Say Anything Blog

A very curious position taken by the GF Herald:

At times, you know that an election fully expresses the people’s will. The 2003 vote against a proposed Grand Forks water park was one. Grand Forks debated the plan thoroughly, the two sides stated their positions often, turnout was huge - and the water park got trounced. It drew only 3,376 “yes” votes out of more than 11,000 cast.

At other times, an election’s expression of public opinion is less decisive. Wednesday’s vote across Grand Forks County against remodeling the old jail into a 911 center seems like such a time. Only 1,255 votes were cast - a 2 percent to 3 percent turnout. Had “yes” votes boosted their tally by only 138, the plan would have drawn the required 60 percent.

I really wonder if the Grand Forks Herald would be concerned with the vote if this vote would have gone the other way.  In fact reading this article seems to suggest that both Tom Dennis who wrote this opinion article and Editor Mike Jacobs in another column were quite surprised with the outcome even though they correctly identified the reason (in my opinion) that it failed.

Mike Jacobs Column:

This is both a mystifying result and a troubling one. Unlike some projects, an emergency system is of potential benefit everywhere in the county and to everyone in the county.

The result can be interpreted only as a slap at county government, which apparently has lost the trust of voters. The reason is the perceived extravagance of the state/county building, constructed after the flood, and the cost overruns in the new county jail.

What’s more, the county seemed to try to sneak this election through, first by scheduling it on a Wednesday in midsummer (Who remembers ever voting in July? Or on a Wednesday?), and second by cutting the number of voting places.

Jacobs calls the decision mystifying although he accurately described voters disgust with local governments.  One thing he did miss is that the local tax payers are fed up with out of control spending by the school district, the city, the park board and yes the county.  They’ve been raising their spending at over twice the rate of inflation for years now. 

But aside from that omission, Jacobs is right on.  The voters don’t trust the local governments anymore that just can’t help but spend more and more money every year.  There isn’t much on the cities wish list that they don’t fund and generally it’s for the benefit of a few people (Dog Park) or for the benefit of public employees alone.

Jacobs is also right on that voters are tired of the local governments holding these special elections to get their newest pet project passed.  This election was particularly egregious as Jacobs pointed out as there’s never been a vote in July on Wednesday and they closed most of the polling places.  I guess we’re lucky that they printed ballots.  I suppose they counted on sending all of the public employees out to vote would overwhelm the few concerned citizens who are fed up.

But as Tom Dennis pointed out we’ll probably see this proposal again.  Around here if the government doesn’t care for an election they’ll have it again and they aren’t beyond lying about the costs in order to get it passed. 

The event center was voted down a number of times but the city kept bringing it up.  Of course they held a special election despite the extra costs in order to cut down voter turnout.  They’ve also ran the same kind of dishonest campaigns over the Columbia Road overpass. 

This election was a repudiation of the Grand Forks way of misdeceiving the voters.