City should put its cards on the table

By NewsPress Now

In a certain part of town, a vacant building in St. Joseph was once sprayed-painted with a simple, two-word message: Vote no.

That’s St. Joseph in a nutshell. It doesn’t matter what the issue is. If it’s on the ballot, specifically if it involves forking over tax dollars, then it’s best to just fill in the negative oval.

The conventional wisdom says St. Joseph voters are against everything and they’ll always vote the bums out. That’s what the dark-money groups are counting on when they flood the community with negative mailers.

But give St. Joseph voters some credit. The April 2 election showed a more thoughtful and nuanced view of ballot issues. Voters saw a $20 million school bond extension for the St. Joseph School District as bigger than the simplistic turf-vs.-teachers bullet point. The measure passed with 65% approval.

Voters looked past the recent school board dysfunction and re-elected LaTonya Williams, which says a lot about her standing in the community. Ken Reeder, another incumbent, was sent packing, but he was always a lightning rod. Perhaps voters felt that Reeder’s quixotic attempt to influence the City Charter election made him seem distracted from the task at hand for the Board of Education.

Most City Charter amendments passed easily, including measures on staggered City Council terms and a higher standard for removing the city manager. However, there were limits to the electorate’s agreeable nature.

Voters rejected proposed charter amendments that would have given the council the authority to establish or modify municipal departments. The other failed amendment would have moved the Personnel Board and Museum Oversight Board from the City Charter to the administrative code, giving elected council members more authority over both.

The failure of these two charter amendments was neither surprising nor regrettable.

Regarding the Personnel Board and the council’s ability to meddle with city departments, both changes could have degraded the whole reason for switching to a council-manager form of government. The Personnel Board, in particular, should be immune from political influence because it makes decisions on the discipline of city employees.

Those might be simple issues to resolve compared to a fight over museum funding and oversight. Even if the city has good reasons to consider a broader approach to museum funding – one that would require the St. Joseph Museums to share its allotment of tax revenue – it’s shocking to think that a major change would sail through with few questions asked.

People had plenty of questions, and they deserved to hear better answers before handing over what amounts to a blank check on museums.

Both charter issues deserved to die at the polls, not necessarily because they were bad ideas but because the city was less than forthcoming.

Maybe that spray-painted building should be amended to say: If the city’s not telling you what’s up its sleeve, then vote no.