Westminster – Residents of this city may be able to vote in November on whether they want a controversial Wal-Mart Supercenter at West 72nd Avenue and Sheridan Boulevard.
But that doesn’t mean opponents of the store, who have been petitioning to get the Westminster City Council to either kill the proposal or send it to voters, are happy.
“It’s an affront to democracy,” anti-Wal-Mart organizer Dino Valente said. “Let the citizens finish what they started.”
The bizarre turn of events began Wednesday when the Westminster city clerk revealed her count of the opposition’s petition signatures. Opponents had turned in two petitions in the hopes of reversing the City Council’s earlier approval of the store. Both needed 6,460 signatures to force the council to either change its decision or put the issue on the ballot.
Both petitions came up short but by only a couple hundred signatures.
Wal-Mart foes now have about two weeks to go out and collect more signatures for the petition. But if they do that, they will miss the city’s deadline for getting an issue on the November ballot, said Steve Smithers, Westminster’s assistant city manager. If the opposition gets the requisite number of signatures – and Smithers said city leaders expect they would – that would force the city to hold a special election.
“It just doesn’t make sense to push this over to what will be more than a $50,000-plus cost to hold a special election,” Smithers said.
The City Council will have a special meeting Monday night to formally decide whether to put the Wal-Mart on the ballot.
Valente said a special election is just what he wants.
He said if the council decides itself, absent the nudge from a petition drive, to put an issue on the ballot, it gets to determine the wording of the question. And, he said, a special election would focus attention on this one subject, while he fears the topic could get lost in the general-election clutter.
Valente said his group would gather more signatures regardless of the council’s decision.
“I’m not against an election,” he said. “But what this tells me is they don’t want the citizens to control anything in the government.”
Wal-Mart spokesman Keith Morris said his company would be prepared for an election, should it happen.
“The project was approved based on sound zoning principles,” he said. “Nothing was circumvented. Everything was done properly. We fully intend to make sure that sound decision by the city is upheld.”
Staff writer John Ingold can be reached at 720-929-0898 or jingold@denverpost.com.
