PORT ANGELES — City Council members have turned back an effort by the anti-fluoridation group Our Water, Our Choice! to ask voters to change the city’s form of government through a Nov. 8 ballot measure.
The Port Angeles City Council decided instead on Tuesday night to have the measure go before voters Nov. 7, 2017.
According to state law, a petition to change the form of government must call for a vote during the next general municipal election, said City Attorney Bill Bloor.
General municipal elections are held in odd-numbered years in Washington state, he said.
Council members also agreed Tuesday to discuss a surprise proposal by Mayor Patrick Downie at their next regular session Aug. 2.
Downie, who had not put the proposal on the agenda, wants the council to discuss stopping fluoridation immediately and asking voters in a Nov. 7, 2017 advisory ballot if the city should continue the practice and make that vote binding on the City Council.
But council members had more immediate issues to deal with Tuesday.
They were faced with an Aug. 2 deadline to put the change-in-government measure on this year’s Nov. 8 ballot.
Our Water, Our Choice! members, upset by the council’s continued split support for municipal water fluoridation, had gathered enough petition signatures to ask voters to approve the change in city government status.
The group requested that the council pass a resolution to hold an election Nov. 8.
Bloor said that would be permitted by law.
“If you are the ones sponsoring the proposal, the state statutes allow you to choose the election date,” Bloor told council members.
If voters approve the measure, Port Angeles government would change from being governed as a code city to a second-class city.
No city in Washington state has made such a change. Cities historically opt for code-city status and the home-rule and initiative powers that comes with it.
The goal of the group, as stated in the petition is to elect an entirely new City Council.
Four of the seven-member council will be up for election in November 2017.
Eloise Kailin of Sequim, who is president of Our Water, Our Choice!, said residents’ initiative and referendum powers were subverted by the city anyway by city councils that challenged the will of residents who opposed fluoridation.
Having the election Nov. 8 would take a hot-button issue off the public agenda, Kailin said.
But at the same time, she said, it would give proponents less time to explain the advantages to changing to an earlier form of government, one that existed until 1971, when the city became a code city.
Council members decided there was not enough time to meet the Aug. 2 deadline.
There was no support for a Nov. 8 ballot measure.
Council members said the proposal needed to be discussed more.
“It is really a huge change,” said Councilwoman Sissi Bruch, who voted Dec. 15 to discontinue fluoridation.
“I don’t think we have enough time to really understand the implications.
“This is probably the most important decision we will make in our tenure.
“We do not need to rush it.”
Councilman Dan Gase accused the anti-fluoridation group of making a “political move” to change the form of government because there wasn’t a four-vote council majority to stop fluoridation.
He questioned why a Sequim resident such as Kailin would come to Port Angeles to ask its citizens change its form of government, “the most dramatic thing that’s ever happened to the community,” Gase said.
“The fluoridation of your population is that serious,” Kailin responded, saying the concentration of fluorosilicic acid in Port Angeles drinking water is 200 times greater than it is in breast milk.
“My concern is that the infants are not getting a fair shake is all.”
Kailin said Wednesday the concentration she referred to was cited in a 2006 federal National Science Foundation study, Fluoride in Drinking Water.
Public Works and Utilities Director Craig Fulton said Wednesday that fluoridation levels in city water are kept in the range mandated by the state.
“We check the fluoride levels daily, and we report those to the department of health on a regular basis,” Fulton said.
Councilman Lee Whetham defended Kailin for representing Port Angeles residents opposed to fluoridation.
“I don’t care if you’re from Mars,” he said.
The tally against adding Downie’s proposal to Tuesday’s meeting agenda included Downie, who voted against discussing his own proposal.
Downie, Gase, Deputy Mayor Cherie Kidd and Councilman Brad Collins, who voted Dec. 15 to continue fluoridation, voted against adding it to the agenda, while city fluoridation opponents Whetham, Bruch and Michael Merideth were in favor.
Merideth was the lone no-vote in the 6-1 decision to take up the issue Aug. 2.
Downie acknowledged Wednesday that some council members were taken off-guard by his proposal, which he said factored into his decision to wait until Aug. 2 to discuss it.
He said council members have a deadline of Thursday before Tuesday council meetings to add items to the Tuesday agenda.
“It probably sounded confusing, but believe me, my intentions were trying to gain some degree of trust with the electorate,” he said.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 55650, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
