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After a study session discussing Charter changes, BoMA met one more time to approve their Charter changes to be submitted to state legislators.

City Attorney Stephen Worsham spoke at request of Mayor Ray Knowis regarding the changes made in the study session.

“You will recall that we met on Monday night with Honna Rogers and she has worked tirelessly with Mr. Quick and I in order to incorporate the changes that were made during the last meeting,” said Worsham.

Worsham stated the particular issue he wanted to focus on was “our having the legal ability to also address the election of board of education members as well as BoMA.”

He said that under consensus, BoMA believes they have the authority to do so, so a provision was placed in the charter that doesn’t lay out the “electability” of various board members (due to the potential of extended terms), but provides a framework to do so. He said there was a private act that could be added in the event of state legislation having questions about the provision. He said the other changes “were just house-keeping items” that Rogers addressed and changed.

An issue regarding the Board of Education’s 2024 election was brought up. Mayor Pro Tem Jenna Amacher made a motion to amend language that would ensure the Board of Education election of 2024 would be in November, and Alderman Bobbie Wilson agreed language should be changed, as the current language said the election would be changed to November in 2026.

City Administrator Jason Quick responded to these questions by saying that after talking with the Coffee County Election committee, there was concern the Charter would not be ratified in time to make the change for this year, as the requirement for such a change would be to have the Charter ratified by Feb. 16 of 2024, which would not be possible.

Amacher called for point of order so that the motion could be put on the floor and discussion could continue after a second. Wilson seconded.

“I reached out to the state election commission for some guidance on this,” Amacher said. “There’s a little bit of misconstruing. We don’t have to cancel the primary or anything like that. So long as we have a decision by the end of April, or possibly May. We already have an election in November.”

She said the timeline would have to be the same in order to have BoMA elections in November of 2024. She added it would be no different than the process for the municipal elections. She said the Party primaries do not concern the city as far as language in the Charter.

“It will be up to the party to figure out what they want to do with that. This will just simply be moving the election the same way that we are trying to move the aldermanic election,” she said. “I see no reason to put that off. The language would not have to change any further in the Charter.”

She added that the board does want the elections to be at the same time, “and maybe that will address Mr. Sandlin’s comments. He wishes that we could get rid of the 2025 election to save us some money so we can do that here and now. And he also hopes to make it ‘a little less divisive and partisan.’ Well, our elections are not partisan.”

She said that moving the elections would only serve to get citizens more involved in local issues.

Alderman Derick Mann asked to hear from Worsham again, who said “I don’t disagree with that. We can try that, and if it doesn’t work, the legislators may kick it back to us and we can take care of it then. It makes sense to me.”

Alderman Kurt Glick said he “just wanted to state [his] agreement with Ms. Amacher. I don’t really see any reason to delay the election to 2026 for one and then change ours, so I think they should both be changed and the sooner, the better.”

Quick spoke again, saying that he was only explaining County Election Commissioner Andy Farrar’s concerns, as candidates running in the Board of Education election have already met certain deadlines for candidacy. He added that as a person in a non-partisan position, he will do as asked by the BoMA, he just wanted to inform them of that opinion.

Amacher again said that the change from August to November will not affect the primary. “That is their partisan primary, that has nothing to do with citizens, they can choose what they want to do with that primary.”

Alderman Daniel Berry’s concern was that the language was not quite “enough” to clarify their intentions. He said he spent several hours trying to figure out exactly how language should be added into the Charter. He added that he did it based off of 2026, due to the amount of changes needed.

There was further discussion about language specifics surrounding term extensions for the Charter. Worsham proposed they have a back up plan in case the language wasn’t worded correctly enough for state legislators, which Berry agreed with. Amacher then amended her motion to change the language from 2026 to 2024. The vote passed unanimously.