This is not exactly breaking news, but maybe its developing news.
The round-a-bout, or traffic circle, on the bypass has fallen behind and will be a couple of weeks before it opens.
It was originally scheduled for Sept. 4. Now they are saying Sept. 20. They are blaming rain late in the summer.
City Manager Steve Archer is hoping to get the state secretary of transportation to come down for an opening ceremony. There will likely be some sort of ceremony and grand opening regardless of whether the state official shows up or not.
The skateboard park is coming right along. Cement is being poured this week. They are saying it will open on the 18th with a grand opening.
Third thing concerns tonight's meeting of the city commission. They are going to change election rules so that there will be a primary before the general election. Used to be you had to have nine candidates to have a primary to cut it down to six. There are three candidates each election.
Archer said this is being done to encourage more people to participate in the process. They believe as a result, more people will run, and there will be more interest in the elections.
It will take a super majority, meaning four of five have to vote for it.
Only four items on the agenda tonight, so may be a very short meeting.
Only ;ast year did the state statute change such tgat a ratio of 3 candidates per seat would necessitate. Prior to that, the statute required a primary whenever the ratio exceeded 2:1. If there were more than 6 candidates for the three open seats in the Ark City local election, a primary was held. Currently the ratio must be 3:1 or minimum of 9 candidates to trigger a primary.
ReplyDeleteThe state legislature did that in response to a majority of municipalities concerns about costs of local elections. Im a number of instances, primary elections would only eliminate 1 candidate (the 7th in our case) from the general election.
Along with the costs, even our metro areas cited incredibly low voter turnout as another reason to raise the threshold for primaries.
Kansas has only held local elections once in the state (2009) under the new format and actually Ark City had the most candidates file for the three seats since 2000.
Typically Ark City has 6 to 8 candidates file. I believe there were 8 in 2009. A 9th would have resulted in a primary by state law.