[New Braunfels] City Council, confronted Wednesday by a petition challenging a controversial new law, called for a Nov. 8 election to let voters decide whether disposable containers will be banned from local rivers.
The “Can the Ban” coalition gathered more than 4,300 signatures during a whirlwind, weeklong campaign after the City Council passed the law, which takes effect in 2012.
Election laws required that the petition contain the signatures of 1,666 registered New Braunfels voters, or 5 percent of the city’s total.
City Secretary Patrick Aten said he stopped counting after his staff verified 1,690 signatures.
See here, here, and here for some background. The NB City Council could have voted to rescind the law rather than put it up to a vote, but a motion to do that was not seconded. I think they’re just delaying the inevitable. Consider this:
There’s plenty of local support to repeal the ban [Shane Wolf, a river outfitter and one of the leaders of the anti-ordinance group] said.
[…]
“We had more signatures than the number of (people who) voted for the mayor or anyone else up there,” Wolf said.
He’s right. Only 1,727 voted for Mayor Gale Pospisil, the only at-large candidate on the City Council.
Whatever you think about the issue, you have to respect that. Their Facebook page has even more fans than that, though there’s no way to know how many of them are actually in New Braunfels. Be that as it may, I’d bet on the petitioners winning in November.