing the final version of the amendment, which states this proposal would amend Article 7 initiatives and referendum. It would lower the requirement for verified signatures on an initiative or referendum petition from 10% to 8%. It would allow for the transfer of signatures from an unsuccessful initiative petition to a mini-initiative, if the required 3% of valid signatures have been obtained. Signatures required for petitions affecting only unincorporated Clark County would be calculated using the same method as petitions for the entire county. It would allow the county auditor to use random statistical sampling to verify initiative, mini-initiative, and referendum petition signatures by sampling no less than 3,000 signatures submitted. No petition may be rejected solely based on statistical sampling. So to hopefully put that into clear language, which I think is the request, it's really just lowering the percentage of signatures required for initiatives.

1:03:51 And I'll let Commissioner Garber expound further on that, if she would like. - Exactly, and I wanna be real clear that we're not here to advocate any proposed amendment or object any, but this one would lower the amount from 10% to 8%. We have not had a successful initiative petition since we became Home Rule County, and this would lower that requirement. And it would also allow the possibility for an unsuccessful initiative to become a mini-initiative, which just allows a chance for your proposal to be in front of the county council and to have a hearing. And then the other information is a way to help the elections office administratively. - So I think to try and boil it down even further, you would have to collect fewer signatures for an initiative, and the county would be permitted

1:04:49 to use a more efficient method to verify them. - Well, and also I would reemphasize that Commissioner Garber, who is the sponsor, gave a superb presentation on this initiative several nights ago, and you do need to look at that if you're interested. It was, it really set a standard, so I would advocate taking a look at that. - Can I chime in? Before we send folks to watch 40 presentations at 15 minutes apiece, if the page that has the list of all of the amendments that are still in process, one of the things on there near what I would call the header or kind of near the top of the section for each amendment,

1:05:46 yeah, if you scroll down just a little bit, it'll show the chair. So that's actually an email link, and so if you have questions, like if you don't wanna read that much text or watch the whole presentation, you can click on that link and ask the sponsor of that amendment proposal, like hey, what is this all about? What are you trying to do with this? Do you really think that it's gonna do what you think it's gonna do, whatever questions that you have, and that is probably gonna be a little more easily digestible, and in that regard, they are able to advocate for what their amendment does, whereas we have an agreement of neutrality amongst us for this particular forum that we're not gonna advocate for against a particular measure. I promise you we all have opinions

1:06:45 on these specific amendments, but I think we're doing our best to stick to that. But if you email the sponsor of those amendments, they can boil it right down for you. They can tell you what they're trying to accomplish. They can answer your hard questions. Ask 'em hard questions. This is America. That's what we do. We petition our government. We complain about the government. It's in the Constitution. So I encourage you to do that. - That's a really good call out, Commissioner LeBaron. I think one of the joys of the town hall process is getting to have these questions, but the thing that I personally feel a little sad about is we haven't had a lot of those questions along the way, and it would be a very unfortunate thing if we got all the way through the process without anyone emailing one of the sponsors of these amendments to say, hey, what's going on? What is this? I think we would benefit from your input, benefit from public comment. The process benefits from public input and comment.

1:07:43 And so if there's one thing that you take away from today, 'cause I know that we've talked about a whole bunch of things in the process, and we've gotten into the weeds on specific proposals, but if there's one thing you take away from it, it's that please just email us, ask us these questions. We really want and need your comments, so. - I'll try to keep it quick since we all have a Saturday to get to, but just on the last one real quick, I do appreciate that, especially given the fact that none have qualified for the vote so far, so that makes sense. First read, thank you for putting that forward. Also on the direct democracy front, thinking about the fact that for someone to qualify themself for the ballot, or a candidate to qualify for the ballot, they need to get enough valid signatures to match each dollar it would cost to register to be a candidate, and so one dollar per signature at this stage is extremely, extremely low, so that becomes a very difficult burden

1:08:42 for a candidate or their volunteer committees, and I think that's been the price for a long, long time now, so just really quick on that. - And then the last question I have for you guys is just process. Regarding the votes, since we talked about the vote totals and making that public, I was wondering, are these going to be private votes, or with making those vote totals public, are we going to be able to know who voted how? - None of this process is private, so all of the votes, as Commissioner Garver said earlier, are in the minutes, so it's unfortunate that they're not listed right with the amendments or proposals, and so I think we've heard that feedback very clearly, and I'm going to be asking our public outreach folks if that's something that we can do, just to make it clearer for folks, but every minute, or every minutes document that we have after our meetings shows, here's the specific proposal that was voted on, here's who voted for, against, abstain, who was absent, so it's very clear who supported and who didn't support those proposals.

1:09:44 - Just one quickie, I swear. (laughs) - Real quick, so Commissioner LeBrant, you said, or I don't know, somebody said, that this is supposed to be a neutral, just informing people what the amendments are, so I know you're gonna be reaching out to smaller groups, like if you want someone to speak to your group about the amendments, is that also gonna be strictly neutral, or can, say, if one commissioner comes to talk to a group, can they offer their personal opinion? - I think that's permissive from my understanding, that we're still people with opinions, because who isn't, but it should be very clear that they're speaking in their capacity as individuals, and that their opinions don't represent the opinions, thoughts, commentary, or intent of the Charter Review Commission.

1:10:43 - Okay, so we have the space until noon, but we also gotta do some cleanup, they're gonna put us to work, so happy to stick around to answer any further questions, but I think if there's nothing else from you all, I'll let my fellow commissioners make some final comments, and then we'll wrap for today, and thank you so much for coming to spend time with us. Any final comments? Commissioner LeBrant. - Thank you all for coming out, it's so appreciated. Thank you for being here, and also thank you for your comments. I think we will likely end up with a better result if we have more than just the 15 folks seated around the table trying to figure all this out, and have more active involvement from folks, more two heads are better than one, and however many folks are able to comment definitely informs the process, and I think we'll hone what we're doing and get a better result,

1:11:42 and either way, we all have to live with the outcome, so it's important that we're doing our best on this. - And also, one more thing, five years from now, there'll be another charter review commission, and they'll do the same thing we're doing, and so we hope to leave the charter in excellent condition for the next team that comes up. - Thank you. Oh wait, she has, you had a question. - Are there any things that you're trying to pass now undoing current charter? - That is a really good question. I'm not aware of any amendments that do that, but that is such a good question, thank you. - I do think it's fair to say that there are some amendments which adopt, or propose to adopt things that come from the prior form

1:12:42 of government that Clark County had, but there's nothing that's specifically trying to undo something the last charter commission did. Okay, thank you all so much. (audience applauding)