MAYVILLE – The Chautauqua County Legislature will meet Wednesday night with several amendments to the county charter on the agenda.
The three amendments will focus on changing the term lengths of legislators, as well as adjusting the salary for three county-wide elected position. A third local law involves adjusting the number of votes that would be needed when appropriating fund balance money.
The proposed amendment for term lengths would involve increasing the length from the current 2 years to 4 years, starting in January 2018. Even if the legislature approves the amendment tonight it would still have to go up for a public vote in November before being enacted.
In addition to the term length amendment, another focuses on increasing the County Executive’s salary from the current amount of $85,000/year to $92,500. The County Clerk’s salary is seeing a proposed increase from $53,000 to $55,500. And the County Sheriff’s salary would go from $82,500 to $85,000.
Both the county executive and clerk haven’t seen a salary increase since 2002, although the sheriff has received a couple raises since then.
A third charter amendment would involve increasing the amount of votes needed for using fund balance, should that force the fund to go below 5 percent of gross revenues. Currently a simple majority (10 out of 19 legislators) is only needed but the proposed amendment would increase that to a 60 percent (12 out of 19).
Wednesday’s meeting begins at 6:30 p.m. in the legislature chambers and is open to the public.
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