Alderman at Large Vic Zitta is scheduled to report tonight on his review of the name-removal process that ultimately killed a citywide petition drive last fall.
Zitta reported preliminary findings of his review, which included several errors that had occurred in the city’s review of the petition, at the Feb. 1 meeting of the mayor and Board of Aldermen.
If successful, the petition would have brought the issue of whether to build a new justice complex near the Miss. Highway 25 Bypass to a public vote. The city election commission’s review of the final petition eliminated 120 names from it, causing it to fall short of the amount of names required to force a vote.
Zitta, a proponent of the petition, criticized the process at the Feb. 1 meeting. Holding up a newspaper with a story about Iraqi elections on the front page, Zitta said, “We have sent troops to Iraq to give the people the right to vote; I don’t want to have to send troops to Starkville to enforce the right to vote.”
He made a motion that an independent committee be set up to look over the documents for more errors, but withdrew the motion before aldermen voted. Aldermen decided to hold the justice complex issue until today’s meeting at 5:30 p.m.
The petition, which called for aldermen to halt plans for the new municipal justice complex and allow Starkville citizens to vote on the issue, circulated in the summer and early fall.
A petition must have 10 percent of the registered voting population’s signatures to be valid. Controversy surrounded the issue after a lengthy review of the petition determined that not enough names were on the list to support a referendum.
However, during the Feb. 1 meeting Zitta presented several inaccuracies he had found in the petition verification.
“How many mistakes are you willing to live with?” Zitta said.
He pointed out several cases in which names were removed from the petition and were marked as not being registered voters, but those names did appear on the voter rolls.
Zitta also noted some signatures he said he could clearly read, but were deemed illegible by the verification committee.
“If you have 2,600 names, you’re bound to make some mistakes in putting [them] onto a spreadsheet,” Davis said.
Some people signed the petition two or three times, and they had to be removed, which reduced the total amount of signatures, Davis said.
Another issue that concerned supporters of the petition was that a counter-petition was circulating at the same time, which allowed for signers to remove their names from the original petition.
The counter-petition was circulated by the Police Benevolence Society, a group supporting the proposed new justice complex. Zitta said, uniformed policemen acquired signatures for it in their patrol cars at the beginning of its circulation.
Zitta said he thinks the fundamental issue here is allowing people to vote or not.
Seth Stephenson, a senior majoring in interdisciplinary studies and a member of the Student Association, spoke at the meeting during the open forum for citizens.
He said he thinks that since there are questions about the process, the board is obligated to do something.
“If they’re really concerned with doing the right thing, they should take every measure to prove the process has been absolutely legitimate,” Stephenson said.
Davis said he feels the matter will be resolved soon and that the building will most likely be built at its current proposed location at the proposed cost. The board will decide on this for the third time, he said, since this is the third petition in opposition to the building of the complex.
Current plans call for the complex to be built near the Miss. Highway 25 Bypass near Wal-Mart with money loaned to the city by the federal government, Davis said. Starkville would become one of only five cities in the United States to receive this type of loan.
The money would be paid back at a 4 percent interest rate over a period of 30 years, and there will be a 15 percent increase, as opposed to the 30 percent increase some believed was the case, Davis said.
Zitta said he thinks the new building is necessary but could be built at a lower price. He also thinks it should be built closer to downtown.
He said he believes that moving government facilities away from the town center tends to cause decay, so everything should be arranged around the historic center.
Davis said the bypass location is justified because it met certain criteria including not being located close to a school. Also the tax increase will be about $5 for a retired or disabled person who owns a $100,000 home or $22 to $25 for a family with the same value of property, which is not as severe as some fear, he said.