After ballot defeats, a piecemeal approach planned for Cottage Grove park improvements
November 13, 2012 at 10:28 am in South Washington County Bulletin
With voters on Election Day delivering a sizable defeat to a pair of ballot questions that proposed sweeping park and recreation enhancements, Cottage Grove officials say the city will now fall back on a long-term plan to complete piecemeal park improvements over the next decade. Continue Reading
I wonder if part of the reason the ballot didn’t pass was the wording of the questions? For example, the question on the aquatic center asked for authority to bond $6.5 million. On the surface, that sounds like a lot of money. If I am a resident who hasn’t followed the issue closely, I may say no thinking that my yearly share would be much higher than it actually would be. I’m not sure of the rules regarding language on ballots, but mentioning the part about $74 per year on a $230,000 house might have put the numbers in perspective for voters?
I’m sure some of the “no” votes fully understood this, and I have no problem with people voting their convictions in that case. I just hope the question’s financial impact was understood by the majority of the voters – $74 a year (about $6.15 a month) didn’t sound too bad to me for the investment in continuing to improve the quality of life in our city.
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so even though #2 was rejected, we are going to get the additions anyways??? Why bother then? We said no, meaning we don’t think we need them.
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To be fair, we only said that we didn’t want to borrow money to pay for them. The ballot questions didn’t ask anything about whether or not they should be part of the city’s annual budget.
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