Harvey County Clerk Rick Piepho certified a successful protest petition that prevents a charter ordinance from the City of Hesston from going into effect, at least without a public vote. The ordinance, approved by the Hesston City Council in August, would have allowed the city to designate its website as its legal newspaper, removing state requirements to print various legal notices in an official print newspaper. Late Tuesday afternoon, Piepho certified that a protest petition against the measure had a sufficient number of valid signatures from registered Hesston voters. It took 73 verified signatures for a successful petition, 10 percent of the number of voters who participated in the last municipal election. The signatures had to belong to currently registered voters, and their addresses had to match their addresses on voter rolls. Hesston community members and Harvey County Now submitted a list of 97 signatures in anticipation of some being ruled ineligible. Piepho determined that at least 81 were valid.
Source: Harvey County Now
