City Of Emergency

The City of New Cordell appears to be in a state of emergency, if the city council’s actions in 2019 are any indicator.

The overwhelming majority of new ordinances and ordinance amendments enacted by the council during the past year included the council invoking the emergency clause, making those changes and new ordinances effective immediately instead of 30 days later as required for normal ordinances under Oklahoma law. According to the approved minutes of the 2019 city council meetings, the council voted on 17 new ordinances or amendments during the year. In 16 of those cases, the council voted on the emergency clause, invoking it 14 times.

The new ordinances enacted by the council included regulations on trailers and commercial vehicles, ownership and restrictions on pets, licensing for commercial marijuana cultivators, processors, and dispensaries, adding public nuisance abatement costs to customers’ utility bills, and bringing the city’s alcohol regulations into conformity with state code. They also passed ordinances to address questions about the mayor’s eligibility to serve as an ex officio member of city boards and commissions and the ineligibility of council members to serve on citizen boards. Other new ordinances included routine housekeeping items, such as the allocation of the city’s use tax and changes to the employee retirement system.

Additionally, the city amended several ordinances which would, under normal operations, require a 30-day waiting period before going into effect. They amended the newly-passed ordinances on trailers and commercial vehicles and the commercial marijuana ordinances, in both cases again invoking the emergency clause. They also amended older ordinances regarding the definitions, licenses, and occupational taxes permits for alcohol, the use of utility vehicles and golf carts in the city, and the city’s vendor, solicitor, and peddler permits.

The council also approved an amendment to the city’s ordinance regarding the display of merchandise for sale on sidewalks and passed a new ordinance that triggers an automatic three percent utility rate hike every year. In these two cases, the motion to invoke the emergency clause did not receive the required three-fourths vote of the full council.

In every one of these 16 instances, the city council invoked, or attempted to invoke, the emergency clause with neither discussion nor statement issued about why the situation required an emergency response.

The only ordinance passed by the city council in 2019 that did not include at least an attempt to invoke the emergency clause was regarding a one percent sales tax increase to help support Cordell Memorial Hospital. That ordinance merely codified the results of a September 2019 referendum election set to take effect Jan. 1, 2020.

When asked why the city so frequently invoked the emergency clause and why the issues involved posed an emergency to the city, Mayor Jerry Beech referred the question to city administrator J.C. Moser, who said the emergency clause allows for ordinances and changes to have immediate effect and could be used for anything that has to do with the preservation of peace, health, or safety.

“Mayor Beech asked me to send you the reason the ordinances passed by the City Council of the City of New Cordell contain emergency clauses,” Moser wrote in an email to The Beacon. “If the City Council agress the ordinance should be passed with the emergency clause then they have the option to pass it with the emergency clause which makes it go into effect immediately instead of 30 days after passage. An emergency clause is anything that has to do with the preservation of peace, health, or safety. All in all, if an ordinance is passed it will go into effect.”

Oklahoma law, however, contains a slightly different definition of emergency and also includes specific requirements for such a declaration.

“Every ordinance except an emergency ordinance shall go into effect thirty

(30) days after its final passage unless it specifies a later date,” reads Title 11, §11-14-103 of the Oklahoma Code. “An emergency measure necessary for the immediate preservation of peace, health, and safety shall go into effect upon its final passage unless it specifies a later date. Such an emergency measure must state in a separate section the reasons why it is necessary that the measure become effective immediately. The question of emergency must be ruled upon separately and approved by the affirmative vote of at least three-fourths (3/4) of all the members of the governing body of the municipality.”

State law also requires the publication of all ordinances, in full, within 15 days of passage unless said ordinances are passed with an emergency clause. Passage of an emergency clause requires publication of the emergency ordinance by title only.

Title 11, §11-14-106: “No ordinance having any subject other than the appropriation of monies shall be in force unless published or posted with fifteen (15) days after its passage. Every municipal ordinance shall be published at least once in full, except as provided for in Section 14-107 of this title...”

Section 11-14-107, Paragraph E allows for the publication of emergency ordinances by title only, but under the same conditions as a normal ordinance.

“Ordinances which are passed by the governing body with an emergency clause attached are not required to be published in full, but may be published by title only in the manner provided by Section 14-106 of this title.”