A citizen-driven initiative is again looking to ask Soldotna voters if they support creating a home-rule charter commission.
Soldotna City Council Member Keith Baxter says the initiative efforts are being led by Linda and Dave Hutchings.
Baxter: ” “In light of the Soldotna district vote of the non-prepared food tax, which this district didn’t like that idea but it passed [in the borough], some people in the community including the Hutchings thought hey maybe people didn’t understand that home-rule would give us the ability to make these decisions locally for ourselves and we should ask the question again. And that’s totally within the rules, this time it is different because it is coming from a citizen group.”
In February of last year Soldotna voters failed the motion by the city council to create a charter commission which would have created guidelines for Soldotna to become home-ruled.
For this year’s citizen led initiative to be put on a 2016 ballot, 103 signatures of support must be gathered from Soldotna residents and submitted to the Soldotna City Clerk by February 3.
Baxter: “And if they have gathered the requisite number of valid signatures then the council will schedule whether to have a special election or to put it off until the next regular election at which point we wouldn’t be determining whether we’re home rule or not, it would just be yes or no are we going to elect a charter commission. We could double up [ballot questions] but if we don’t double up the next step would be ‘Who would be the charter commissioners?’.”
If voters pass the initiative and home-rule charter commission members are elected, they would then create a home rule charter for Soldotna voters to approve.