We've had several calls of late asking about the ramifications of the Grand County propositions #1 and #2 on the November ballot. These propositions arrived on the ballot by virtue of citizen initiatives, one of the moving citizens being the late Harvey Merrell. Prop. 1 proposes to reduce the number of members on the Grand County Council from seven to five; and Prop. 2 proposes to make all members at large rather than representing geographic districts.

Last week we published a calendar of coverage of things that will be on the Nov. 2 ballot. Because of questions surrounding propositions 1 and 2, they will be addressed next week rather than this week.

One of the problems, as I understand it, is that the Grand County Council is in charge of planning implementation of these items, should they pass, and the council has been advised to wait until after the election for any such planning, because they were not originated through the council, but through the citizenry.

Questions addressed to the Utah Attorney General's office about the propositions have resulted in tossing the ball into the court of the Grand County Attorney's office, for various reasons.

My reaction is that neither of these propositions is likely to pass if there is no further information available to the voters than that they should vote for or against.

One of the major questions at hand is whether all members of the council would have to run for re-election in a special election, should either proposition pass. That was the case when Grand County changed its form of government from the County Commission to County Council, and increased the number of elected members from three to seven.

At any rate, we plan to bring readers as much information as we can find about the issues.

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We've missed Nik Hougen and his political cartoons. The editorial pages are pretty gray without any artwork. And so when Zane was attending the National Newspaper Convention in Denver a couple of weeks ago, he picked up information about syndicated cartoons. As a result, we have subscribed.

This week's offerings included seven different cartoons by cartoonists from various newspapers around the country. Not surprisingly, the subject matter of most of them is the upcoming presidential election. See my choice for this week on page A7. With the first presidential debate tonight (Thursday), it seemed appropriate.