As times change and the Town of Monument continues to clean up verbiage in its municipal code to align with its Home Rule Charter, another pair of ordinances came up for review.

Town Council had its regular meeting Sept 16 at town hall where it continued one ordinance and approved another as it brings town code language in alignment with either modern municipality code language or Monument’s Home Rule Charter. The first ordinance involved amending Titles 3 and 5, which referred to revenue and finance, and business licenses and regulations of the town’s municipal code.

The ordinance involved a lot of definition changes and updating code sections to align it with the charter. Among the changes was having the annual proposed budget required to be presented by Sept. 30 instead of the code reading “the first town council meeting of September.” This reverts the code to match what is stated in the charter, Javon Quarles, associate attorney with the town’s contracted law firm, said.

The other major change was the publication of expenditures. The previous code required expenditures be published no later than 20 days after the town council meeting. With the approved ordinance, expenditures are reported in a quarterly publication.

Involving business licenses and regulations, presently the town clerk has the authority to revoke a business license should the licensee not meet an established list of conditions. The process allows the licensee to be able to appeal the revocation to a hearing officer. However, it was asked if the ordinance should define who the hearing officer would be.

Other suggestions for changes to the code was to allow the town council to intercede if it feels the process was not executed properly, Quarles said. Another option would be to appoint a committee to act as the “hearing officer” with 2-3 council members serving on it.

After council members discussed the options, town clerk Tina Erickson suggested if the situation happened, town staff would hire a hearing officer. The same process is described elsewhere in the town code, specifically involving the Fair Practices Act. In a circumstance of a potential violation towards the act, a hearing officer is to be appointed.

“That’s what we have done in the past is just found qualified hearing officers,” Erickson said. “The reason we were supposed to do that, I believe, is it removes any kind of bias from staff and council. It also affords the opportunity to find someone who is qualified to run a hearing and is familiar with evidentiary procedures and processes around hearings, and has all that legal expertise.”

Others on council seemed to prefer the suggestion.

“I’m okay with that for the time being,” Mayor Mitch LaKind said. “That made a lot of sense.”

Council approved to continue the ordinance to allow time to change its language as directed and return it to the council for approval at its Oct. 7 regular meeting.