The Slidell Charter Review Committee seems about ready to submit a series of charter changes to the full council.

There will be one more meeting on Nov. 18 in which the committee will go over the final language of the charter changes and vote on which ones should be submitted to the council. The ordinance with the changes and a call for the election must be presented to the council by Dec. 8. The council must vote on the ordinance by Jan. 12. If the ordinance is accepted, it must then go to the Louisiana Secretary of State for his approval to be put on the ballot.

Tuesday afternoon, city attorney Tim Matheson submitted a list of proposed changes with the appropriate language to appear on the ballot. That list will be mulled over by the committee and decided upon at the Nov. 18 meeting. The charter changes deal with several issues from elected officials’ salaries to how the mayor can transfer money within a city department, to what the mayor should include when he presents the budget to the council. There are also other housekeeping changes that would get rid of certain sections of the charter because they are not needed anymore.

The changes for elected officials’ salaries do not set actual dollar amounts for councilmen, mayor or police chief. Instead the changes state that the salaries shall be decided by ordinance during the budget process. Also the raises will not exceed the percentage of increase to all city employees.

Another proposed change would control how the mayor transfers funds among the various departments. The mayor can transfer funds among programs within a department, however, if he wants to transfer funds between divisions within a department, he must get the approval of the council. The original wording allowed the mayor to transfer money between divisions without approval.

There is also a change in which 4 percent of the city’s operating revenue will be put aside each year to pay for major infrastructure projects.

Under a proposed change, the council could hire an attorney independent of the city attorney’s office changing language that forbids the council from hiring outside legal counsel.

In case of an emergency, such as a hurricane, where the council has to pass emergency legislation, the charter states that the legislation must be either signed or vetoed by the mayor within 12 hours of passage of the ordinance. A proposed change would take into account a situation in which the mayor were absent during an emergency. The new language states that if the emergency ordinance is neither signed nor vetoed by the mayor within 12 hours, it automatically becomes law.

The city charter states that all elected officials are to be sworn into office on the first Monday in July following an election. A proposed change would have elected officials sworn into office on July 1 following the election.

Under a proposed change, the now-defunct title of clerk of the council is officially changed to council administrator.

Currently under the charter, a former council member may not be hired by the city for a year following his term on the council. The proposed change would strike that prohibition allowing a councilman to work for the city as soon as his term in office is finished.

Finally, voters will be asked if the city will get rid of the current code of ethics because the city is now under the new state code of ethics which is much more strict than the city code.

However, before voters can decide on any of these changes, the Charter Review Committee must vote on the changes at 4:15 p.m. Nov. 18 in the City Council Chambers. Whatever changes are agreed upon will be sent to the whole council to be voted on Jan. 12.