Renton City Council unanimously agrees on ballot title for library location; ballot statement still in work

First, my standard disclaimer.  I am only speaking for myself in this blog, not the council overall.  This is my understanding of the current state of this issue, and opinions expressed are mine alone.

At Monday's council meeting the Renton City Council adopted a resolution which officially informs the County Elections Division that we wish to place the downtown library location on the August 7, 2012 ballot.  In addition, the resolution finalizes the council's proposed wording for the ballot title, which has to be a succinct statement of the issue and is limited to 75 words.  The resolution was adopted unanimously by the six councilmembers in attendance at Monday's meeting.  What was also notable about Monday's meeting was there was no audience comment, which I believe indicated general satisfaction with the wording of the ballot title by the members of the public who have been watching the issue closely.  The resolution that the council adopted can be read here.

The council was under a tight deadline and had to act on Monday to meet the election calender, so we dropped all reference to the complex issue of costs from the ballot title in order to reach agreement  The Council now has two weeks to compose and approve a 250-word explanatory statement for the voters pamphlet which must describes all the effects of the voter's decision.  This statement will need to include cost figures, so we have to reach agreement on how to communicate these costs in this two week period. 

I personally feel that part of describing the costs is capturing and communicating the costs of re-purposing the existing building on the Cedar River in the option where we move the library to the Piazza location.  To me, capturing this cost is necessary since the ballot title says the building will be re-purposed in this situation, so voters must have an idea what they are agreeing to.

Because we are facing a two-week deadline, the council has agreed to have Rich Zwicker (Council President) and me (Council President Pro-tem) work with our City Attorney on a proposed explanatory statement to present to the rest of the council.  Rich and I will be starting our discussion in the next day or two.

When we have some draft wording for this explanatory statement, we will communicate it using official council channels as best we can under the tight deadline.  I will also include it in a follow-up entry to this blog.

Note that there will be two other vital communication steps after we have completed our explanatory statement.  The first of these steps is for the City Clerk to arrange for two committees to construct promotional statements for the two options for the voters pamphlet.  That is, a committee will write a statement in favor of moving the library to the Piazza, and another committee will write a statement in favor of remodeling the existing library.  These statements, along with rebuttals to the other committee's statements, will be included in the voters pamphlet.  The final format can be seen in this example from the library election two years ago.

The second communication step is the most important one of all-- the CAMPAIGNS by the political committees advocating for each of the two locations.  While the ballot title and voters pamphlet wording are very important, informed voters will make their decisions based on the detailed arguments that the two campaigns put forward.  These arguments take more space than the voters pamphlet offers, and will typically be put forward by websites, mailers, doorbell fliers, signs, email, word-of-mouth, social networking sites, phone calls, forums, and all manner of communications.  In a democracy this is the most important step of all, and I would encourage anyone with a strong feeling on this issue to find the campaign that shares their position, and join in.  You will be participating in democracy at its finest.