Our five government reform measures are destined for the November 2020 ballot.
Their path to the ballot necessarily involves a trip through a city council meeting. At its December 17 meeting, the City Council did not adopt our measures, nor did they vote to put them on the November 2020 ballot. Instead, they voted to delay their decision for 30 days until after they conduct an internal study on all five of our measures.
We’re somewhat baffled that the City feels the need to study the financial impact of our term limits proposal, which limits the mayor and council to two consecutive four-year terms – the official can run again after a two-year break.
You may recall that the city council reacted to our measures by placing their own Measure B on the March 2020 primary election ballot, and one of its elements would be an alternate term limits proposal – three consecutive four-year terms but with a loophole that allows some to evade the term limits. (We'll have a lot to say about Measure B as the March election approaches.)
The City Council has placed a ballot argument in the voter guide for Measure B that proclaims that their term limits proposal won’t cost the city a dime, but for our term limits measure, they decided to spend 30 days studying the financial impact of it, as if ours would incur a cost that theirs does not. It’s absurd, but that’s what we’ve come to expect from the City’s leadership.
During the meeting, Oxnard City Manager Alex Nguyen called our Permit Simplicity measure “permit stupidity” and then called three of our other measures “dangerous.”
Who would have imagined that an initiative that requires the City to conduct meetings after 5:00 p.m. so more of the public can attend would be deemed a dangerous proposal?
Given Mr. Nguyen’s expressed hostility, we're certain their studies of our measures will not be impartial, and they may not even be accurate.
Some of the comments made by council members during the meeting demonstrated that they hadn't done any due diligence to even understand what the measures propose to do. They were just suspicious of anything that the public at large wished to put on the ballot.
We will keep you updated as this story develops!
Of course, that's just us stating the obvious.
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