Objects in the Mirror Are Closer than They Appear

Getting the Referendum Petition May Be Harder than We Thought

KEY COLONY BEACH (July 28, 2023)--A group of concerned citizens in Key Colony Beach is fighting City Hall. They oppose the commission drive to build a massive replacement city hall at a cost expected to be two- to three-times more than neighboring Marathon's larger new structure. Laurie Swanson and Joe Schmidt are some of the citizens taking this action. Swanson is leading a petition drive to ask KCB to hold a citizens' referendum on the plan.

Under a KCB city ordinance, the people have "the power at their option to approve or reject at the polls any measure passed by the city commission."

"We've never done a petition like this before so I had been asking Silvia [Gransee, KCB's city clerk] for information since she is KCB's named supervisor of elections," Swanson said. "She didn't know most of the answers."

Gatekeeping ...
Are the City actions willful incompetence
or incompetent willfulness?

Swanson asked Gransee technical questions. Gransee in turn asked city attorney Dirk Smits who told her the group must register as a political committee (not true) and that they have to follow all the rules for a recall election. Those rules are considerably different than the requirements for a referendum and he's wrong. The City appears to be throwing up these roadblocks to stall or divert their constituents.

Smits took it on himself to write a "petition" for Gransee to give to Swanson. Gransee ran 200 numbered copies and had Swanson sign for them on Wednesday, July 26.

"The language is wrong. The format is impossible. And they expect us to hand write the ballot issue on every sheet of 200 or more petitions," Swanson said. "And we hadn't even requested the petition yet."

That petition was returned unused to the city.

On Friday, July 28, Swanson did ask Gransee for 500 "petition blanks" for the referendum. The request was very specific, right down to the language of the petition itself.

Gransee argued about the request "because you need only 200" signatures. She also insisted that every petition be returned to her, whether signed or not. She will again call on Smits to draw the city's response.

That was Part I. On to Part II...

Swansons's lawyer and Smits did plenty of expensive back and forth. Smits sent Swansons's lawyer a proposed petition to replace the one he (Smits) had improperly drafted. In just a brief glance, Swanson saw that it was "still non-compliant.

"Dirk continues to call it 'an amendment to the City of Key Colony Beach Code' which it categorically is not. Further, it doesn't have the requestor's name, the issuer's name, the count, or the date that are all spelled out in our code." The yellow highlights show some of the discrepancies.

"Matt," she said, "we're afraid Dirk is trying to game us."

Gransee printed 500 copies of that still-improper petition and had Swanson sign for it on August 3.

Meanwhile, another KCB resident indepently asked Gransee for 250 copies of a petition similar to Swanson's. Gransee provided 250 more copies of a petition form that is nearly word-for-word the same as the one Smits wrote for Swanson on July 26, including the blank lines for voters to write in the ballot issue by hand.

Recounting the facts so far:

1. Swanson did not request the "issued petition." Dirk Smits generated that document for his own purposes, because Swanson had asked Gransee a series of technical questions.
2. There is nothing in the code that says a citizen can't have two (or more) petitions active at once.
3. Swansons's lawyer gave Smits the required correction. Smits replied "Changes made." And then Gransee delivered 500 copies of the incorrect, non-compliant petition. Again.
4. The city, through Smits, is deliberately trying to circumvent KCB citizens' right of referendum. "The people shall have the power at their option to approve or reject at the polls any measure passed by the city commission..."

No one is sure if this gatekeeping is willful incompetence or incompetent willfulness but whatever the city calls it, it certainly appears as if they are purposefully using these obstructions to stall or divert the voters.

Stay tuned. There's more to come ...