When necessary, for the preservation for the public peace, health, welfare, or safety, the Council, by an affirmative vote of at least four-fifths of the members elected thereto, may adopt an emergency ordinance which shall take effect upon passage. Such emergency ordinance shall set forth and define the specific facts designating the emergency. Such emergency ordinance shall require no public hearing and both the first and second reading may be passed at the same meeting. Such emergency ordinance shall be published as other ordinances after final passage. No ordinance granting a franchise or fixing a rate to be charged by a public utility shall be passed as an emergency measure.
It is not sufficient for the passage of an ordinance as an emergency measure to merely state the ordinance is necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, welfare, or safety, without providing additional rationale for passing the ordinance on an emergency basis. In the absence of such additional justifying language, electors shall have the right to exercise any referendum rights available with respect to the ordinance. If the emergency ordinance does not receive an affirmative vote of at least four-fifths of the members elected to Council on its first reading, the ordinance shall be deemed to have failed to pass at that meeting and shall require two additional readings and a public hearing before passage as required by Article III, Section 15 of the Charter.(Amended November 8, 1988; November 8, 2022; November 7, 2023.)