A year ago, Iola voters overwhelmingly approved a measure to disband the existing city commission.
Now, Iolans are being asked to return to the polls April 6 to decide just how big the city’s new governing body will be.
The City Commission, at a special meeting Thursday, directed City Attorney Chuck Apt to draw up a question to ask voters whether they’d prefer a five-, seven- or nine-person commission.
Apt will continue visiting with officials from the League of Kansas Municipalities and Allen County Counselor Alan Weber to ensure the ballot question is worded properly.
“There are a lot of ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ when you have a question like this,” Apt said.
The results of the election will be non-binding, Mayor Bill Maness noted, “but we’ll have a very strong sense of precisely what the citizens of Iola want.”
Prompted by last April’s election, in which voters by a nearly 2-to-1 margin approved doing away with the existing three-man commission, the city appointed a citizens task force last fall to recommend just how the new governing body should be shaped.
The group met over several weeks before ultimately voting in January to recommend a seven-member city council — six councilmen and a mayor.
The 9-5 vote by committee members belied differing opinions, member Jim Talkington told commissioners.
He noted that in forming their final endorsement, the 14 committee members were nearly evenly split among three options — a four-member city commission and a mayor; a six-member city council and mayor and an eight-member city council and mayor.
Their initial vote had six members endorsing the four-member council, while four others opted for each of the larger two options, Talkington said.
But because the five-member option received only a plurality of votes and not a majority, the committee decided on a weighted voting system, in which each voter’s first choice received two tallies and their second choice a single tally.
That meant the six member council received the most tallies, even though it was only the second-best option for most of the members, Talkington explained. Even with the weighted voting system, the seven-member option still only received a plurality of the votes, and not a majority.
The split opinion among the committee members illustrates why the city needs another public vote, Maness said.
“This gives every individual an opportunity to weigh in on what they’d like to see,” he said.
Apt spoke briefly on the new timeline.
After the April vote, commissioners will use the election results to draft a series of charter ordinances setting the size of the new governing body, as well as determining whether it will be a city commission or city council. They’ll also establish such things as meeting times, the scope of the city administrator’s duties and whether the city treasurer should be an elected or appointed position.
