Meghan Casey’s excellent commentary on the need for a change to Portland’s referendum process (Commentary: Portland City Council must change the referendum process,” Nov. 15) was right on target. It has been extremely frustrating over the last few years to see complex issues that require experience and expertise to fully understand taken directly to the public without thorough research and debate at the council level first.
The clearest example of the problem was the item to limit the number of cruise ship passengers that could disembark in Portland. The group that put that item out to referendum later withdrew their support for it when they fully understood the impact of such a requirement on many small businesses in the city.
Let’s put these issues before the council to be researched and debated. Let’s voice our opinions and share our suggestions before the council and help them create effective ways to work on these issues. Then we will have well developed suggestions to put before the public to vote up or down as the citizens see fit.
At a minimum, we should start by raising the minimum number of signatures required to trigger a referendum initiative to at least 4,000 out of our population of roughly 67,000, as suggested by Meghan Casey.
Pam Plumb
Portland
Send questions/comments to the editors.
Success. Please wait for the page to reload. If the page does not reload within 5 seconds, please refresh the page.
Enter your email and password to access comments.
Hi, to comment on stories you must . This profile is in addition to your subscription and website login.
Already have a commenting profile? .
Invalid username/password.
Please check your email to confirm and complete your registration.
Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.
Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.