City Council Gave Charter Commission Their Take, Public Gets A Turn on Tuesday

The Sandy Springs Charter Commission will hold a special meeting for public comment at 7 p.m., Tuesday in Council Chambers at City Hall.

During its organizational meeting in March, the Commission decided to regularly meet at 4 p.m., on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month at City Hall in Board Room 2. All meetings are open to the public.

Commission members were appointed by the Mayor, City Council, and members of the State House and Senate, and must live in Sandy Springs.

At the last meeting, the Mayor and Council members met with the Commission and offered opinions on how the charter reads in regards to privatization; the role of the City Manager; and the possibility staggered terms in office. [The Mayor and City Council’s terms end at the same time.]

Mayor Eva Galambos said the charter gives her all the powers that she needs. 

“I know there has been some discussion about how all of our elected terms run out at the same time.  I want to explain how that happened,” Galambos said.  “When the bills were originally written, we had three seats that would run out [in a particular] year and three that would expire two years later.”

The bills had to be re-written year after year in the legislature because the dates were wrong, she said. “Finally someone got tired of viewing different dates and put them all at the same time.”

The Mayor added that she is in favor of continuing a system of having Council members elected by district rather than city-wide elections. A person who is elected by city-wide election would have the same right to be spokesman for the city as the Mayor, which Galambos said she does not support.

Council member Karen Meinzen McEnerny stressed that the primary goal of the city charter should be to protect the interests of the citizens.

Gabriel Sterling said, “Do not mess with our tax cap.” 

Adding to a McEnerny comment on executive powers, Sterling said, “The Mayor gets to make appointments and Council does have a right to reject them, but we do not have any ability to put anybody in there our own…we may want to make sure the council has at least one member that is their appointment.”

Council member Tibby DeJulio said, “I don’t’ think there is anything that we have to add to the charter to make it more efficient…Privatization has worked out fabulous for us. We're getting calls and have people asking for advice from all over the world.

Thirty years from now, we don’t know what the situation is going to be. So we don’t want to tie up the city…by putting things in there that will hinder the process one way or another.”

Dianne Fries praised the city’s budget. “Our budget is a thing of beauty, the way it is done,” she said. “The way John [McDonough] does it - we rank things, and then we rank things again. It’s so clean. I wish there was some way that you could tack that onto the charter.”

Fries supports how McDonough prepares a budget for the Mayor and City Council to approve.

“I don’t want the Mayor to set the budget.  The way John does it, It takes the politics out of it,” she said.