Five months after a retired election official questioned the legality of several Presque Isle City Council votes, including the 2025 municipal budget, the council voted 6-1 to approve changes to the ordinance that governs its voting procedure Wednesday.
The approval came after three rewrites of an ordinance that spells out council procedures, specifically in how it is interpreted when the council votes with fewer than seven seated members.
Operating with six councilors after the death of former Councilor Garry Nelson in October, the council approved Presque Isle’s 2025 budget by a 4-2 vote in December. In January, councilors voted 3-2 to elect Councilor Hank King as deputy chair.
Both these votes require a two-thirds majority of the council to be approved, according to both the procedure ordinance and the city charter. But prior to Wednesday’s amendment, the ordinance specified a supermajority to be five councilors. Neither of those votes met that requirement.
Presque Isle resident and former election official Jayne Farrin brought up the issue during a Feb. 5 council meeting.
“Wouldn’t it be better to revote these two motions, so the city of Presque Isle has a lawfully approved 2025 city budget and lawfully elected deputy chair, thus not opening the city to a possible question of liability or legal action?” Farrin said at the time.
The council reelected King as deputy chair 5-0 that night, but did not redo the budget vote. Several councilors who took office after it occurred said they didn’t feel comfortable voting on the budget when they were not involved in the budget process.
City attorney Richard Currier wrote in a Feb. 20 memo to councilors and then City Manager Tyler Brown that the vote was legal.
The council put the procedure ordinance to a rewrite and a public hearing — followed by two more public hearings as councilors tweaked the ordinance’s language.
The changes approved Wednesday remove a definition for a two-thirds vote altogether.
“For me personally, I would just trust the math to divine what two-thirds is,” Councilor Mike Chasse said. “I find it more problematic to give a two-thirds vote to a specific number, and even to pass a budget … because what if there’s only five of us and we say it needs five votes to pass a budget? Then you’re requiring a unanimous vote.”
Farrin and her husband, Steve Freeman, voiced their opposition to the changes during the public hearing on the basis that the rewrite still clashed with the city charter.
“Revising this ordinance has been a torturous process,” Freeman said. “I read this clause to mean that when there are seven qualified councilors, then the city budget can be passed with a simple majority vote of 4-3. If this is your intent, then you are putting the cart before the horse. You need to first amend the city charter.”
The council and Currier disagreed with that assessment, and the council voted to approve the amendment.
