It’s budget time at the Greenfield City Council. Almost all other business gets swept aside for months. At its April 16 meeting, the council could decide to return the issue of citizen initiatives to the Appointments and Ordinances Committee for its May meeting, because the committee came up with no recommendation at all.
But the Appointments and Ordinances Committee always meets one week before the full council, so whatever it decides at its May meeting won’t be taken up by the council until June, at the earliest. It’s very possible that a vote on the future of citizen initiatives will not happen until July — five months after the committee decided to do nothing. What’s more, the committee carried the citizen initiative issue on its agenda for months (October, November, December, January) without ever discussing it.
This is an object lesson in how to kick the can down the road. If the council is going to spend months taking no action on this issue, the least they can do is what they did with the referendum issue: put it on the ballot and let all the voters decide. I am confident that citizens in Greenfield do not want to make it harder for all voters to have initiative rights.
Eric Hallowell
Greenfield