GREENFIELD — City Council’s Appointments and Ordinance Subcommittee will discuss amending the citizen referendum section of the city charter, requiring a citizen’s petition to have 750 signatures in 30 days in response to a council decision.
The Appointments and Ordinance Subcommittee will host a public hearing July 10. Following the hearing, which will address potential changes to sections 7-7 and 7-8 of the city charter, the subcommittee will bring a recommendation to the full council to vote on an amendment to the charter.
As it stands, citizen referendums require 319 signatures from registered voters who reside in Greenfield, which is the equivalent of 10 percent of the voters from the last biennial election in November 2017.
City Council Vice President Penny Ricketts said at Wednesday’s subcommittee meeting, “The council doesn’t want to allow every vote of the council to be challenged by petition.”
“It’s just way too many months and/or years of work that now we’re supposed to forget because someone found a loophole,” Ricketts said. “What we want to do is close up that loophole.”
Precinct 6 City Councilor and mayoral candidate Sheila Gilmour and Precinct 2 City Councilor Mark Berson agreed that the number of signatures needs to be higher.
“The bar should be higher, it shouldn’t be 10 people derailing 13 people who were elected,” Gilmour said. “You could find 10 people who would disagree for every vote we’ve taken.”
Gilmour also qualified that it shouldn’t be impossible to get signatures needed in a given time period after the council’s vote.
Ricketts noted it should “be work to get signatures.”
“It is work, but if you believe in it, that’s what you’re going to do,” Ricketts said. “If you have to go door to door to door to get your 700 or 1,000 signatures, that’s what you’re going to do.”
The task of amending the charter came about after Greenfield resident Al Norman filed a lawsuit against the city.
Norman submitted a citizen’s referendum petition after the March 20 council vote that removed zoning laws from a majority of the French King Highway corridor overlay district in exchange for a vote to approve the library project. His intention was to pause the zoning change and send it to the ballot box for a citywide vote this November.
Former City Councilor Steven Ronhave also filed a petition in protest of the City Council’s March vote to approve financing for a new public library. That petition, signed by 452 registered voters, was certified and the voters will decide the fate of the library in November.
However, the city ruled Norman’s petition was invalid and later noted the process had changed following a tweak to the charter in 2017. Norman protested, calling it a clerical error that led to a substantial change in the petition process.
Along with requesting the council put its March 20 votes on zoning before all the voters on the November ballot, Norman also requested an amendment to the charter. He said his hope is that sections 7-7 and 7-8 of the charter can be combined or rewritten.
“They’re linked and they refer to each other in a confusing way. The language needs to be streamlined,” Norman said in a phone interview Thursday. “One section, 7-8A, has some word changes made by persons unknown at the statehouse.”
He said he would like the process to be “simple, easy and clear about how to get a referendum, so any resident knows how to do it.”
Those interested in commenting on potential changes or bringing up ideas of their own amendments to the citizen referendum section of the charter are encouraged to attend the Appointments and Ordinance Subcommittee’s public hearing July 10.
“That’s the point of this whole thing — what does the public have to say?” Ricketts said in the meeting. “Let’s hear from them.”
Reach Melina Bourdeau at mbourdeau@recorder.com or 413-722-0261 ext. 263.