Update: On Thursday afternoon, the city filed a lawsuit seeking to have a Johnson County judge deem the three petitions “legally insufficient,” and, therefore, not required to be placed on the ballot. The Post is currently working to draft a new story laying out the city’s legal motion in more detail.
Three citizen-led petitions in Prairie Village are headed back to the county for “judicial review” after a special city council meeting Wednesday. Whether the controversial measures get on the ballot this November remains up in the air.
After an executive session behind closed doors Wednesday night, the Prairie Village City Council unanimously voted to authorize the mayor, city administrator and city attorney to “institute and defend” legal action on the petitions.
After the vote, City Administrator Wes Jordan told the Post that the petitions are now headed back to the county for an “impartial review.”
The move angered members of the Stop Rezoning PV group, which has been gathering signatures for months on the three proposed measures, one that deals with rezoning and two that aim to restructure city government.
They argue it is the city’s obligation to either approve the measures for a vote or — in the case of the rezoning petition — to adopt the proposal outright as a new city ordinance.
“Let democracy work. Let the people vote,” Dan Schoepf, a spokesperson for Stop Rezoning PV, wrote to supporters in an email Thursday morning.
What the city council did Wednesday
- After a 30-minute executive session — in which governing bodies adjourn a public session to discuss subjects privately — the city council returned to its chambers with a motion in hand.
- Council President Ron Nelson read the motion, which authorizes Mayor Eric Mikkelson, city administrator Jordan and city attorney David Waters to take further legal action as they deem “necessary or appropriate to assert and protect the city’s legal positions” regarding the petitions.
- The motion referenced two Kansas statutes, KSA 25-3601 and KSA 60-1701, the first of which deals with sufficiency of petitions and the second of which deals with jurisdiction.
- Without discussion, the city council unanimously approved the motion.
- “We are bound by an oath that we have to take lawful action and there’s been enough issues raised by the city attorney that, in my mind, we really have no choice but to take a look at this,” Jordan told the Post following the meeting. “The last thing we want to do is unknowingly or unintentionally have an ethics violation on something that we did not do lawfully, against our sworn oath.”
The city has argued the petitions are invalid
- Waters, the city’s attorney, sent a letter to the county election office earlier this month, arguing the petitions should be invalidated due to a number of technical reasons.
- Included in Waters’ reasoning was his contention that the petitions filed with the county election office on Aug. 1 appear to be unchanged from when the county’s legal counsel rejected them on May 1.
- But in a response to the city, County Election Commissioner Sherman explicitly did not weigh in on the legality of the petitions and instead asked the city for confirmation of whether the petitions were valid.
- One of the two statutes referenced in Wednesday’s motion, KSA 25-3601, spells out the petition process as well as the process of challenging the validity of a petition’s form of a question.
- That statute reads, in part, “Any person challenging the validity of the form of a [petition] question shall have the burden of proving in the district court that the form of the question is invalid.”
- After Wednesday’s vote, when asked what entity would be reviewing the petitions, Jordan told the Post, “It’s the county.”
Stop Rezoning demands, “Let the people vote”
- Schoepf, in a Thursday morning statement, called for the measures to be put on the ballot.
- Schoepf said the city council met “without allowing public input, two days after our county election office validated thousands of signatures on three petitions.”
- Schoepf noted in his statement that instead of immediately putting the petitions on the ballot, “the city council instead authorized legal proceedings.”
- “This is a breakdown in representative government — and the very reason citizens’ initiatives are legal,” Schoepf said. “Let democracy work. Let the people vote.”
What you may have missed
The Stop Rezoning PV initially formed last year in opposition to the city’s housing recommendations, which aimed to address skyrocketing housing costs in the affluent Johnson County suburb.
But the issue has broadened in scope beyond housing and now encompasses a fierce debate over city governance.
One petition put forward by the group would limit accessory dwelling units on properties in single-family-zoned neighborhoods, one of the group’s major sticking points with the city’s original housing recommendations.
The other two petitions deal with substantive changes to city government.
One would cut the city council in half from its current 12 members to six, booting off the last six councilmembers elected in 2021 midterm.
The other would abandon the “strong mayor” form of government, in effect limiting mayoral powers.
Meanwhile, three residents affiliated with the Stop Rezoning group have also tried unsuccessfully in recent months on multiple occasions to recall Mikkelson.
Some current councilmembers say the petitions are a “political ploy” to take control of the governing body because some residents are unhappy with the 2021 election results.
