The Portland City Council will hold a public hearing Thursday night on the charter commission’s eight proposals to reform city government that will appear on the Nov. 8 ballot.

The public hearing will be held during a special council meeting at 5 p.m. in Council Chambers, though people also may attend remotely via Zoom. After the hearing, the council will vote on questions and summaries to appear on the ballot.

Council members have the option to put summaries or the full language of each proposal on the ballot. They could choose to adopt summaries prepared by the commission or to revise those summaries, but they cannot offer competing measures or adopt the recommendations outright as they could with five citizen-initiated referendums that were placed on the ballot in early August.

The charter commission, which a year ago began to review and recommend changes to the key document outlining city government, concluded its work in July by approving a dozen recommendations consolidated into eight ballot questions.

The most significant recommendation would establish an executive mayor, replace the city manager with a new “chief administrator” and increase the size of the council from nine members to 12.

It would give the executive mayor the authority to nominate and remove the chief administrator, nominate all department heads and veto city ordinances subject to an override by the council.

Other proposals include the creation of a clean elections system with a mechanism to publicly fund candidates for local office, a new civilian police review board, an ethics commission and a code of ethics. A “school board budget autonomy” proposal would remove the requirement that the council approve the school budget.

Each proposal ultimately must be approved by voters to be enacted.

But first, the council has to decide what information about the proposals voters will see on the ballot. In a memo to the council this week, Acting Corporation Counsel Jen Thompson said the commission’s recommendations, if printed in full on the ballot, would require at least 18 double-sided pages.

Thompson said the summaries that the commission prepared for each proposal appear to meet state statutory requirements to fairly describe the proposals. “Having reviewed the summaries, it is also my opinion that they do not misrepresent the subject matter,” Thompson wrote in the memo.

If the council approves placing the summaries rather than the full text on the ballot, supplemental materials, including the full text of proposals, will be posted at polling places in November, said City Clerk Ashley Rand in an email.

In addition, Rand said, the city will work with a print shop to create a foldable packet of information to be sent 0ut with absentee ballots containing the full text of all charter commission proposals and citizen-initiated referendums.

In all, voters are likely to be asked to decide 14 ballot questions. On Thursday, the council will also hold a public hearing and vote on its own referendum question, which seeks to use gender-neutral language in the charter.

The five citizen-initiated referendums that already have been placed on the ballot concern short-term rentals, tenants’ rights, restrictions on cruise ships and a minimum-wage increase that would be paired with elimination of the sub-minimum or tipped credit wage.

Some councilors said they are hoping to discuss Thursday ways to ensure that the crowded November ballot is clear and not confusing for voters.

“I think we’re hearing a lot from constituents – I know I’ve heard from a ton of people in District 4 – saying (the citizens’ initiatives and charter questions) really need to be noticeably separate from one another so there’s no confusion,” said Councilor Andrew Zarro.

Councilor Roberto Rodriguez said in an email Wednesday that he also is worried that “bunching all the citizen initiatives and charter amendment questions together” may be confusing for voters, and he has suggested to the city clerk’s office that the two groups of questions be distinguished from each other by using letters for citizens’ initiatives and numbers for the charter proposals.

“I look forward to what other councilors will have to say about this and hope we can find ways to make the ballot as simple as possible for voters while making sure everyone knows exactly what they are voting on for each question,” Rodriguez said.

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