Primary election results: Detroit voters appear to approve city charter changes
Voters in Detroit were approving changes to their city charter in the initial results of Tuesday's primary election.
It is the third time in four years they have been asked if they wanted to make changes to the city charter.
Voters in the city of 134 in eastern Marion County in the Santiam Canyon are deciding if they want to make changes to the charter that was last updated in 2012.
The biggest changes in the charter, if approved, are:
Reducing the number of signatures required for people running for office such as city council to 15 from 20.
Adopting language from the League of Oregon cities model with terms like objection instead of remonstrate.
Removing gender-exclusive language.
Language about city debt to coincide with state law.
And eliminating wording about full- or part-time citizens when it comes to who is eligible to serve on city council or planning commission.
After the city was decimated by the Labor Day wildfires of 2020, it has been difficult for city residents to return to the city. Estimates are that there are as few as 26 people who meet the primary residency requirements.
The current language differentiates between primary and part-time residents, saying five of seven city council members and the mayor have to be primary residents.
A primary resident is a person who lives in the city more than six months each year, is registered there, receives mail there, has a driver’s license at their Detroit address, and attends nine of 12 council meetings each year.
If the charter changes are approved, there would be no differentiation between primary and non-primary residency requirements.
Bill Poehler covers Marion and Polk County for the Statesman Journal. Contact him at bpoehler@StatesmanJournal.com
This article originally appeared on Salem Statesman Journal: Detroit's citizens appear to approve charter changes
