May 28 New Date Set On Cruise Limit Vote

Details

Category: News

Created on Tuesday, 18 March 2025 15:19

Hits: 517

SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff Writer

City clerk Sara Peterson said today that after a second legal review she has changed the date for a special election on cruise ship passenger limits, moving it up by two days to May 28.

Peterson originally set the election date for May 30, through a process that included reviews by the city attorney and outside attorneys for the city.

Small Town SOUL, the group that filed the petition, contacted Peterson Friday, asking for clarification on the May 30 date since they believed the window for an election date allowed in the city Home Rule Charter was earlier than that. City Attorney Rachel Jones reviewed relevant case law on Monday, and agreed with the initiative sponsors.

With that legal finding, Peterson revised the election date to May 28 , and made that change in the ordinance that the Assembly will consider on first reading at a special meeting tonight.

It will be the first reading of the ordinance, which says a special city election will be held May 28 on a proposition limiting cruise ship passengers to 300,000 annually, 4,500 daily, setting the cruise ship season to May 1 through Sept. 30, and requiring at least one quiet day per week. The new rules would go into effect for the 2026 cruise season.

Tonight's special meeting starts at 6 p.m. in Harrigan Centennial Hall and is open to the public.

On Thursday, the clerk set the date of May 30 for the special election in accordance with the section of the Home Rule Charter on initiative petitions. It requires the special election to take place 40 to 90 days after filing a petition containing the required number of signatures. The completed petition was turned in Feb. 28, but it was not until March 13 that the clerk's office certified that it had the required number of valid signatures.

The question that arose in determining an election date was whether to calculate it from Feb. 28, the date the signatures were submitted to the clerk's office, or March 13, the date they were certified as valid.

Small Town SOUL asked for clarification, and City Attorney Rachel Jones agreed in a second review that the election date calculation should start with Feb. 28. That opinion put the original proposed date (May 30) outside the time line specified in the charter.

Peterson said taking into consideration the charter’s requirement for 60 days' notice for an election, that gave her only five days to consider for the one on the cruise ship limits: May 25, 26, 27, 28 and 29. She removed May 25 because it’s a Sunday, and May 26 because it’s the Memorial Day holiday. From the three dates remaining she chose May 28, a Wednesday.

Peterson said in her review of elections since unification in 1971, this is the first instance she could find that a special election was triggered by an initiative petition.