A Sioux Falls judge rejects an appeal attempt to change an error on tomorrow's ballot. On Tuesday, Sioux Falls voters will weigh in about a new pool at Spellerberg Park. The petition to build a new outdoor pool is what sparked today's events.
The Save Spellerberg organization wants the city of Sioux Falls to build a new outdoor pool. A petition claiming the completion date of the project to be on December 31, 2015 was signed by the required 7,000 residents. The ballot has different language. It reads the project would be completed by December 15, 2015, which is just over two weeks earlier then what supporters of the outdoor pool group initiated.
The Chairman of Citizens for Integrity Bruce Danielson says even though two weeks doesn't seem like a big deal, it is. He says a difference in the petition language to the language on the ballot is concerning.
"Maybe the typographical error is going to be a thousand vote different or all of a sudden, as what happens in the legislature, there's all of a sudden a Hoghouse. In other words, you have a shell of a ballot measure that all of sudden becomes something that is totally different," Danielson says.
The problem, according to John Matthius with Save Spellerberg, raised an important issue so as to not allow future errors.
"It's likely that just about any law or legal action is the result of a lesson learned or a mistake that occurs in public policy or legal matters. So our having brought this to the attention of the city and brought it to the court level, we hope is a precident that is not to simply, from a stand point of wishing to be an irritating citizen action group," Matthius says.
Polls in Sioux Falls open from 7 am to 7 pm.
