Nelsonville City Law Director Jonathan Robe said if you put 10 lawyers in a room and ask them the same question, you will get 15 different answers. However, since the passing of Issue 23 to abolish the Nelsonville City Charter of almost 30 years, Robe has found himself racking his brain for even one answer.
The case is the first of its kind in the history of the State of Ohio. According to the Ohio Municipal League, 250 cities in the state have charters and the Ohio Constitution provides a framework for cities to establish them. However, no city has ever abolished a charter, and there is no state legal protocol to guide officials through the transition.
Issue 23, a citizen-led issue to abolish the charter in favor of the state’s mayor-based government blueprint, passed with 70% of the vote in November 2024. The charter will remain in effect until Jan. 1, 2026, at which point the city will default to the statutory mayoral government. However, Robe said the language of Issue 23 means the transition will not be so simple.
The most notable difference in the timeline is the statutory form of government requires three readings to pass an ordinance, then a month after the third reading for the ordinance to take effect, while the city’s current charter only requires two. However, Robe said his biggest concern was the implication of the extra reading on reinstating certain city services such as the police and fire departments.
“When the charter was adopted in 1994, the charter very cleverly solved that transition problem by saying, ‘The police department as it now exists shall continue to exist,’” Robe said. “Issue 23 doesn’t have any of that language in reverse … so the council’s only authority that they have right now is under the chart.”
Robe said police and fire departments cannot exist under both the charter and the statutory law. When the charter is abolished, those departments also are abolished until they are officially reinstated by the new mayoral government.
The process requires three readings and a wait period of one month after the third reading to go into effect. Robe said it would be around mid-February before police and fire departments would be properly up and running again unless the City Council is able to put a special election on the ballot to amend Issue 23 to include some transitory “magical legal language.”
Nelsonville City Council President Gregg Clement has taken the initiative to put forth a different solution. At its special meeting Tuesday, the Nelsonville City Council passed an ordinance to hold a special election May 6 to amend the city charter to include a mayoral position.
Ordinance 06-25 was enacted by a special council vote in just a single reading under emergency rule to meet the Feb. 5 deadline for the municipal primary election. All but one member of the council voted in favor of the ordinance.
Clement said he believes Ordinance 06-25 offers a different path that preserves the home rule of Nelsonville’s charter and grants the wishes of the 70% of voters in favor of Issue 23.
Clement said he also believes the charter sours the appetite of the council and citizenry to speak to more pressing matters.
Nelsonville barely made the 2020 Census’s 5,000-person requirement to be considered a city and not just a village. Clement said with his only desired term coming to a close at the end of 2025, less headway than he wanted had been made on a city economic planning committee.
He questioned whether the abolition of the charter is the best way to address the issues Nelsonville is facing and doubts it will meet the requirements of a city by the 2030 Census.
“In the last week, Councilman Jonny Flowers, as on a couple occasions, made the statement that citizens in the city were not happy with members of the current council, so instead of voting those people out of office, they chose to upheaval the government and go back to a mayoral form of government,” Clement said. “Why didn’t some of those 70% of people run for office to vote out the members they didn’t want?”
Robe said he is sending the case up to the Ohio Supreme Court, and Clement said the next council meeting will see a special advisory board sworn in to facilitate the transition. Meanwhile, time marches on toward 2026, when Nelsonville’s government remains slated to return to how it was in 1993.
