Minimum bar entry age petition filed

Time is up for petitioners wanting to repeal Iowa City's new minimum bar entry age.

Petitioners had until 5 p.m. Tuesday to turn in an amendment to their original filing that came up 1227 signatures short of the city's required 2500 valid signatures.

Raj Patel, the petition organizer, said his group has been working hard for the past 15 days to gather enough supporters to send the matter back to city council members for a reconsideration of the ordinance.

“We've been just going every day down town, to different neighborhoods,” Patel explained.  “We've virtually have every neighborhood and every age group in iowa City represented in this petition.”

Patel said the average age of those who signed the petition was 27.

“We believe that the city of Iowa City clearly voiced that they want to see this on the ballot in November and they're geared to engage in the democratic process,” Patel said.

Patel turned in a stack of signatures to city clerk Marian Karr just before 3:30 Tuesday afternoon.

Karr estimates Patel's group collected 3340 new signatures.

Karr has 15 days to review all of the signatures.  This requires a tedious process of cross-referencing the petition signatures with Johnson County voter registration files.  A signature is deemed invalid if it is illegible, does not match the address records of county voting records, among other things.

Once Karr has finished determining the validity of the petition, she will send a certificate of insufficiency or sufficiency to city council members.  If the former is sent, the new law will stay in tact as is.  If the latter occurs, the city council will then reconsider the issue and decide whether to repeal it or place it up for a city-wide vote.  That vote, according to Iowa City Mayor Matt Hayek, would likely be part of the November ballot.