By LESLIE EIKLEBERRY
Salina Post
The Salina City Commission's decision Monday night to allow Salina residents the opportunity to vote on a petition-driven proposed ordinance that would limit the commission's ability to impose restrictions on businesses or citizens in response to public emergencies is a step in the right direction as far as Kevin Korb is concerned.
"I am pleased that the commission decided to put it to a vote and let the citizens decide. That’s what we were aiming for," Korb told Salina Post.
Korb and a group of Salina citizens spent many days this summer collecting more than 2,000 signatures on the petition.
A summary of the proposed ordinance is as follows.
"This ordinance prevents the City of Salina Governing Body from enacting any ordinance, in response to a public emergency, that imposes restrictions on businesses or citizens, leaving that responsibility to Saline County and subject to the Kansas Emergency Management Act."
Once the petition was verified by the Saline County Clerk's Office as having valid signatures, it was delivered on July 28 to the city clerk. At that point, the city commission had 20 days to react to the petition. Options included adopting the proposed ordinance in the petition, seek a declaratory judgment as to the validity of the petition and proposed ordinance, put the proposed ordinance on the November ballot, and do nothing at all and force Korb and his group to take the matter to court.
"Obviously, it would have been my preference to not spend time defending it in court, but I feel confident in the legal premise behind the initiative and the opinions of the attorneys that reviewed it," Korb said.
At the Aug. 16 city commission meeting, adopting the ordinance died for lack of a motion. That lack of motion also fulfilled the city commission's responsibility to act on the petition within 20 days. During that meeting, commissioners also defered discussion about the next steps to Monday night's meeting in order to allow city counsel time to pull together the additional information that commissioners requested in order to make a decision on how to proceed.
After meeting with city counsel in executive session Monday night, commissioners voted 3-2 to approve a "resolution authorizing the city's legal counsel to file suit in Saline County District Court seeking declaratory judgment and associated legal remedies regarding the validity and status of an initiative and referendum petition and proposed ordinance." They also voted 3-2 to put the measure on the November ballot. Mayor Melissa Rose Hodges and Commissioner Aaron Peck voted against both measures.