1999-06-16 Charter Commission Minutes

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Page 7 of 11 Thank you Commission members, for holding this meeting. This is a good start on it. I guess it seems a little bit like we have a cart before the horse because we don’t have any particular proposals to reflect on although we certainly have this chance to make some specific input. The only input I’d like to make at this time is just to the one issue of holding a special election and I think just based on the grass roots democracy concept of special elections traditionally have an extremely low voter turnout so what we’d have is an election that would be based on, I’m sure, way less than half of our population, probably a very small fraction. I’ve heard of figures like 14 to 20% maximum come out for special elections and I just think that decisions about a Charter which is a document we will live with for the next ten years, there is no need to rush into a situation like that and I think that we would have a better chance to appropriately educate the public on the issues and then see the kind of turnout we get in a general election to respond to those so I think any particular issues that might come up, I don’t see that there’s any emergency or any health and safety issues that would require us to hold a special election. We also know it would be a very costly endeavor and the cost would increase with providing the proper education to the public because it would require, to adequately inform the public, mailing out voter information. Just expecting people to get information from the newspaper, I think would be a little scanty. I suppose we could have a whole lot of public forums but again in a special election, these kinds of things are not well attended either so I just urge you to put all these proposals forward in the general election for the public to decide. Thank you very much. RAY: Okay. Thank you. Bob Jacobson. Are there any questions for Ms. Jacobson? IRVINE: I didn’t have any questions but I could give her those statistics on how many people turned out in the last special election. RAY: Sure, this is just purely informational. Go ahead, Ms. Irvine. IRVINE: In 1979 we did have a special Charter election. There were 37,606 registered voters at that time. 9,128 votes were cast which meant that 24.2% of the people voted. The regular election that year had a turnout of 78.5%. RAY: Everybody understand that? Okay. Bob Jacobson. BOB JACOBSON: Good afternoon. Thanks for coming and doing this work. I just had a couple of things. First off, I think that Del Pranke’s ideas regarding the Sunshine Law are really important. I think that’s one of the critical things that ya’ll should be looking at. If there’s going to be any discussions of changing any Sunshine Law provisions, strengthen them, don’t weaken them in any shape or form. I think that it’s really important to try to keep people involved in the government as long as there’s some sunshine, I think people are going to have some faith in the process. If there’s any mistake being made, please err on the side of public disclosure. Things can always be fixed up from that angle and I’ve heard a number of different, to change the topic, to a number of other areas that have been discussed and I know that you have not met and you don’t really even know what your agenda, in terms of these items, is going to be but so be it. I think first off, the special election: I really do worry about the fact that as whether we can educate people because you only have to give 45 days notice after you make your recommendations to call for the special election and 45 days to plan for an election, I think any of those who’ve ever run for any kind of elective office, know that 45 days is almost no time at all to educate the public; that 45 days is just a heartbeat really and I think unless there’s some major overwhelming reason to call for the election and I really cannot see it, it would be best avoided. I know that when Julie went over the budget, there’s just file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 6-16-99.html7/1/2011