Franklin resident wants charter changed so councilman can be removed

A Franklin resident asked the Franklin City Council to change the city charter in order to allow for the removal of a councilman for missing too many meetings.
Ella Hamilton did not name the councilman, but said that District 3 (actually District C), where she lives, is not being properly represented because the elected councilman has not attended a meeting since February of 2022.
But the city charter does not provide clear expectations of its council members’ attendance at meetings, she said.
“I don’t know when the charter was written or who wrote it, but the charter does not explain enough,” Hamilton said. “It explains a lot about (the expectations on) the mayor, but not about the council. I’ve got a charter here and it only says that a vacancy should come only through death or resigning, and none of this is happening.”
“I want the citizens of District 3 to know, District 3 is not being represented. We need a representative in Disrict 3. We need a lot of work in District 3. I understand we have a lot of other councilmen, but we need someone on the ground in District 3.”
District C Councilman Larry Guilbeau Sr. has not attended a meeting in some time, she said.
“If you are going to miss a meeting, something should be in that charter pertaining to that,” Hamilton said. “January of 2022 to now, which is October of 2023, one of our councilmen has never been to a meeting. Something needs to happen with District 3.”
Hamilton said that if nobody else runs for that council seat, the current councilman can run and remain in office and continue to be paid for being a councilman even if he doesn’t attend any meetings.
She added that work needs to be done in the district, for instance, at one of the railroad crossings where the street is in such bad condition that people’s cars are being torn up.
“This used to be a beautiful little town, but this town is going down because District 3 needs help,” she said. “Y’all help us. Help us to get this together.”
Mayor Eugene Foulcard thanked Hamilton for having the courage to bring the issue to the council, adding that he served as the chairman for the original charter commission from 2000-04, with the charter voted into service in 2006.
“The councilman in question was sworn in on July 1st of 2022 and he may have come to two or three meetings after that, but be that as it may, we are going to review that,” Foulcard said, before asking City Attorney Russell Cremaldi to explain the process that would be needed to make a change to the charter before the council addresses the issue.
“I’ve been asked how do you go about amending the charter,” Cremaldi said, explaining there are two routes for making changes to the charter. “Right now, Miss Hamilton is correct. Basically, the charter says you hold your office unless you die, resign, or unless you are removed from office under some legal process that’s set forth in state law. That does not include missing meetings. That’s not part of the charter.”
An amendment to the charter to set forth a requirement for holding the office, or for removing someone from the office, must be voted on by the public, Cremaldi said. The amendment would have to be specific about what is necessary to trigger a disqualification or removal from office, such as missing a certain number of meetings in a year.
The first method for amending the charter is for the City Council to draft an ordinance saying they want to have a detailed proposition to be placed on an election ballot.
The second method, if the council chooses not to seek to amend the charter, is to circulate a petition and have one-third of registered voters in the city sign the petition. That is difficult because the petition must be very specific, and the petitions have to be verified. Often that process eliminates some of the signatures as invalid — for instance, one person in a household can’t sign for multiple people in the household.
The amendment would then likely be submitted to a bond attorney who works with the state in order to submit it to the Secretary of State’s office to be included on a future ballot. Since the bond attorneys routinely submit bond election items to the Secretary of State to be included on ballots, Cremaldi said, they are familiar with the process of coordinating with the Secretary of State’s office.
“I can tell you that if any council member here wants to work on such an ordinance, I’ll be happy to work on it with them,” Cremaldi said. “It’s really going to be up to the council, if the council wants to move (on amending the charter). If the council doesn’t want to move, the people can move. It’s not easy, but the people have the right to move. If you’re going to petition, the petition has to say exactly what the change is going to be, so it takes some work to get the wording of the petition done. And then it would take one-third of the registered voters of Franklin to sign. If that happens, then that petition would be presented to the City Council. It would then be sent to the Secretary of State and he would put it on a ballot with some election coming up next year.”
Foulcard said the council would take the issue under advisement.