Calling at City Hall for a charter-amendment election, surrounded by stacks of boxes containing the signatures of 100,000 registered voters across three petitions, fire union president Chris Steele this month repeated a refrain that also served as a slogan for his campaign to transform municipal governance here.

“Let the people decide,” he said, again and again.

But what if the people have no idea what they’re deciding?

This week, after requesting from the city a random sampling of the petitions Steele had delivered, I called some of the voters who had been persuaded in February and March to sign in support of significant changes to the charter, which serves as a local constitution. Of those who answered their phones and spoke candidly, almost none could recall the point of the petitions to which they’d lent their signatures.

“I didn’t understand exactly what was being proposed. … I would suggest that I signed it as much under a social pressure kind of situation,” said Paul Marsh, a 60-year-old program manager who was approached by petition workers on February 22 as he was leaving the Julia Yates Semmes Library.

“As I came out, I was basically, not berated, but certainly strongly encouraged to come talk to firefighters,” he continued. “I didn’t feel like I had a good grasp of the situation. But I figured, hey, it’s firefighters. How bad can they be?”

The document Marsh signed, “Petition for a City of San Antonio charter amendment to facilitate voter use of the referendum process,” sounded harmless enough. Its effect would be anything but.

Beyond making it easier to put city ordinances to a public vote, the amendment would remove restrictions on what issues are subject to a referendum, such as the appropriation of money, levying of taxes and setting public utility rates.

The result would be to empower voters to override their elected representatives on complex and critical issues. While that might sound enticing, the referendum process can wreak havoc on communities.

Marsh said he realized this after the signed the petition and learned about its real impact.

“In retrospect, I don’t think I would have signed any of them,” he said. “I learned more about them on (Texas Public Radio) after the fact, the fact that this was a major program being run by the union.”

Herbert Scranton, 64, signed all three of the fire union’s petitions. On Friday, he could recall the intent of only one of them: capping the salary of the city manager at 10 times that of the lowest-paid city employee. (The last would prohibit the city from going to court over labor agreements.)

“I just thought it was kind of unfair that our city manager makes more money than our president, but we can’t seem to fund our firemen,” he said. “I’m trying to think what the other two were. It escapes me now. I’m sorry. I just don’t remember what the other two petitions were.”

He said he signed the documents because his brother was a firefighter, “so it’s kind of close to my heart.”

Jacqueline Horrocks, 29, signed for a similar reason.

On March 1, Horrocks was at Bonnie Connor Park when she was approached by petition workers. She ended up signing the document that called for changing the referendum process — although she wasn’t aware of that this week.

“Honestly … I don’t remember exactly what it was about,” she told me. “They were more concerned that the people were making more money than the firefighters. People who are elected.”

Horrocks said she signed because she respects firefighters.

“They do a lot for the community,” she said. “If they’re having issues in the community, I don’t mind supporting them.”

Margaret Tabor, 66, said she and her husband signed a petition on March 1 at the John Igo Library because “we have several friends who are firefighters.”

She could not, however, recall the purpose of the petition she had signed. (It was the one seeking to alter the referendum process.)

“Well, they were asking for an increase in pay, I think,” she said. “They were asking for the health benefits to be improved.”

In fact, the fire union has not asked for any of these things; it has repeatedly refused even to begin negotiating a new labor contract after its current agreement expired in 2014.

Instead, Steele is pursuing political ends that far exceed the union’s duty to its firefighters — and exploiting the community’s innate respect for them in the process.

bchasnoff@express-news.net