Ordinance 119 is gone. The issue is not.
Fayetteville's effort to provide anti-discrimination protection for the city's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community is far from finished.
Yes, Fayetteville voters last week repealed the controversial anti-discrimination ordinance a Fayetteville City Council approved in August. That's a fact.
The many supporters who filled the council chamber and told their stories of discrimination over a 10-hour period won the council over back then. But a successful petition drive put the issue on Tuesday's special election ballot. However, only slightly more voters wanted it repealed than wanted to keep it. That's significant.
The vote hasn't been certified, but the unofficial results put the tally at 7,523 (52 percent) for repeal and 7,040 (48 percent) against repeal.
Some people may have thought the vote would settle the issue. But efforts are already under way for a second try and the closeness of the vote argues for just such a rewrite.
The question is when and by whom.
Alderman Matthew Petty, who sponsored the original measure, said on Thursday he now wants to send the failed ordinance to the city's Ordinance Review Committee for amendments.
Petty's idea is to rework the ordinance, secure passage by the City Council and ultimately refer the issue back to voters, possibly in the primary or general election in 2016.
As should have been expected, some on the other side aren't so ready to see any part of the ordinance revived.
Duncan Campbell, president of Repeal 119, said the ordinance "can't be fixed" and should not be the starting point for future discussions.
He also said it is "inappropriate" to bring up a controversial ordinance so soon after the special election.
It isn't quite clear what the hurry is for Petty, particularly if he isn't looking for a revote until 2016. But he's talking about a January restart, when he would try to get the council to refer the old ordinance to the Ordinance Review Committee.
Passions for and against the ordinance do remain high in the days since the election. And people may be more tuned in to address the issue sooner rather than later.
At any rate, Petty sees no reason to stall on fixing at least some of the perceived flaws in the ordinance.
"I'm taking some of the supporters of repeal at their word," Petty said Thursday. "They said they wanted to honor the intent of the ordinance but change some things."
While some of the criticism of the ordinance was ideological or not based on fact, Petty said some complaints were reasonable "and they're things logical people can agree on." He sees room for compromise and has a number of amendments he proposed in an email to Mayor Lioneld Jordan on Wednesday.
Because the vote was close, Jordan, too, has said he would be willing to have the council try again.
"A different ordinance with some modifications, I think, would be palatable," Jordan said.
Here's a thought, one used successfully by the Fayetteville schools, when a high school funding proposal failed a few years back. Spend some of that money that was so available to push the anti-discrimination issue one way or another to ask voters why they voted the way they did.
Voters in the school election returned postcards to the school district, citing reasons for their votes. A subsequent proposal took those reasons into account and passed.
Theoretically, there were at least three divisions among voters in the recent city election. There were those decidedly for Ordinance 119, those decidedly against it and those who were concerned with details in the ordinance but supportive of its core principle.
It's that latter group that might be persuaded to support a different, or amended, ordinance. If their numbers were great enough, they could swing a second election the other way.
The trick is to write an ordinance that addresses those reasonable concerns Petty acknowledged.
Petty has suggested representatives of Repeal 119 and Keep Fayetteville Fair, the lead organizations for and against repeal, be involved in redrafting the ordinance. They should be involved, as should a lot of the voices that sounded off during the campaign for and against the measure.
What should not happen, but might, is that this issue could keep the city divided well into 2016.
Petty's proposed timetable virtually guarantees impact on the next round of city elections -- and continued division in Fayetteville in the meantime.
That won't help the city's reputation for tolerance and it won't protect anyone from discrimination, which is supposedly still the goal.
From that standpoint, it would be better to get a new ordinance drafted sooner rather than later, seek buy-in from all sides and get it to voters next year, not in 2016.
BRENDA BLAGG IS A FREELANCE COLUMNIST AND LONGTIME JOURNALIST IN NORTHWEST ARKANSAS.
Commentary on 12/13/2014