Presque Isle city councilors moved Tuesday to schedule a third public hearing in their effort to revise council voting procedure.
The council is working to amend an ordinance that outlines its procedures, to eliminate discrepancies in voting requirements between the ordinance and the Presque Isle city charter.
Both the charter and council rules require a two-thirds majority to pass the city budget and appoint, terminate or suspend those in positions appointed by the council, such as city manager.
But council rules specify that a two-thirds majority is at least five votes of the council’s seven members, or four votes for a simple majority, needed for all other matters. The city charter does not include a required number of votes.
These discrepancies faced controversy in February after a retired election official questioned the legality of several council votes.
From October to March, the council operated with six members following the death of former Councilor Garry Nelson. In December, the council approved Presque Isle’s 2025 budget by a 4-2 vote, and in January elected Councilor Hank King to deputy chair, 3-2. These votes met the supermajority and majority benchmarks set forth in the charter, but fell short of the vote requirements under council rules.
A rewrite of the council procedure ordinance discussed at Tuesday’s meeting reduced the minimum votes needed to constitute a two-thirds majority from five to four, but Councilor Michael Chasse suggested eliminating the number requirement altogether to make the charter and council rules align.
Chasse acknowledged the wisdom in setting a minimum vote requirement, but cited a changing council landscape as reason for the change.
“I think what we need to think about now is there’s fewer and fewer people running for council and we could someday get into a scenario where there’s only five or six of us here and do we want to set a specific number,” Chasse said. “If we set a certain number and for some reason it’s budget time and there’s only five councilors, that could make it challenging to pass a budget.”
Presque Isle City Manager Sonja Eyler supported the recommendation.
The council announced Eyler as the city’s new permanent manager during the meeting after she held the role for more than two months on an interim basis.
“We’ve worked this a number of different ways,” Eyler said. “It simplifies it in a beautiful way, the way you’ve presented it this evening, so I would absolutely agree with that.”
An amended version of the ordinance will be presented for approval during a public hearing at the next council meeting on July 2.
Councilors also approved amendments to the city’s ordinance on conduct in public parks, recreation areas and facilities during Tuesday’s meeting.
The meeting featured the second public hearing concerning the revisions. Changes to the ordinance include designating certain public lands — such as Presque Isle Housing Authority and Sister Mary O’Donnell Homeless Shelter — as “safe zones.”
Title 30-A of the Maine Revised Statutes states that, “A municipality may designate an area of the municipality that is frequented by minors as a safe zone.”
“If a property is listed as a safe zone, drug trafficking crimes have much [more] severe penalties,” Chasse said. “I think the intent, at least from my standpoint, was to make the repercussions for that behavior in those areas that include the homeless shelter and the housing be more serious.”
The amendments also added cannabis products and marijuana products to the list of prohibited substances in parks and updated the definition of bicycles to include electric bicycles.
The rewrite of the ordinance presented Tuesday removed a section of the ordinance initially added that would have made it illegal — with exceptions — for “any person to sit, lie, kneel, or recline in any park or on any public lands.” A comment attached to the document states “Legal counsel has informed that is probably unenforceable and unconstitutional.”
