Signature stalemate

Friends of the Farmers’ Market, the folks who gathered more than 9,000 signatures to keep the Saturday market in its longtime downtown space, learned this week that the signatures that were turned into the City Clerk’s Office May 12 had, as of May 20, not yet been transferred to the Butte County Elections Office for verification. Former Chico Mayor Karl Ory, who helped lead the initiative campaign, said he was told by City Clerk Deborah Presson that she’d been advised by the city attorney to hold onto the signatures.

City Attorney Vince Ewing told the CN&R he simply had not had a chance to examine the paperwork, which he said was sitting in a large box in the clerk’s office. The recently hired Ewing works out of a Los Angeles County-based law firm and had arrived in town on May 19 and said he would stay until Friday, May 23, as part of his regular schedule.

“The city clerk and I still need to evaluate what is in the box,” Ewing said. “It’s a very big box with a lot of documents. In this job I read a lot of documents, and this is on my list. With any sort of initiative or referendum, on our end the clerk and the city attorney look it over and then pass it on. Like I said, it’s a big box.”

The City Clerk’s Office confirmed last week (May 13) that the Friends of the Farmers’ Market had gathered 9,265 signatures. Only 4,750 signatures—10 percent of Chico’s registered voters—are required to advance the initiative.

Presson told Ory via email that Ewing wanted to allow the City Council to discuss the matter in closed session at its May 20 meeting. At that meeting, Ewing simply said three votes were taken during closed session, but did not give any details as to the subjects of the votes. Immediately following the closed session, Ory asked for more information, but Mayor Scott Gruendl said the matters couldn’t be discussed because they were brought up in closed session.

This isn’t the first time Ory has questioned closed-session meetings. Earlier this week, he sent an email to Gruendl:

“I was just told by the City Clerk that the petitions have been withheld from processing, although required by Election Code, at the direction of the City Attorney in order to be brought up in closed session,” Ory wrote. “At whose direction? It really is unfathomable that the City Clerk has been prevented from following state law and has suppressed petitions signed by over 9,000 residents. It is in pattern with recent undemocratic practices of the City. In secret session the opinions of biased staff and councilmembers go unchallenged. All of this stinks, we need fresh air and openness.”

Wednesday morning (May 21), Presson said she would most likely take the petition to the county, which will verify the signatures, that day. She said her office has 30 days from the day they are turned in, excluding weekends, to get the signatures verified, which means the deadline is June 24.

The initiative, if passed, would give the market a six-year lease and expanded use of the parking lot at Second and Wall streets where it has resided for the past 21 years.

Former City Attorney Lori Barker, who retired in April, had said the initiative did not comply with the state constitution in that it specifically “identifies a private corporation that may perform any function or have any power or duty.”

Ewing has concurred on that interpretation of the state law.

The CCFM’s attorney, Keith Wagner, said in a memorandum to Ory, that the “initiative measure spells out the details and terms of the farmers’ market’s operation, and does not grant CCFM the types of prospective, governmental consultation and decision-making powers that have caused other measures to run afoul of [the Constitution].”