Council sends limited Charter change to voters

LAKEWOOD – City Council Monday backed away from a proposal that would have all but eliminated special elections called by citizens, and instead will send to voters a proposal that would double the City Charter-mandated length of time the City Clerk’s Office has to arrange elections dealing with initiatives or referendums.

If approved by voters in November, the ballot measure would give City Clerk Margy Greer up to 180 days, instead of the current 90 days, to set and conduct elections forced by citizen petitions. The proposal resulted from Greer’s concern over the cost of conducting such elections.

A special election, Greer said, could cost the city nearly a quarter-million dollars more than the approximately $30,000 it pays to participate in annual countywide coordinated elections, Greer told City Council.

“We don’t take Charter changes lightly,” said Mayor Bob Murphy. “But this is a problem that really should be fixed, and certainly the clerk given more time. And there are a lot of options out there.”

The proposed fix that came out of Monday’s public hearing is a far cry from the original proposal brought to City Council.

That plan, which also would have required voter approval, called for putting all citizen-initiated referendums and initiatives on a November ballot as well as giving Greer’s office more time to put together an election.

That proposal could have kept referendum proposals from the voters for as long as 18 months and could take even longer to get initiatives to a vote.

The original proposal also would have given City Council the power to call special elections at their discretion.

Initiatives propose new, citizen-conceived ordinances that City Council has not or will not bring to public hearing. Referendums seek to overturn previous City Council actions. Both require Council to either adopt the proposals as presented or send them to voters for a final decision.

After two previous study session discussions of the issue, Council seemed to be leaning toward sending the originally proposed wide-sweeping Charter amendment to voters going into Monday’s meeting.

But the change in direction was revealed early in the public hearing when Murphy indicated a hybrid version of the proposal might be the best way to proceed.

“There is really no perfect solution,” Murphy said.

Seizing that opening, Councilwoman Karen Kellen suggested the two problems – the high cost of elections and too little time for Greer’s staff to prepare – could be answered without wholesale changes in the Charter’s initiative and referendum procedures.

Of the two issues, Kellen said, “the timeframe that the clerk needs to get it done seems to the primary issue we need to get resolved here,” suggesting that both concerns could be addressed by doubling Greer’s preparation time to 180 days. That would eliminate much of the extra cost by paring what Greer said are prohibitive staff overtime costs incurred in the rush to complete pre-election work.

“If we have to bring in a lot of extra people and you have to work a lot of overtime, you’re going to pay a lot more to get the job done,” Kellen said.

Council also considered a suggestion by Councilwoman Diana Allen that would have placed the timing of petition-driven elections up to the petitioners.

“The way that its written now right now, we are just telling them (petitioners) we can take up to six months to give them a vote,” Allen said. “My question is: is there a possibility to write it where its more flexible … to put it with a coordinated election if the parties who brought it forward are agreeable?”

After discussing Allen’s idea, Council decided not to include it in the ballot question.

Ward 1 Councilwoman Vicki Stack urged Council to leave the Charter intact and look at other ways to solve the staffing problems.

“Why are we changing a Charter when it is an internal problem that needs to be fixed,” Stack asked before casting the lone opposition vote when Council decided 10-1 to send the 180-day extension to voters in November.

The only citizen-initiated special election in the city’s history was the 2007 “Switch for the Ditch” election that overturned a controversial Council-approved land swap.