Today on the opinion page, columnist Joe Lewandowski argues that Durango City Council silenced its citizens when it prevented the No Secret Police initiative from reaching the ballot.
We agree.
Earlier this month, the Herald's editorial board concluded that council chose prudence over principle when it declined to move forward with the measure (Herald, June 1). We argued that council could have adopted it as a statement of community values despite legal, financial and political risks.
We have since reconsidered that conclusion.
Not because the legal, financial or constitutional questions changed, but because we came to believe we were asking the wrong question.
Our focus was on whether council should adopt the measure itself. Under the city charter, council also had another option: allow voters to decide. Upon reflection, that was the more fundamental question.
More than 1,700 residents signed a petition to bring the measure to a public vote. The issue was not whether council agreed with the proposal. It was whether voters should have been denied the opportunity to consider it.
Durango's decision comes at a troubling moment. Across the country, opportunities for public participation are shrinking. Republican-controlled legislatures have moved to make citizen initiatives harder to qualify and harder to pass. Some have sought higher voting thresholds, stricter petition requirements and new barriers to direct democracy.
At the federal level, public comment periods have increasingly been shortened, bypassed or ignored.
Whether one agrees with those actions is beside the point. The trend is real: fewer opportunities for citizens to influence decisions that affect their lives.
Durango has been moving in that direction.
At a moment when direct citizen participation is being narrowed nationally, Durango should be expanding opportunities for public involvement, not reducing them.
In 2023, City Council dissolved several long-standing advisory boards despite opposition from citizens and a letter signed by 16 former mayors. At the time, this editorial board warned that it was “impossible to assign a monetary value to vibrant citizen participation, collective wisdom and institutional knowledge.”
The loss of the Multimodal, Parks and Recreation, Natural Lands and Infrastructure boards is still being felt. Their members provided institutional memory, expertise, neighborhood knowledge and community networks that connected City Hall to residents and helped keep citizens engaged in city decisions.
Today, the city is hiring a Community Engagement Manager with a salary of up to $90,000 and continues to invest in the Engage Durango platform.
But communication is not the same thing as participation.
The city increasingly asks residents for feedback while offering fewer opportunities to participate.
The recent Engage Durango civic campus meeting illustrates the challenge. One of the largest public investments in Durango's history drew roughly 15 residents. Engage Durango is an important tool, but it cannot replace the networks created by volunteer board members. For years, those residents carried information into neighborhoods, workplaces, nonprofits and community groups, creating conversations that no website or survey can replicate.
Last week, the city received a Best Practices Award recognizing “visionary leadership that drives customer excellence.” Leadership should also be measured by how effectively government engages the people it serves.
Durango has never lacked for civic engagement. In 2022, Citizens Voice Durango successfully used the initiative process to require greater public review of certain city fire and police projects. That effort effectively made the civic campus project possible. More recently, more than 1,700 residents signed petitions supporting the No Secret Police initiative.
Both efforts reflected the same belief: that citizens should have a meaningful role in decisions that affect their community.
They were not asking City Council to endorse their position. They were asking for the opportunity to make their case to fellow citizens.
That opportunity should not have been taken from them.
A city confident in its citizens should never be afraid to let them speak.
