A pitched battle last spring over the future of a giant shopping mall will now have Castle Rock voters deciding how much democracy is too much democracy.
The November ballot in Castle Rock will ask if the percentage of voter signatures required on a referendum petition should be raised from 5 percent to 10 percent of registered voters, and whether the percentage on initiative petitions should go from 10 to 15.
The proposed threshold increases — — are a direct response to a referendum petition that was circulated this year challenging , a nearly 1-million-square-foot shopping center slated for the north end of town.
Castle Rock Mayor Paul Donahue said the current signature requirements to getting a question on the ballot invites outsiders to infiltrate the electoral process.
“We want the residents to decide if it is too easy for a special interest to come in and extort money from developers at the expense of the taxpayer,” he said.
The mayor said Idaho-based Wildlands Defense coordinated the fight against Promenade, which revolved in part around the extermination of hundreds of prairie dogs on the 166-acre site between Interstate 25 and U.S. 85.
He claimed that the group “hijacked” via the ballot box what was a legitimate land-use-approvals process in Castle Rock. after the developer agreed to pay for relocation of some of the animals.
Voters in Castle Rock, Donahue said, will need to decide the appropriate number of required signatures to allow for “a remedy but not for abuse.”
A referendum is a voter-driven challenge of an ordinance approved by a governmental body. An initiative is a law proposed by residents.
Deanna Meyer, a Colorado board member with Wildlands Defense, said the petition came about because the Town Council wouldn’t listen to residents upset over the prairie dogs killings. They didn’t take notice of the opposition, she said, until faced with the prospect of a ballot measure that threatened to scuttle the project.
Under the increased signature threshold being proposed, Meyer said, those opposed to Promenade would have come up short. — enough to make the 5 percent cutoff of 1,945 signatures but not enough to meet the 10 percent threshold of 3,890.
“It’s very undemocratic,” Meyer, who lives in Sedalia, said of November’s ballot measure effort. “In a democracy, everyone should be able to have the right to vote on something that affects them.”
But not everyone agrees that direct democracy is the best way to set policy. That’s what elected officials are for, they say.
Criticism has been aimed at the ease with which voters can change the state constitution in Colorado — for elections in 2015 through 2018, 98,492 signatures are required to get a measure on the ballot — and the potential that exists for elections to get gummed up with silly, confusing or contradictory ballot questions.
In 2008, state lawmakers put Referendum O on the ballot, which stipulated an increase in the number of signatures collected on a petition for a constitutional amendment. It narrowly lost.
Municipalities in the state are all over the board in terms of how many signatures they require be collected for ballot measures, but Castle Rock would be far from alone in requiring the 10 percent and 15 percent thresholds.
Colorado Municipal League leader Sam Mamet said this isn’t the first time a town or city tried to raise its signature requirements.
“I see it as an affirmation that the duly elected town council should be the primary decision-makers in the town,” he said.
Rachel Scarborough, a Castle Rock resident who successfully challenging a Town Council decision to ease restrictions on the open carry of firearms, decried the proposed threshold increase.
She points out that there have been only a handful of citizen-initiated measures to make the ballot — the town clerk says there have been two in the past five years — proof that the process is not abused.
“You’d be making it very hard for citizens to protest a decision made by the Town Council that may not be in the best interests of the community,” Scarborough said.
John Aguilar: 303-954-1695, jaguilar@denverpost.com or twitter.com/abuvthefold
