Grand Forks City Council members have the choice of turning downtown Arbor Park over to the Park District or putting the question to voters after City Attorney Howard Swanson determined the proposal laid out by activists seeking to stop development of the park was legal.
City staff said this week a petition to stop construction of a five-story building at the park site was valid and would go to the council after it was submitted with more than the required 3,465 signatures. Those wanting to preserve the park at 15 S. Fourth St. say it should be sold to the Grand Forks Park District or another entity for $1 rather than become the site of a $7 million commercial and residential building, a plan approved earlier by the council.
Swanson provided a report on his legal findings regarding the petition in council meeting materials released Friday. Council members will receive the report at their regular meeting Tuesday.
With the petition determined to be valid, the council must consider the proposal to sell to the Park District or submit it to voters by the next general election, June 2018, if council members decide not to adopt it.
Swanson's memo is an informational briefing for the council, and members likely will develop a plan on how to act on their options in the coming month, City Administrator Todd Feland said.
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If the council chooses to put the park's future to voters, it would more likely be in a special election in the near future rather than left for the 2018 general election, he said.
"What I heard from council is that we should do this sooner rather than later and have it linger," he said.
City leaders are discussing the possibility of using a special election as another chance to try to pass a sales tax increase to pay for infrastructure projects. Voters defeated a 0.75 percent sales tax increase in November, and Feland said with an estimated $15,000 to $20,000 cost to hold a special election, it would make sense to put Arbor Park and the sales tax on the same ballot.
"I think that's part of the conversation, too," he said.
The sale to the Park District was one of two options proposed by the petition, but the only one Swanson determined was legal. The other proposal was selling Arbor Park to a nonprofit organization to be designated or created by petition organizers. However, that is not possible as city code prohibits sale of land worth more than $2,500 to such an entity, according to Swanson's memo.
He also has been researching whether the Park District was created in part by the City Council, a requirement of city code for the sale to be legal, but said in his memo the district met that stipulation.
Adam Kemp, a Grand Forks artist and a petition organizer, said the signatures gathered for the petition show community support for the park, but he did not speculate on what an election would decide.
"You don't know. That's the scary part," he said.
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City Council meets at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at Grand Forks City Hall.
