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Additional elections put on hold for now
By ANNE LINDBERG, Times Staff Writer CLEARWATER -- Deborah Clark, the Pinellas County elections supervisor, has put a temporary moratorium on all referendums, including those for annexation, because she'll be too busy finalizing the November general election. The earliest a referendum could be held is Jan. 21, Clark told municipalities in a memo earlier this month. To conduct an annexation on that date, a city must give Clark information on the area to be annexed by Nov. 29. Clark said she wrote the memo "in response to inquiries regarding when this office will again be able to support referendum elections and annexation elections requested by municipalities." The inquiries came from Seminole and Largo, which both were interested in holding annexation elections, Clark said Tuesday. Clark said the moratorium applies only to cities that want to hold so-called standalone elections, meaning the municipality would be the only entity voting that day. Cities had been invited, she said, to put referendums elections on both the September and November ballots instead. Some cities, such as Pinellas Park, took advantage of that invitation. Pinellas Park voters will have a chance Nov. 5 to change the city charter, or constitution, with a referendum that asks if they want to eliminate runoffs in future elections. "We're there," said city clerk Kathy Witherington, referring to that Pinellas Park's ballot initiative. But Seminole had a different experience and city leaders are a bit frustrated with the situation. They say they keep getting put off. Officials there wanted to hold two annexation referendums last spring but agreed to wait until after the American Assembly, a three-day confab in May in which government, business, religious and community representatives discussed important issues facing Pinellas County. Seminole officials say when they requested a date from Clark's office after the assembly, they were told the office didn't want any municipal elections or referendums until after the fall elections because it was too busy preparing the new touch screen voting system. The city then was told the annexation referendums would have to wait until January, said Mitch Bobowski, Seminole's general services director. "We're disappointed because we indicated to these people who have been waiting patiently that they would be able to vote on annexation by now," he said. Clark said the changes arose because annexations put her staff to a lot of work determining who lives inside the boundaries of the area to be taken. Those are the only people, she said, who would be allowed to vote in an annexation referendum. -- Staff writer Maureen Byrne Ahern contributed to this report.
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From the Times South Pinellas desks Letters |
