Voters may get a chance to weigh in on the idea of a Kelso-Longview merger after all.

The Longview City Council has called a special meeting for 6 p.m. Thursday at City Hall to reconsider a resolution for a citizens’ advisory vote about exploring a city merger.

At the council’s July 23 meeting, the council voted 3-2 against holding the vote. However, two council members who supported the poll, Mary Jane Melink and Dennis Weber, were absent. If they had been present, the resolution would have passed and the advisory vote measure would have been put on November’s ballot. The Kelso City Council had already approved the resolution.

Last week, Mayor Kurt Anagnostou solicited support for holding the special meeting from the three other council members who supported the advisory vote, according to Melink.

Melink said she was surprised and disappointed that the vote failed and is glad the council has decided to take a second look at it.

“People have strong feelings about (a merger), but I don’t know anybody’s ever asked what the public thinks about that,” Melink said.

On July 23, the council struck down a resolution for November’s ballot that would ask voters whether the cities should “move forward to study potential greater efficiencies and long-term savings in tax dollars by a merger of the cities.”

If voters were to approve the ballot measure, a formal study would be conducted within six months to lay out the details for a city merger. Then citizens, armed with all the details, would be asked to vote in November 2010 whether they wanted to merge Longview and Kelso.

Councilmen Ken Botero, Don Jensen and Andy Busack had opposed holding an advisory vote. Botero said citizens needed more information first about a merger’s cost before they could make an informed decision. Jensen said past attempts to consolidate services had failed. Busack said he liked living in Longview and worried about putting the fate of two cities into the hands of the few thousand voters who turned out for the election.

Their opposition prompted Kelso City Councilman Dan Myers to fire off an e-mail to the entire Longview council the following day.

“Either someone failed miserably to explain the concept of an advisory vote or the Longview City Council doesn’t give a damn what the citizens think,” Myers wrote July 24.

He went on to say that this year’s ongoing meetings between local governments was intended to look at ways to combine services and save money through economy of scale, and that the question of merging Longview and Kelso has arisen repeatedly.

“Those of us involved in this process knew that to undertake drawing up a merger plan would involve hundreds if not thousands of hours of work and would eventually have to be voted on by the citizens,” he wrote. “Before spending that time we felt it would be prudent to gauge the public sentiment on this issue. … I am very disappointed that the Longview City Council could not grasp the concept of an advisory vote.”

Last week, Myers, who is participating in the government summit, said he wasn’t proposing a merger at this point. He could see some benefits and disadvantages and felt “kind of neutral” about it, he said.

He believes the Longview councilmen who opposed the advisory vote were “overthinking it,” Myers said.

“It was an opportunity to gauge the public,” he said. “That’s what we’re supposed to be (doing) as public servants.”