Last night Houghton approved four resolutions to make additional editions to the city’s charter. Earlier in the year Houghton submitted its charter to the state attorney general’s office as regularly required every few years. The city had chosen to clarify some of the language within the document.
Now, a while back we had mentioned, okay, the state’s good to go with these charter amendments and then they weren’t. And honestly, so I’m just saying earlier this year, the council approved four charter amendment language resolutions for the proposed changes recommended by the charter commission. – Eric Waara, City Manager, City of Houghton
The city’s changes were limited to creating gender-neutral language in the document, and clarifications for the layperson. The attorney general has returned the city’s initial editions, requesting simple formatting changes, and some further clarification in the document. The format changes requested by the state will bring the city’s charter into standardization with fonts, and spacing.
And the third one, and it’s in the third resolution, which would be 1987, they wanted some wording changes that the state thought would just clarified things. And if the AG asked for it, honestly, folks, let’s say yes as we go. But you could see by the highlighted text there, they just wanted it tweaked a little bit. – Eric Waara, City Manager, City of Houghton
In a similar vein, the city updated the ADA policy coordinator for the Transit Authority. Previously Houghton would approve an individual to be named as the ADA coordinator. Former city treasurer Jodi Reynolds, who was also the Transit Authority director, had been the ADA coordinator while with the city. Houghton approved adding the Transit Director title as the ADA policy Coordinator, effectively naming Treasure and Transit Director Gale Kappineimi–Gerard to the position. In the future, the city will not need to separately approve the ADA coordinator role.
