GRAND HAVEN, Mich. — Grand Haven’s city charter is a thick, old book that sits on a corner desk in the city council’s chambers. It is more than 60 years-old and some of its language reflects that.
“Currently, all male pronouns are used throughout the documents. So whether it's city clerk, city manager, city, attorney, council member, mayor refers them on the male form of the pronoun,” Grand Haven City Manager Pat McGinnis explained.
On Election Day next Tuesday, voters in Grand Haven will be asked if they want to change those ‘he’, ‘him’ and ‘his’ to ‘they’, ‘them’ and ‘their’ in the city charter.
The official ballot language states “Grand Haven City Council proposes that gender biased pronouns in the City Charter (such as he/she, his/hers, him/her) be deleted and replaced with gender neutral pronouns (such as they/their/them).”
“It doesn't have any real impact on how we do things, it only makes the charter agree with the fact that we do not discriminate based on gender, non-gender, we just appoint and hire and elect the best people for all these positions,” McGinnis added.
Just twenty minutes north in the city of Muskegon, a similar proposed change is on the ballot.
“The City of Muskegon Charter would be amended to change all gender all specific terminology to gender neutral terms, making it clear that the Charter applies equally to all persons regardless of gender,” reads the ballot proposal.
“It won't change anything in terms of rules or powers or anything like that related to the city, but what we wanted to be was just more inclusive.” Muskegon City Manager Frank Peterson said. “The charter of the city was done 40 plus years ago, at a time where everything was just ‘he, he, he’, and right now we're trying to be a little more gender-neutral, a little more inclusive,” he added.
A simple majority 'yes' vote on both of those, would allow the city to make those updates to their respective charters.
