The phone rang about 1;30 on a slow news day. The reporter picked it up and from the other side of the line, in a house in Virginia, he he hears: “duh, duh, duh, another one bites the dust.”
Clay Chastain re-appears thru the mist. Chortling and announcing that the Missouri Court of Appeals, who’s offices are a street car or two away from City hall, has decided to take up his appeal.
Chastain, as all who care to remember, will…got a 27 mile, gondola laden, light rail plan approved by voters in 2006. it shocked the Bejesus off of most everyone. Especially the City Fathers & Mothers.
They quickly scrambled. Declared the plan too expensive, too complex and one year and one day after the voters approved Chastain’s plan, the City Council repealed it.
At the time, the Council promised to put another more feasible plan on the 2008 ballot. They did and voters stomped into the ground.
Now the word comes from Chastain, and confirmed by the Appeals Clerks’ office, that the Chastain case will get an appeal hearing.
Clay was positively delighted when i talked with him. He’s basking in the news his quest remains alive. He was quite aware of the troubles rumbling about Mayor Mark Funkhouser’s term.
“I may just come back to town and run for mayor”, he told me. I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.
In any event, Chastain remains supremely confident he’s going to win this case. He says the City Council overstepped themselves when they threw his plan out the window. He claims that the Council can’t adjust the mechanics of a citizen initiative. They could even return to voters to adjust the plan if they felt it was not workable in it’s original form. But they can’t legally do what they did, says Clay. Throw it out.
Chastain says he expects an expedited hearing. A quick rush to the Appellate bench in the next 45-to 60 days. And like I said, he’s certain he’ll win.
And I thought ‘09 was going to be slow.
