An emergency measure is an ordinance for the immediate preservation of the public peace, property, health, safety, and welfare; or providing for special emergencies in the operation of a municipal department, in which the emergency is set forth and defined in a preamble thereto. The Council may, by an affirmative vote of five members of the Council, pass emergency ordinances to take effect at the time indicated therein and such ordinances shall not be subject to referendum. Ordinances appropriating money may be passed as emergency measures, but no measure making a grant, renewal or extension of a franchise or other special privilege, or regulating the rate to be charged for its services by any public utility, shall ever be passed as an emergency measure.
(Amended 11-3-15)