Don’t put council district proposal on November ballot

Published 1:30 am Monday, July 31, 2017

If Everett Districts Now fails to obtain enough signatures to put their council district proposal on the November ballot, I would strongly encourage the Everett City Council to not place their proposal on the ballot, as some have suggested. Aside from the obvious political motivations of an election year, I’m perplexed as to why this option would even be considered.

Placing the EDN plan on the ballot would establish a bad precedent. If the council disregards the threshold defined in the city charter for this proposal, wouldn’t the council be obligated to lower the bar for other future petitions as well? Twenty percent is a tough hurdle, but it’s tough by design to make sure only proposals that have broad community support find their way to the ballot.

Also concerning is the desire of several councilmembers to advance the EDN plan without even knowing how many signatures have been obtained! It was mentioned several times at last week’s council meeting that this petition would have qualified for the ballot in another year. First of all, how could anyone possibly know this to be true if the petitions are not turned in and validated? Secondly, even if we assumed EDN has the rumored 3,000 signatures, at no point over the preceding eight general elections would this figure have met the minimum requirements, even in the lowest voter turnout years!

If the council feels compelled to “do something” on this issue then I would suggest the council draft its own proposal. True, “perfection cannot be found,” but a better plan certainly can be.

Michael Swanson

Everett