I realize that some of you may have disagreed with my opinions on the eight questions that were decided yesterday, and I respect that. In fact, I couldn't even get my wife to agree with me on all of them. Regardless of your opinions, however, what I think we can all agree on is that the relative turnout for the Questions was quite high. According to today's Republican-American the total turnout in Waterbury was about 38%. Of the 21,000 voters who turned out yesterday, approximately 14,000 voted for the Charter Revision Questions. This means that about 2/3 of the Waterbury voters took the time to flip the ballot over, and make a decision about the future of our city.
What makes this result so impressive is that there was very little coverage of the Charter Revision Questions leading up to the election. As best as I can remember there was only one article in the newspaper about the questions, and there were considerable errors in the story.
Thankfully, I was able to get information out to the citizens that (I hope) helped them make an informed decision. Thanks to Larry Rifkin at 1320 WATR, and my friend Raechel Guest, the information I provided here was able to reach a wider audience.
I know that my efforts alone did not get the total number of votes to such a high level, and I doubt I was able to sway the results of the questions on my own, but it is nice to see such a wonderful turnout for issues that can often be confusing.
In case you haven't had a chance to see the paper, the results on the questions are listed below.
| Question | Yes | No |
|---|---|---|
| #1 | 9573 | 4430 |
| #2 | 9623 | 4290 |
| #3 | 6478 | 7882 |
| #4 | 9950 | 4116 |
| #5 | 9575 | 4444 |
| #6 | 4394 | 9734 |
| #7 | 11490 | 2980 |
| #8 | 11463 | 2282 |
Personally, of the eight results, I was only disappointed by the failure of Question #6. I understand that some people may have been concerned about the political influence that would be exerted by removing the Civil Service requirement from the Superintendent, but as you have seen in my earlier post, I think the test severely limits our applicants, and scares some potentially great applicants away.
Either way, the people have spoken. I'm glad that the work of the Charter Revision Commission resulted in some positive changes for the City of Waterbury.
Now the big question is how long before the fun begins for the 2011 election. Any guesses?
1 comment:
This is great information. The Rep-Am should take a page out of your book in terms of communicating the significance of these questions.
I was confused by the verbiage on some questions and, I suspect that many other citizens were as well.
All in all, I have to commend you and the entire Charter Revision commission. You did a fine job.
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