WESTFIELD – The organizers of a referendum to allow city residents to overturn the City Council vote to transfer land on Ponders Hollow Road from the Fire Commission to the Park & Recreation Commission failed to turn in the petition within the 20-day period.
The land transfer is directly linked to the construction of a 96,000-square-foot, 600-strudent elementary school at the intersection of Ashley and Cross Streets because of a National Park Service requirement to replace land at the Cross Street Playground which is being incorporated into the school project.
The petition organizer, Thomas Smith, whose mother live on Cross Street directly across from the proposed school site, said that his group just ran out of time and perhaps should have started collecting signatures before the City Council’s second and final reading of the land transfer at its Sept. 3, 2015 meeting.
“I’m still receiving signatures sheets, so I don’t know the final count, but I’m confident that we don’t have enough,” Smith said Thursday morning.
The petition referendum under Article 49 of the City Charter requires that the petition proponents submit signatures from 12 percent of the city’s 24,000 registered voters. The petition documents would have had to have about 2,800 signatures and the papers had to be submitted by 5 p.m. Wednesday.
“We had a tremendous response. We had 40 to 45 petition papers out there and about 90 percent of the people we approached chose to sign the petition. We had support all over the city,” Smith said. “It was nice to hear a wide range of people supporting us.”
“We just didn’t have enough people out collecting signatures and we should have probably started collecting signatures on July 3, but our lawyer, who has experience with petition drives, urged us to wait for the final council vote, so we took the side of caution,” Smith said. “It was a decision made with a lack of experience.”
Mayor Daniel M. Knapik sent a motion to approve the land transfer to the City Council at the July 2 session, and that order to transfer the “care, custody, management and control of certain parcels of land” was referred to the council’s Legislative & Ordinance Committee.
The City Council, at its Sept. 3 meeting, voted 9-4 to approve the transfer. Nine affirmative votes were needed to gain approval. The vote had been delayed from the August session to clarify a legal question raised by Smith.
Smith said that the City Council needed a recommendation from the Planning Board pertaining to the Park & Recreation use of the land before the council could act. The Law Department said that the transfer did not require a specific use plan for the property to be transferred from the Fire Commission to the Park & Recreation Department and that the Planning Board will have to review and approve any future plans to develop the land for recreational use.
Section 49. – Referendum.
If, within 20 days after the final passage of any measure by the city council or the school committee, the number of registered voters of the city to sign a petition presented to the city council or to the school committee, as the case may be, protesting against such measure or any part thereof taking effect, is not less than 12 percent of the total number of registered voters, the measure shall immediately be suspended from taking effect and the city council or the school committee, as the case may be, shall immediately reconsider such measure or part thereof. If such measure, or part thereof, is not entirely annulled, repealed or rescinded, the city council shall submit the referendum petition to a vote of the qualified voters, either at the next regular city election or at a special election which the city council may, in its discretion, call for such purpose. Unless a majority of the qualified voters at such election shall vote in favor of such measure, or part thereof, the measure shall forthwith become null and void.
The procedure for a referendum petition shall be the same as that provided by sections 46 and 47 except that, for the purposes of the referendum procedure, the words “measure or part thereof protested against” shall be understood to replace the word “measure” in said sections 46 and 47, wherever they occur, and that the word “referendum” shall be understood to replace the word “initiative” in those sections, wherever it occurs.
