The people of the City reserve to themselves the power, in accordance with the provisions of this Charter, to initiate and adopt any ordinance, except an ordinance appropriating money or authorizing the levy of taxes, to require such an ordinance when passed by the Council to be referred to the registered voters for approval or disapproval, and to recall elected public officials. These powers shall be called the initiative, the referendum, and the recall, respectively.
Any five registered voters may form themselves into a committee for the initiation of any ordinance except as provided in Section 6.01. Before circulating any petition they shall file a certified copy of their proposed ordinance with the City Administrator together with their names and addresses as members of such committee. They shall also attach a verified copy of the proposed ordinance to each of the signature papers herein described, together with their names and addresses as sponsors therefor.
The petition for the adoption of any ordinances shall consist of the ordinance, together with all signature papers and affidavits thereto attached. Such petition shall not be complete unless signed by fifty registered voters. All the signatures need not be on one signature paper, but the circulator of every such paper shall make an affidavit that each signature appended to the paper is the genuine signature of the person whose name it purports to be. Each signature paper shall be in substantially the following form:
Initiative Petition
proposing an ordinance to (stating the purpose of the ordinance), a copy of which ordinance is hereto attached. This ordinance is sponsored by the following committee of registered voters:
Name: Address:
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The undersigned registered voters understanding the terms and the nature of the ordinance hereto attached, petition the Council for it's adoption, or, in lieu thereof, for it's submission to the registered voters for their approval.
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At the end of the list of signatures shall be appended the affidavit of the circulator mentioned above.
All the signature papers shall be filed in the office of the City Administrator as one instrument. Within five days after the filing of the petition, the City Administrator shall ascertain by examination the number of registered voters whose signatures are appended thereto and whether this number is at least fifty. If he finds the petition insufficient or irregular, he shall at once notify one or more of the committee of sponsors of that fact, certifying the reasons for his findings. The committee shall then be given 30 days in which to file additional signature papers and to correct the petition in all other particulars. If at the end of that period the petition is found to be still insufficient or irregular, the Administrator shall file it in his office and shall notify each member of the committee of that fact. The final finding of the insufficiency or irregularity of a petition shall not prejudice the filing of a new petition for the same purpose, nor shall it prevent the Council from referring the ordinance to the registered voters at the next regular or any special election at its option.
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