MARQUETTE — The Marquette City Commission discussed possible amendments to the city charter during a Tuesday meeting.

City commissioners took the first steps in making amendments to the city charter, which would require approval by city voters in order for the changes to be implemented. The commission unanimously approved the resolution, which now will move on for ballot language to be drafted.

The six proposed amendments to the city charter come from a charter study group, which the city charter mandates that a group makes recommendations for changes to the charter every 10 years.

Proposed Amendment #1 has to do with scheduling of the city commission’s organizational meetings. Currently, the city’s meeting schedule is open for the commission’s choosing, with the exception of language that states “a regular meeting shall be held at 7 p.m. at the then prevailing local time on the Monday next following each regular city election.”

The amendment would remove references to dates and times for meetings and allow the meeting schedule to be fully set by the commission.

Amendment #2 aims to clarify the charter’s anti-nepotism language to include spouses of elected officials. “The language would prohibit the hiring of a City Commissioner’s child, grandchild, parent, grandparent, brother, sister, half-brother or half-sister; and it would prohibit the hiring of that City Commissioner’s spouse’s child, grandchild, parent, grandparent, brother, sister, half-brother or half-sister. It would not prohibit the hiring of the City Commissioner’s spouse,” reads the recommendation.

The clarification would rectify the language to prohibit the hiring of the spouse of a commissioner.

The third amendment has to do with the removal of term limits associated with appointments for boards and committees. Currently, the charter states that anyone who has served on a board or committee for six consecutive years is ineligible for a new appointment unless two years have passed. The charter study group says that this bottlenecks the process and leaves the city with many vacancies on various boards and committees due to these term limits.

The two-part Amendment #4 has to do with election cycles within the city.

Amendment #4a would remove the month requirement for local elections.

“Currently, the general election is the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, while the primary is the first Tuesday after the first Monday in August; but these dates can change at any time,” the amendment reads. “Presently, there is a push to get the Legislature to move the August date into June and to eliminate entirely the May election date. If the state were to make that change, we could have a statewide primary in June, a local charter requirement to conduct a local City Commission primary in August, and a general election in November.”

Amendment #4b would, in essence, remove the need for primary elections in the city of Marquette as the study group found that the city was spending money unnecessarily on primary elections when they haven’t had significant impacts on outcomes of elections. The recommendation also states that other municipalities such as East Lansing and Traverse City do not hold primary elections for local positions.

Amendment #5 would remove the requirement for the city to publish, in full, ordinances in the newspaper and use an alternative method to publish the ordinances.