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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5.
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.
When the petition is found to be sufficient, the City Administrator shall so certify to the Council at its next meeting, stating the number of petitioners and the percentage of the total number of voters which they constitute, and the Council shall at once read the ordinance and refer it to an appropriate committee, which may be a committee of the whole. The Council shall thereupon provide for public hearings upon the ordinance, after the holding of which the ordinance shall be finally acted upon by the Council not later than 65 days after the date upon which it was submitted to the Council by the City Administrator. If the Council fails to pass the proposed ordinance, or passes it in a form different from that set forth in the petition and unsatisfactory to the petitioners, the proposed ordinance shall be submitted by the Council to the vote of the registered voters at the next election; but if the number of signers of the petition is at least 200, the Council shall call a special election upon the measure. Such special elections shall be held not less than 30 nor more than 45 days from the date of final action on the ordinance by the Council or after the expiration of 65 days from the date of submissions to the Council when there has been no final action; but if a regular election is to occur within three months, the Council may submit the ordinance at that election. If the Council passes the proposed ordinance with amendments and at least
four-fifths of the committee of petitioners does not express their dissatisfaction with such amended form by a statement filed with the City Administrator within 10 days of the adoption thereof by the Council, the ordinance need not be submitted to the registered voters.
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