Petitioners opposed to Vision Fund changes fall short of valid signatures

RAPID CITY – Petitioners wanting city leaders to put Vision Fund changes to a vote of the people came up short just 211 valid signatures.

City Finance Director Daniel Ainslie and the City Attorney Joel Landeen held a press conference with local media on Monday. Ainslie said that only 2,496 valid signatures were collected, not enough to meet the 2,707 requirements to place the issue on the November ballot.

Ainslie explained that on Friday July 12 at about 4:45 PM the City had received about 266 petitions from the group looking to refer the recently adopted revisions to the Vision Fund ordinance. He said the preliminary number was 2,998 signatures.

On further review over the weekend Ainslie found a couple of signatures that were crossed out. “We’re not sure if whether it was the organizer or the signer themselves.” Once the individual signatures that have been crossed out or left blank were removed, there were a total of 2,975.

Officials then began the validation process on Monday. “This included six different staff members reviewing a portion of the petitions: checking to make sure the petition had been notarized, signed by the signer and the circulator themselves, the date of the signing and the notarization were made between legitimate dates, and most importantly going to the Secretary of State’s website to validate voter registration.”

Ainslie said they again reviewed the signatures that were declined using a two-step process. “We would have two staff members that would agree that a signature was illegible, that the individual wasn’t registered to vote or whatever the issue might be.”

Ainslie said that a total of 479 petition signatures were invalidated due to violations of various state statutes and administrative rules governing petitions. “The largest number of that was 310 were invalidated because they weren’t registered to vote. There was incomplete information for 49 signers, many didn’t include their county or their address. There were 32 where the names were illegible. There were 36 signatures where the circulator and the notary were on a separate sheet of paper than the actual petition itself which is a violation of the administrative rules. Once you add all of those up, there were 479 that were thrown out. Signatures that were in violation of one or more statutes were only counted as one.”

Resident Marci Burdick, who helped gather signatures, said invalid signatures aside, the amount of people who sought her out to sign can not be ignored. “We have asked the city for the documentation that supports their decision, and we are anxious to get that and review it. Our petition drive fell short, but what should not be missed is that over three thousand people signed the petition. In the city’s own reckoning, just short of 2,500 people were registered Rapid City voters. I can’t think of another issue where that many people have come out in opposition to the Council’s action. And they’ve done nothing about it.”

Burdick said the modifications this time are the most substantial since the inception of the Vision Fund. “It’s the first time the Council has removed requirements that citizens are involved. It’s the first time the Council has removed the guardrails on the funds so much so that they’ve even taken out the language that the fund must be spent in Rapid City. Those were the issues that galvanized a wide swath of people. This effort brought together constituencies that have never been on the same side of an issue. And to be honest, you know, there’s that phrase that you can’t fight City Hall. I didn’t want to fight City Hall. I simply hoped they would listen to me when I went to testify on the changes to this ordinance and they turned a deaf ear to significant opposition at that time too. They said trust us.” Burdick told Native Sun News Today that she had no reason to trust them in the way they’ve made this ordinance change.

A local group, ‘Liberty and Justice For All’, organized the petition effort.

“We advise anyone wishing to run for office or who plans to initiate a petition drive to be aware of the often necessity to collect a significant cushion of signatures,” Ainslie said. “It’s not uncommon for groups and candidates to submit 10-25 percent more than the number of signatures needed as it’s common to have signatures set aside for a variety of reasons.”

(Contact Marnie Cook at cookm8715@gmail.com)

The post Petitioners opposed to Vision Fund changes fall short of valid signatures first appeared on Native Sun News Today.

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