The petition effort to put proposed changes to the Rapid City Vision Fund to a public vote has failed.
In turn, new ordinances associated with that change are immediately in effect.
After turning in the required number of signatures, it was technicalities that undid petition gathering to place public oversight of the Vision Fund on the ballot.
The Vision Fund is a Rapid City program that seeks to fund public enhancement and arts projects.
Petitioners were tasked with gathering the signatures 5% of total registered voters in Rapid City. About 500 were thrown out for a variety of reasons and only 2,496 signatures could be validated. That’s 92% of the total needed to put the measure on the ballot.
City finance director Daniel Ainslee walked through the validation process.
“Six different staff members each taking a portion of the petitions, number one reviewing to make sure the petitions had been notarized, and lastly but probably most importantly was going to the Secretary of State's website to check the voter registration of the individual," Ainslee said. "The largest number of that was 310 were invalidated because they were not registered to vote in Rapid City.”
Now, having been read twice by council, the new ordinance goes into effect immediately. City attorney Joel Landeen said the new rules could mean the end of the Vision Fund citizen committee.
“The ordinance amendment really removed a lot of the specific requirements and said the council could basically determine what the procedure for awarding the vision funds was for each round. A lot of the focus has been on the citizen committee," Landeen said. "There was a requirement in the current ordinance that they do form a citizen committee, if the council wants to have a citizen committee, they can do that – or they can choose not to.”
Mayor Jason Salamun and other advocates of the change on City Council were not present for Monday's press conference.