Democracy – The Recorder

Category: Democracy

Published: 5/7/2021 6:40:36 PM

There seems to be much gnashing of teeth about how the Charter Review Committee is destroying democracy by raising the bar for overturning City Council decisions. What actually destroys democracy is 300 people being able to hold an entire town hostage (and cost us an extra $500k+!) when a decision has been made by a democratically elected council.

Exhibit A: the anti-library petition that almost cost the town $10M in grant funds and backed up construction by most of a year.

Obviously there needs to be a way for citizens to petition their government, but it has to be a high-enough bar that a small group cant just stop our city from functioning. 1200/5% seems like a reasonable minimum, but perhaps give more than two weeks to gather the signatures.

If 300 people stopped the budget every year because of something they didnt like it in, we could quickly run into a constitutional/charter crisis.

Garth Shaneyfelt

Greenfield

See original here:
Democracy - The Recorder

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May 9th, 2021
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