Potential County Charter Revisions: Questions and Common Sense

submitted by Dave Fox

Potential County Charter Revisions:

Questions and Common Sense.

On the most basic level, here is a list of just some of the questions that each of us who are registered to vote in Los Alamos County need to answer seriously for ourselves, as we seriously consider whether we actually benefit by having our County Charter changed; and changed so that an election will be required once a yearin every year that one or more capital projects of a million or more dollars is proposed.

Keep squarely in mind that the documentation would be prepared to the 60%- designed level. And be fully aware these documents would be required to be mailed to every voter. Think blue prints. Think pages of structural, electrical and plumbing details and the like.

Picture 13,000-some voters opening a package of million dollar project details, knowing they’re supposed to read , understand and vote on them.

Understand that an electrical outage in Los Alamos just before the recent Holiday Season cost almost that much by itself.

Now here’s the list of questions for each voter to ask:

How much material, in weight or pounds, do you imagine will have to be mailed to your home so that you will be sufficiently informed to vote knowledgably?

How likely is it that enough of us Los Alamos registered voters will read the documentation so that we reach the level of understanding that actually makes it worth the money and staff time it would take to prepare of all the documentation the Charter changes would require?      

How much taxpayer money, do you think, will have to be spent, on average, just to mail the materials to all of us?

How much taxpayer money, do you think, will have to be spent to prepare all the documents that just a single million dollar project would require, much less the prep for a multi-million dollar project?

Does this design-prep and mailing step seem like a sensible thing to require, when you realize that this step will add extra cost to any capital project that is approved?

Do you know what and how many documents will be required to be prepared, then mailed to you, if the petition wins?            ….especially if there is more than just a single million dollar project?

How much time do you think you will actually spend to do the reading necessary for an informed vote?

Do you think the time-demands of your job and your family life will provide also enough time for you to actually do the reading that the Charter-revision people

believe will result in an educated vote?

Do we truly believe a developer of new retail shopping would seriously think twice about developing here instead of in a development-friendly place, there being some tens of thousands of other options between our national shores?

These questions are gut-serious questions. But they aren’t the only ones we need asked and answered.  An exhaustive set of questions that exposes the many probable ramifications needs to be prepared so that we voters know what to expect under any proposed Charter change that would shift this County’s government from a representative form of decision-making to a form that puts the responsibility for micro-management in the hands of a committee of 13,000 plus voters.

A Common Sense Act of Due Diligence

A vote to change our Charter should not be permitted until the “exhaustive-question” list has been created and its answers are spelled out, then publicly and widely discussed, with a final, officially agreed-upon list of questions and their answers to be developed by due process and communicated county-wide.

To allow a vote without such an exhaustive examination of implications is to ask us citizens to wish earnestly, but vote blind on Charter revision.

The remaining question: does the Charter Review Committee perform this act of due diligence- the list compilation? Or does the County Council?