Voting revision rejected

Wasilla City Council says no to clarifying balloting procedure

Aug. 23, 2005

DARRELL BREESE\Frontiersman staff

WASILLA - One month after violating the Alaska Open Meetings Act while filling a vacant seat, the Wasilla City Council failed on Monday night to approve an ordinance that would eliminate any chance of a similar issue arising.

By a 4-2 vote, the proposal, drafted by councilor and candidate for mayor Diana Straub, failed after a lengthy debate in which each council member addressed the issue. The majority of the members felt that the guidelines set forth in Straub's proposed ordinance were better suited for an action memorandum, which serves as a policy guideline for the council and is not law.

"It would tie the hands of future councils as an ordinance," councilor Verdie Bowen stated. "As an ordinance, the only way to change the process would take two meetings (one for announcement and another for approval). If this were an action memorandum, I could probably support it with some adjustments."

Bowen was joined by councilors Ron Cox, Rob Sande and Howard O'Neil in favoring the legislation being in the form of a memorandum, as opposed to the ordinance Straub introduced, which would have established a legal procedure the body must follow in the future.

By definition in city code, a memorandum is simply an approval by the council on how it should proceed in relation to the topic at hand. A memorandum is open to being changed at the will of the council seated at the time and can be done without any public input or comment.

The council's desire to reject the ordinance troubled Straub.

"I'm disappointed," she said. "I believe this was an important ordinance addressing an area of ongoing concern for the city. Memory seems to be short as to the problems that have arisen, and this ordinance would have made the process easy to understand. Now we'll have to wait and see what solution comes forward."

The proposed ordinance called for establishing a step-by-step method to use when filling a vacant council seat and would have brought the process into compliance with the Open Meetings Act.

It called for all ballots taken to be marked by the council members in such a manner that the clerk could identify each councilors ballot. The ordinance would have also required any ballots to be tabulated by the clerk in the presence of two council members and two members from the public and would have had the ballots cast by the council read into the record.

Mayoral candidate Steve Stoll was confused by how the open process spelled out in the ordinance would have tied the hands of the council.

"The only way that the council's hands would have been tied by the ordinance is that they would have had to do things in public view," Stoll said. "No secret ballots or keeping the results from the public. When undertaking such an important action, I believe it is vital that the council have clear guidelines with how to act and how to inform the public of how they act. The people have a right to know."

Wasilla resident Anne Kilkenny was also troubled by the action of the council and questioned the use of the Borda balloting system that lead to the problem at hand.

"Why can't the council use the same type of ballot everyone else uses when voting for president or mayor?" Kilkenny questioned. You vote for the guy you want and leave the rest blank, and then the person with the most votes wins. It's a good system, it has worked for over 200 years.

"Now we will have to wait and see what new system for voting in secret the council can dream up next time we need to replace a council member," she continued. "Why not have an ordinance or code that says this is how things are done?"

Contact Darrell Breese at

352-2267 or darrell.breese@

frontiersman.com.