The Taylor City Council held its regular meeting on Wednesday, August 7, 2024, at 6:30 PM in the Taylor Municipal Building. The meeting covered a wide range of items including first reading of an ethics ordinance amendment, a public hearing on Judge Martha Snow, rezoning of a parcel, numerous departmental contracts and purchases, and open business discussions on the towing RFQ and FOIA requests. All seven council members were present: Charley Johnson, Angie Winton, Douglas Geiss, Jill Brandana, Lindsey Rose, Tina Daniels, and Angie Winton (Chairwoman Pro-Tem). The meeting adjourned at 9:17 PM.
Supported by Councilwoman Witten. Is there any discussion? Hearing none, all is in favor say yes. Yes. Yes. All is opposed to say no. Yes, is have it motion carried. Item 5.2 is a motion to approve the acceptance of the minutes of the meeting held July 16, 2024 and dispense with oral reading. Motion. Motion by Councilwoman Witton supported by Councilwoman Brandana. Is there any discussion? Hearing none, all is in favor say yes. Yes. All is opposed, say no. Yes, the seven motion carry. That brings us to mayor's communication. Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Item 6.1 is a motion to approve the first reading of the amendment to the code code of ordinances, chapter 2, administration, article 3, division 3 standards of conduct. Is there a motion? Motion. Support motion by councilwoman Brandana supported by Councilman Johnson. Is there any discussion? Chairman. Councilwoman. Can we give an explanation of what the changes are? Mr. Plato? The Chair. Yeah, back on January 25th. I sent uh a memo to all the council members explaining what the changes are. There basically the changes are in three areas. The first is to be consistent with the donations policy that this council approved sometime last year, I think. Um there are certain gifts we didn't know we don't we don't want to be considered an ethics violation. For example, if the rotary um gives a scholarship to somebody uh in the rotary is doing business with the city that could technically be considered an ethics violation. So we we created those exceptions that are to be consistent with the uh city donation policy that's already been adopted. The other change was had to do with the process for filing an ethics complaint. Um the old ordinance said well the ordinance that's currently existing says that any complaint against uh anyone, any elected official in the city would come to the corporation council. Um what happens if you know the mayor or the administration or the corporation council is the one somebody wants to make an ethics complaint? Don't anticipate that ever happening, but um assume that's a possibility. Um I put in there to have an alternative method by which uh someone wants to file a complaint instead of coming through the corporation council, they can either go directly to um chair of the city council, Mr. Geis, or they can go to the ethics board, assuming we have one in place. And then the last change, which we talked about previously, is changing that part of the ordinance that currently requires there be a vote, a unanimous vote of the city council to place anybody on the ethics board. Uh the change would make that uh to be a simple majority of the council to appoint people to the ethics board. Um that's the way it's done in most other cities. Um Allen Park does that, Lavonia does that, um, and there's really no need to have unanimous approval of the entire council to appoint somebody to a board, and we obviously that's been an issue, and we need people to serve on the ethics board. Um, so we're trying to correct that situation. Thank you.