LEWISTON – Voters won’t get to overrule council budget decisions, according to a City Council vote Tuesday.

Voters will see a ballot issue this November asking them to clean up city rules dealing with voter-driven initiatives and people’s vetoes. But that right won’t extend to city monetary policy, according to a City Council majority.

“People elect councilors to make these hard decisions, and it’s not right to take that away from them,” said City Councilor Lillian O’Brien.

Councilor Stavros Mendros, who proposed letting citizens challenge council budget decisions if they didn’t affect the current fiscal year, said councilors effectively stripped voters of their rights Tuesday. He planned to form a committee to fight the question, keeping city ordinances the way they are.

The issue took up more then two hours of council discussion, debate and comments from the public. Mendros said it’s clear voters are on his side.

“Every person that’s spoken before this council has been against the change they approved,” he said. “Nobody wanted this change, but the council voted for it anyway.”

The issue came to a head last year, after the city adopted a storm water utility fee to pay for culvert maintenance, street sweeping and storm sewer-line projects. A group of 10 residents started a petition seeking to overturn the fee. The group failed to gather enough signatures to put the storm fee on the November ballot, however.

City ordinances require petitioners to gather 1,000 signatures to put a question on the ballot. According to ordinances, that petition is kept at the city clerk’s office. People who want to sign the petition had to come to the window and ask for it.

Those ordinances conflict with both the city charter and state law, according to City Administrator Jim Bennett. Challengers should be allowed to take the petitions out of City Hall.

“The city’s ordinances on this matter are totally screwed up,” Bennett said. “We need to fix this thing in some fashion that people can understand, or else it’s going to be fixed by lawyers and lawsuits.”

Challengers to council decisions would be able to take the petition door-to-door under the proposed rules. Voter turnout in the last governor’s election would determine how many signatures they’d need. Currently, they’d need to collect 1,862 signatures – 15 percent of the number of Lewiston residents that voted in the last governor’s race.

The voters’ ultimate decision could not be challenged by councilors, and could only be overturned by another vote of the people.

Voters would be allowed to challenge any council decision, unless it related to budgets or personnel. Mendros said that’s too broad.

“We are effectively taking away people’s rights concerning some very fundamental decisions,” Mendros said.

Mayor Larry Gilbert agreed.

“We work for the people,” Gilbert said. “They must have the ultimate say in what the city does.”

But Councilor Mark Paradis said voters do have the ultimate say.

“They elect us,” Paradis said. “When they go to the polls, they elect the people that they think are going to best represent what they want. That’s our job, and I would not want one person to take that away from us.”