For the week of January 8 - 14, 2003

Election procedure placed on ballot of May 27 election

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By GREG STAHL
Express Staff Writer

Ketchum voters will head to the polls May 27 to sort out a long fought debate over the method of voting the city uses to conduct city council elections.

Ketchum resident Anne Corrock returned an initiative petition on Dec. 23 containing 250 Ketchum voter signatures to Ketchum City Clerk Sandy Cady. In order to force city action on the issue, she needed signatures totaling 20 percent of the number of voters who participated in the last election. That number was 210.

"The city council shall have 30 days to pass an ordinance substantially as proposed by the petition (to determine results of elections pursuant to open seating)," wrote Ketchum City Clerk Sandy Cady in a letter to Corrock. "In the event the council passes such an ordinance, the initiative petition shall be null and void.

"In the event the council does not enact an ordinance pursuant to open seating, an election shall be ordered to be held on May 27, 2003."

The Ketchum City Council voted 3-1 at its meeting Monday not to take action on Corrock’s petition.

"Let the voters decide," Councilman Maurice Charlat said.

Councilman Baird Gourlay voted against the no-action vote and said he hoped the city council might resolve the issue without going to the polls.

City Attorney Margaret Simms pointed out that the council could change its mind within the 30-day time period, which began ticking Monday night. She also said it is not unheard of for two petition-initiated ballot issues to occur at the same time.

The election debate began two years ago when the Ketchum City Council voted unanimously, with Charlat absent, to change the way the city conducts its city council elections. The council enacted a designated seat system where candidates must select the seats they wish to run for and citizens are allotted one vote per race. Previously, the candidates receiving the most votes were elected to available seats. In a multitude of meetings in the last two years, arguments were made for and against both systems, but people in each camp were not swayed.

Last fall, the Ketchum City Council declined to seek voters’ opinions on the matter, and Corrock, who was a candidate for city council in 2001, started collecting signatures on Oct. 16.

"We just felt that there was no other way to get this resolved," she said. "To wait for the city to do it, they just put us off every time we stepped forward."

Cady said that an initiative petition has not gone as far as this one during her 20-year tenure with the city. The rules for an initiative petition are the same as for a recall or referendum petition, she said.

 

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