
On October 21, 2013 the Issaquah City Council voted to put the newly qualified citizen’s initiative to “REPEAL of Plastic Bag Ban and Forced Bag Charge” on the February 11, 2014 ballot. Giving citizens the opportunity to resolve the ban’s fate.
Thanks to the hard work of Craig Keller, co-founder of Save Our Choice, and a small team of volunteers. More than 15% of all Issaquah voters signed the petition to force the city council to either repeal the ordinance or refer the decision to voters.
Earlier in October, the King County Department of Elections concluded that enough valid signatures were collected to qualify the initiative for the ballot and issued a Certificate of Sufficiency for the Save Our Choice petition to Issaquah City Council. A total of 2626 out of 4266 signatures collected were found to be valid to qualify the initiative.
According to Craig Keller, there is mounting dissatisfaction with ban and the majority on the city council had the power to correct their earlier bad decision. In fact, once the King County Department of Elections certified that the initiative had collected enough valid signatures, the city council could have repealed the ordinance but instead voted to put the issue on the ballot in 2014.
Now residents of Issaquah, Washington will have a voice on whether the plastic bag ban and fee on paper bags will be repealed.
Related articles
- Issaquah bag-ban repeal qualifies for ballot (seattletimes.com)
- Issaquah residents will vote on plastic-bag ban (blogs.seattletimes.com)
- Issaquah to reconsider ban on plastic grocery bags (mynorthwest.com)
- Issaquah group wants to bring plastic bag ban to voters (q13fox.com)
- Will Mercer Island become state’s 11th city to ban plastic bags? (komonews.com)