I am writing to ask the City Council on March 16 to send back to the Appointments and Ordinances Committee their vote on section 7-7 of the City Charter regarding Citizen Initiatives for further deliberation and recommendation.It makes no sense to me that it is more difficult for citizens to be proactive in participating in our city’s democracy by utilizing the Citizen’s Initiative (section 7-7), which enables voters to bring a new idea to the City Council that it has never voted on, than it is to utilize the referendum process (section 7-8) to challenge a vote the City Council has already taken, by referring the issue to the ballot for all voters to decide.The current section 7-7 is a mess: the required signatures level is too high and the process itself takes over a year and should not require two separate gatherings of signatures.I would like to see a process that makes section 7-7 and 7-8 similar in process and in signature requirements, so that the process is easier for citizens to understand. Last November’s vote against increasing the number of signatures needed for 7-8 shows that the majority of voters want the process for signature gathering to be easier and more streamlined.So, I ask the City Council to send this back to the Appointments and Ordinances Committee and that councilors rewrite section 7-7 to match the signature count and process of section 7-8.
Edward Cottrill
Greenfield
