Petition committee seeking council form of government for Nicholasville

As it currently operates, the Nicholasville City Commission has four part-time commissioners and a part-time mayor who oversee operations in the city’s departments.

But a group known as the Nicholasville Council Petition Committee has been circulating a petition seeking to change the city’s form of government from a commission to a council-ward system. On Tuesday, that group turned in 3,285 signatures to Jessamine County Clerk Eva McDaniel in an effort to get the measure on the Nov. 6 general-election ballot.

“We are fulfilling an obligation to get it on the ballot so that the voters can decide,” chairperson Perry Barnes said.

The petition has been circulating since January 2011. Orignally, the group had planned on getting the measure on the 2011 ballot, but that fell through last summer, Barnes said.

State law regarding putting the measure on a ballot, KRS 83A.120, says a petition with 2,101 registered voters within the city limits has to been turned in before the second Tuesday in August, which in this case would be Aug. 9, 2011.

But Barnes said the Jessamine County clerk’s office required petitions to be submitted by July 29, 2011.

Last July, McDaniel said her office needed the petition for the purpose of verification before the Aug. 9 deadline.

Undeterred, the petition committee kept on collecting signatures and exceeded the required 2,101 needed.

Barnes said going to a council-ward form of government would be getting back to the city’s roots.

“In 1812, the city was incorporated as a council form of government,” he said.

On Nov. 7, 1972, a movement to change to a commission form of government passed by two votes, 559-557.

Barnes said he didn’t think the voters of that era took the measure seriously and never dreamed it would pass.

“(For) many citizens, it kind of hit them, and they didn’t expect it to pass,” he said.

Since that time, there have been a few efforts to change the form of government, including one in 2006 that didn’t have enough signatures to get on the ballot.

During Tuesday’s news conference, Barnes hammered the current commission, saying they were blasé in their response to the current effort to change forms of government, adding that the five — Mayor Russ Meyer, commissioners Andy Williams, Doug Blackford, Pete Sutherland and Johnny Collier — don’t get it.

“The lack of attention that the city commission has paid to this — they seem to really be out of touch,” he said. “To think that we have 3,285 voters signatures and we could have gotten about twice that many, and we have about a 95-percent approval rating, and to think that the mayor or the city commissioners are unable to come, now that's a good news story.”

Barnes went on to say some of the current commissioners were “intimidated” and “they’re going to wait and see how the political winds blow instead of taking sides on the issue.”

Former Mayor John Martin said council members elected from wards or districts would mean better representation, instead of a governing body where all of its elected officals are from one geographical region. Martin added that by dividing the city into wards or districts, it would give others a chance who might not have the money the current elected officials do.

“They don't have the money. In my race, I live up on the east side, I spent $2,700 and something and the mayor spent $62,000, so you can't compete with that,” Martin said.

Martin ran for the mayor’s office in 2010, but lost to Meyer by a 5,522 to 1,784 vote count.