For the week of February 5 - 11, 2003

Council returns Ketchum to previous election procedures

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By GREG STAHL
Express Staff Writer

A Ketchum debate centering on the methods voters use to select city council members is over.

In a 3 to 1 vote Monday night, the Ketchum City Council repealed a two-year-old ordinance that established designated seats for city council elections. The repeal returns the city to Idaho’s default format: at large elections in which the two candidates receiving the most votes win two available seats.

Monday’s vote was an anticlimactic finish to two years of sometimes-heated debates about the two voting systems. In three hearings last week, not a single public comment was made about the repeal.

Recognizing that the council may not act of its own volition to return the city to the at-large voting format, West Ketchum resident Anne Corrock took matters into her own hands.

On Dec. 23, Corrock returned an initiative petition 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 votes who participated in the last election. That number was 210.

After reversing a Jan. 6 vote to disregard the petition and establish an election, the city council had until Feb. 4 to repeal the per-seat regulations.

Corrock said she is glad the ordeal is over.

"The initiative process is not an easy process," she said. "It’s a way for the public to voice how they want their ordinances and their laws to be without having to go to an election.

"It’s the only effective way they can get their voice heard if they disagree with the council."

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