January 31, 2025 01:54 PM UTC

Are You SURE You Want These Colorado Springs City Councilmembers?

• 4 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

We took note earlier this month about a discussion taking place among some members of the Colorado Springs City Council about whether to call for a third vote in six months about whether or not to allow recreational marijuana sales within the city limits.

Colorado Springs voters were clear in November that they supported allowing medical marijuana license holders to apply for recreational marijuana licenses. Ballot Question 300 — which was not at all confusing — was approved by 54% of Colorado Springs voters. But failed 2022 GOP House candidate and Councilman Dave Donelson doesn’t want to legalize recreational marijuana sales, so he thinks voters should be asked again — but on a municipal election ballot in April that almost certainly will feature significantly reduced voter turnout.

As 9News reports:

Voters in Colorado Springs just approved recreational marijuana sales there, and conservative leaders on city council are trying to take it back. The city is going to make people vote again to double-check and make sure voters really want legal cannabis…

That hasn’t gone into effect yet, but this week, city councilors voted to put another question to voters in April asking them to repeal the newly legal pot sales.

Councilman Dave Donelson is behind the repeal effort. He says he thinks thousands of voters were confused by the wording and competing measures on the November ballot.

“I believe there was confusion among voters,” Donelson said at a city council meeting Tuesday. “Was it all voters? Absolutely not. Was it even a majority? I don’t think so. Was it enough? Was it 11,000 voters? I think it may have been.”

This is hogwash. Donelson and six other members of the Colorado Springs City Council simply don’t agree with what the voters decided in November, so they’re going to hold another vote and pose it to an electorate that is likely to be much smaller and more conservative than those who cast ballots in the 2024 General Election. That election also included a second ballot measure, promoted by Donelson and friends, that would have invalidated Ballot Question 300 if it had passed; voters were not fooled, however, and rejected that attempt. That means April’s vote will be the third in six months basically asking voters the same question.

That’s not how democracy is supposed to work.

Councilmembers Nancy Henjum and Yolanda Avila voted against putting the proposal on the April ballot. Donelson and the other six members of the Colorado Springs City Council should now have to ask voters that they really, really want them to continue representing them. After all, maybe voters were confused when they elected Donelson.