Notice of Intent to File Suit re City Council Special Election Power
The following letter was sent to City of Eureka City Attorney Autumn Luna, Esq., on November 12, 2023 regarding statements she made at the November 7, 2023 City Council Meeting. The full letter can be downloaded below.
Dear Ms. Luna:
This letter concerns certain statements you made to the City Council at the Council’s November 7, 2023 regular meeting relating to the Council’s authority to place the City of Eureka Housing For All and Downtown Vitality Initiative (“Initiative”) on the March 2024 ballot.
The comments at issue are as follows:
Councilmember Moulton: Just to address one of the concerns that came up during public comment and to clarify scope of this conversation, we’re getting a report, we’re not taking action, the action we already took was to put this on the next available ballot. So, of course we could pass it whole cloth if we wanted it to or we can pass it to the voters which is what we did before. Could we, City Attorney Luna, could we move this to the March ballot if we wanted to right now? Could we make that happen?
City Attorney Luna: No. I don’t believe that that’s an option that’s available to the city council. The next general election for the city is November and that’s what’s called for in the election code.
Councilmember Moulton: Ok thank you. I know we said that before but thank you for adding that to this part of the conversation.
This exchange occurred at the 2:39:51 mark in the meeting recording.
Your statement that the Elections Code does not allow the City to place the Initiative on the March 2024 ballot is incorrect, as we show below.
Request
The purpose of this letter is to request that you publicly retract your erroneous statement and inform the City Council that it does in fact have the legal authority to place the Initiative on the March 2024 ballot. We request that you do so by close of business on Tuesday, November 14. We will seek judicial relief if the correction is not issued as requested.
Read the full letter below.
November 13, 2023 in City Correspondence. Bookmark the permalink.