Charter Commission OKs Draft of Sandy Springs Charter

In its final meeting Tuesday, the Sandy Springs Charter Commission gave its OK to a draft of the city charter. The document still must be approved by the city council and adopted in the Genral Assembly.

In making its recommendatons, the commission looked at all aspects of the city's operations over the last five years but the final meeting brought few impactful changes to the document.

"One of the interesting things is how few changes we actually recommended," said commission Chairman Rusty Paul. "That says a lot about the quality of the work that was done by the original charter commission, that they came so close to having, not a perfect document, but a very servicable one for the city."

Two key elements of the draft include term limits and a shift in the distribution of power from the city manager to the mayor. Elected officials will be limited to eight years in office after 2017.

If the draft is approved without change, the mayor will receive more oversight of the day-to-day operations of the city.

"One thing our commission was unanimous on was that as the senior elected official and the only official elected city wide, the mayor has the responsibility of overseeing the operations of the city," Paul said. "That's not to diminish the power of the city manager at all, but to clarify the relationship between the mayor and city manager."

Paul added that as the charter now stands, a situation could arise where the mayor and city manager are at cross purposes and the mayor has no ability to assert his authority over the city manager.

"So, what we did was make sure the city manager was truly subordinate to the mayor. Under our recommendation the mayor sets the revenue estimate. Right now, that's done by the city manager. The revenue estimate is a key part of the budgetary process."