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(8/21/09): Board of Elections Certified Streetcar and Water Petitions |
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August 21, 2009 Media Release Cincinnati NAACP The Hamilton County Board of Elections has certified the Streetcar and Water petitions. Total signatures required for each petitions was 6,150 valid signatures. The Streetcar petition signature count was actually 7,515 good signatures. The Water petition met the count 6,150 threshold. The Hamilton County Board of Elections is deciding whether to count the additional 3,500 signatures that were collected for Water. Smitherman says, " This is great news for all groups which spent a large part of the year collecting signatures. This is a giant step for Democracy which translates to citizen ownership in the ballot." The Cincinnati NAACP remains concerned that the Mayor and City Council will write confusing language for ballot. The Cincinnati NAACP does not write the language that citizens will see on the November 2009 ballot. The Mayor and City Council support the $200 million Streetcar proposal and sale of Cincinnati Water Works. Now, City Officials are faced with the reality that both issues will be decided by voters, their last chance to undermine democracy is to direct their lawyers to write confusing language for ballot. Smitherman says, " The Mayor and City Council must leave their Ivory Towers to run a convincing campaign that Cincinnati needs a $200 million streetcar and to sell their Water assets while laying off 300 city workers and while accumulating an unfunded city pension plan liability of $1.3 billion." |