Alderman at Large Vic Zitta covered the tip of his index finger with blue ink Tuesday night, to no avail.
A blue-fingered Zitta, aping Iraqis who voted in free elections Jan. 30, made a motion that aldermen thoroughly investigate the review process of a petition that has been a source of conflict in Starkville for months.
“This needs to be investigated in great detail,” Zitta said.
His motion died without a second from another alderman.
City residents launched the petition in the summer of 2004, hoping to bring the issue of whether to build a police station and municipal court at the Miss. Highway 25 Bypass near Wal-Mart to a public vote. The review process eliminated 570 names from the petition, leaving it short the amount of names it needed to count.
Zitta opened his presentation on the issue Tuesday night with a review of some of the names that he had found to have been entered incorrectly into the spreadsheets that documented the validity of the petition signatures. He gave a similar presentation to the mayor and Board of Aldermen at the Feb. 1 meeting.
After Zitta’s presentation, about 10 people from the audience stood up and spoke on the issue. Most of those who spoke criticized the board, saying that it had not been fair throughout the petition process.
Audience member Jim Mills said aldermen had taken it upon themselves to decide this issue, and that they had not taken any consideration for the opinions of the citizens.
“This Board of Aldermen, with the mayor, [is] attempting to jam this facility down the throats of Starkville residents,” Mills said to the board, which brought applause from the audience.
A letter sent out from the Petition Review Committee after Zitta’s Feb. 1 presentation said 21 names had been erroneously disqualified and could be counted in the total amount of signatures.
Zitta said he felt the number would increase with a closer look at the signatures; only about 121 signatures of the 570 that were not accepted in the total count were examined, he said.
During his presentation, Zitta read several names from an overhead projector, but was corrected several times by the board for reading names that had already been investigated. Mayor Mack Rutledge and city attorney Katherine Kerby corrected him on one particular name, saying it had already been found to be legitimate, but Zitta insisted on further investigation of the names.
Kerby then addressed the question of whether the voting rolls were up to date; she said the elections commission went through the rolls and manually added or deleted what names required either action.
As of July 20-the day the petition signatures were first examined, the voting rolls were up to date, Kerby said. Some of the names that were removed were not on the rolls, and those who registered after that date were not allowed to be added to the petition, Kerby said.
“The petition failed because it only had 1,415 signatures on it,” Kerby said.
The petition needed either 10 percent of the population’s signatures or 1,500 people; the petition only had to meet whichever number was smaller, but it met neither requirement, Kerby said.
Even with the additional 21 names, the petition still fell short of the required number by 64 signatures, she added.
“There is no need for further action on this petition,” Kerby said.
Josh Foreman contributed to this article.