Why a Vote on December 22?
We Wanted the Vote to Take Place on Election Day; the Town Board Refused.
The Town Board is the sole entity that can schedule a referendum vote. We asked the individual Town Council Members to put Council Districts on the ballot this past Election Day. They refused and told us to collect petitions. We asked them not to challenge the petitions and they refused.
The Largest Petition Drive in Town History
We organized the largest petition drive in Town history: 123 volunteers collected 788 pages of petitions and nearly 4,000 signatures. We submitted the petitions to the Town Clerk as soon as we had enough signatures to withstand challenges. We had no control over the timing of the vote. The Town Council was then forced by the law to schedule a vote. We only wish they had put it on the ballot on Election Day as we had requested.
Petitions drives almost always result in special elections. That is the way petitions work under the law.
For Five Years, the Town Board Refused to Allow a Vote
It is important to know that five years ago, a group of citizens asked the Town Council to put Council Districts on the ballot and were told the same thing: go collect petitions. They collected enough signatures, but technical challenges invalidated those petitions. The challengers were political insiders who later went to jail for fraud and selling Town jobs. The organizers then demonstrated a desire for a vote by collecting enough signatures and asked the Town Board, but for five years the Town Board refused to let the people decide.
The Town Board Wanted Us to Voluntarily Withdraw Our Petitions
The Town Board wanted us voluntarily to invalidate the very petition process they told us to follow. They wanted us to stop collecting signatures and submit before we had enough to withstand a challenge. How foolish we would have been to do that? They literally complained that we collected too many signatures.
After refusing to put the issue on the ballot for the last five years and refuisng to put the issue on the ballot for Election Day, the Board wanted us to postpone a vote until next November, We objected to a year-long postponement. Joye Brown wrote a Newsday column objecting to the request for a one year delay. “Five years of foot-dragging is enough. Let the people decide! And that ought to be sooner, rather than one more year later.” Here’s the full column: http://www.newsday.com/columnists/joye-brown/put-bid-to-get-ward-system-in-huntington-on-ballot-now-1.1550543
Here’s why we objected to the sudden demand that we delay for a year:
We collected nearly 4,000 signatures from residents asking for a vote now, not next year. The residents of the Town of Huntington have been waiting on this vote since 2004. We have waited long enough. We want to people to vote on this issue.
If the Council District proposal passes, the Town Board must draw the new district lines, a process that will take many months or as much as a year. It will require public hearings and public input. Waiting until November 2010 will not leave enough time to draw district lines so that candidates can prepare for the 2011 local elections. Candidates need to organize campaigns by the spring (the current incumbents kicked off their 2009 campaign in November 2008). Waiting on the new lines favors the incumbents. Community–based candidates may need a full year to put together grassroots campaigns. A delay of a vote until November would undermine the purpose of moving to Council Districts.
This issue was first raised in 2004. Many residents have worked on it for five years. We have had a large group of volunteers working since January to educate voters and put this up for a vote. It is unfair and unreasonable to ask these hard working volunteers to wait another year.
Response to Complaints about a Special Election
The political insiders who protector the status quo complain about the cost of a special election. If the Town Board was concerned about the costs of a special election, why did they not schedule the referendum for this Election Day? Why did the Board require a special election for an ambulance district on December 8? If the Board is worried about too many elections, why has the Board not sought to consolidate school board, fire district, library district and fire district votes?
The vote on Council Districts will be run and paid for by the Suffolk County Board of Elections. The County Executive has endorsed the Town Council proposal. Are we to believe that all of a sudden the Huntington Town Board is concerned about the County Budget?
Opponents claim that the election will cost $250,000, but the County Board of Election does not know the cost and believes it will be a fraction of that amount. The election will cost less than 7 cents per Suffolk County resident. The opponents need to use facts, not scare tactics and exaggerations.