Charter Amendment: Removing Gender Specific Pronouns throughout City Charter (Measure 2-133)

At the November 2, 2021 election, Corvallis voters approved this Charter amendment. Unofficial results from Benton County Elections are as follows:

This amendment removes gender specific and binary pronouns throughout the Corvallis City Charter without changing the meaning of the amended Charter provisions. When possible, gender specific and binary pronouns will be replaced with the noun, title or position from the same sentence, paragraph or section. Where using a pronoun is necessary, the pronouns “they” or “their” are used as the singular non-gender specific pronoun.

This amendment removes the gender specific or binary pronouns from the following Charter Sections:

Explanatory Statement 

This measure asks the voters of the City of Corvallis to approve amending the City of Corvallis Charter by removing the gender specific and binary pronouns (“s/he”; “his or her”; “her or his”; and “him or her”) found in 32 locations in the Charter. The gender of City officers as set out in the Charter is irrelevant to the ability of the person to do the work of the City. Qualified people who do not identify their gender within the binary of male or female should not be excluded from City offices by language in the Charter. Pronoun references in the Charter are often unnecessary, and sometimes are ambiguous. Except to clarify that gender is not a qualification, this amendment will not change the substance of the charter provisions. The specific section and subsection for each proposed substitution is set out in the table below: