SECTION 1. INITIATIVE.

   The electors of the City shall have power to propose any ordinance or resolution, except an ordinance for the appropriation of money or an ordinance making a tax levy, and to adopt or reject the same at the polls, such power being known as the initiative. Only electors of the City may circulate initiative petitions. An initiated ordinance or resolution may be submitted to the Clerk of the Council by petition signed by at least ten percent (10%) of the electors of the City in which petition the petitioners shall designate a committee of the petitioners to act in their behalf. When so submitted, the Clerk shall forthwith determine the sufficiency of the petition and if found sufficient, the Council shall at once have the proposed ordinance or resolution read and referred to an appropriate committee which may be a committee of the whole. A public hearing, to be conducted in such manner and preceded by such notice, as the Council shall prescribe, shall be held on the proposed ordinance or resolution not later than thirty (30) days after the date on which such ordinance or resolution was submitted to the Clerk. The Council shall, within forty (40) days after such ordinance or resolution is submitted take final action thereon by enacting the proposed ordinance or resolution in the form submitted or in an amended form or by failing or refusing to pass the same. If the Council fails or refuses to pass such proposed ordinance or resolution or passes it in an amended form, the committee of the petitioners may, at their option, require that it be submitted to a vote of the electors either in the form submitted or in the amended form adopted by Council, provided that there is filed with the Clerk a supplemental petition signed by that number of additional electors which, when taken together with those who signed the original petition, will total at least twenty percent (20%) of the electors of the City. Such supplemental petition shall be filed within thirty (30) days after the passage by the Council of such ordinance or resolution or its repassage over the Mayor's veto, whichever is later. The date of such election may be fixed in the supplemental petition but not less than sixty (60) days from the time of filing such supplemental petition and the Council shall provide for submitting such ordinance or resolution to the vote of the electors at the date so fixed, or, if not so fixed, at the next general election in any year occurring more than sixty (60) days from the filing of such supplemental petition. An initiated ordinance or resolution, receiving an affirmative majority of the votes cast thereon, shall become effective on the fifth day after the day on which the Board of Elections certifies the official vote thereon.

(Amended 11-4-80; 11-2-10 )