[BoulderCouncilHotline] Ballot Measures

[Yates, Bob]

Council Colleagues:

I want to thank Rachel and Aaron for bringing forward to this evening's meeting a further discussion on 2020 ballot measures. As Aaron and Rachel have observed, we have recently received advice from Boulder County Public Health on the limitations around collecting in-person signatures for the four certified resident-initiated ballot measures. Our council colleagues have proposed that city council conduct a public hearing to consider placing the four resident-initiated petition measures on the November ballot ourselves. Without commenting on the merits of the respective ballot measures, I support Rachel's and Aaron's request for a public hearing, as described below.

By way of background, city council will recall that we first considered this question at our meeting on April 14. At that meeting, not all council members were present and we did not take a formal vote on whether to hold a public hearing to consider placing these four resident-initiated measures on the ballot ourselves. Rather, the city attorney offered to attempt to come up with a mechanism whereby the leaders of the four petition ballot measures could possibly collect petition signatures electronically. His proposal was presented to city council the following week, at council's meeting on April 21.  Members of city council, as well as ballot petition leaders themselves, saw flaws in the proposal, and it did not earn sufficient support to progress. This is the same conclusion reached by city councils across the country as they have considered similar emergency petitioning proposals. Subsequently, Boulder County Public Health issued guidelines around in-person petition signature gathering, prompting Rachel and Aaron to make their requests over the last few days.

City council has until the end of August to vote to place council-initiated measures on the November ballot. Our practice has been to conduct public hearings on council-initiated ballot measures during the summer, prior to making those votes in August. Indeed, council's Charter Committee will be making recommendations on three or four other council-initiated ballot measures at the end of May, and council will then schedule one or more public hearings on those matters over the summer. I propose that city council add to those summer public hearings consideration of the four resident-initiated petition ballot measures, as proposed by the petitioners, assuming that they do not present sufficient petition signatures by the Charter-imposed deadlines. While this would be a significant departure from council's typical process and practice, and should not be viewed as a precedent in the future, these are extraordinary times, calling for extraordinary exceptions.

No one should assume that my support of the request for council to hold public hearings on the four resident-initiated petition ballot measures indicates that I will ultimately vote in favor of placing any or all of them on the November ballot. I will reserve that judgment until after city council has heard from the community at the public hearings on the matters this summer.

Best,

Bob




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