Ordinance to let voters move toward home rule
The Erie Board of Trustees advanced the home rule initiative a step forward Tuesday night, voting 5-2 to adopt the ordinance that will ask voters in November to first approve the formation of a home rule charter commission and elect nine members to serve on that commission.
If the formation of the commission is approved, the elected members would have 180 days to submit a proposed charter to the Board of Trustees, according to the ordinance.
“It’s time to get out of our parent’s basement,” said Mayor Justin
Brooks, who voted in favor of the ordinance.
This is not the first time the home rule charter has been floated to residents of Erie, which is the largest statutory municipality in the state.
As recently as 2019, the board approved a schedule for conducting an election similar to what was approved Tuesday night, but that schedule was derailed in 2020 because of the pandemic.
Board members Andrew Sawusch and Brandon Bell voted against the ordinance.
“If you go back and look at the history with this, when Broomfield became their own city and county they didn’t account for the fact that when they weren’t part of Jeffco and Adams and Boulder, now they had to have their own police department, their own sheriff,” Bell said in the discussion before the vote. “There’s unexpected costs with these things, and I think we did not do the work to have those kinds of items, and address those kinds of items, to the public.”
Trustee Emily Baer held a different view of the home rule potential.
“I think as a board we’re tasked with being visionaries, and if we only plan for today, we’re failing the town,” said Baer, following Bell’s comments. “We have to set ourselves up to be able to
be successful in the future, and grasp the opportunities that come forward, and that being a home rule town would afford us.”
Citing the results of an earlier survey, which asked respondents how likely they were to approve a home rule