YAKIMA -- A lot can happen -- changes to the ordinance, a whole new proposal and of course the city council now has some time to think about it and change their minds and that might be a good thing -- at least for one city council member.

And a couple changes have been made since finding out the vote didn't count, according to council member Susan Whitman.

She said the definition of a gang member and a punishment for loitering were some of those changes.

The Yakima City Council made the mistake Tuesday night: calling for a vote on the ordinance, but never specifying which ordinance they were actually voting on, which means they didn't follow city procedure.

The next day, two city administrators looking through the minutes, caught the mistake and announced: the vote didn't count.

"Kind of bothers me, yeah," said resident Barbara Bechard.

But city prosecutor Cynthia Martinez said Thursday it's not a scheme created by those who didn't like the way the vote turned out. Instead a sudden twist to the meeting could be the reason why the council skipped the vital step.

"If anybody had been watching that meeting they, it would not be a surprise to them how that did happen," she said. "A lot of people were caught up in the moment and things were missed."

The city council worked for weeks on modifiying a gang ordinance that would work in Yakima, that's what they thought they'd be voting on Tuesday. Instead, a council member suggested: forget the modified one and just adopt Sunnyside's version of the ordinance.

Now the fate of Yakima's gang ordinance could be changed completely.

But council member Susan Whitman said it's given her time to reread the Sunnyside ordinance -- the one now being proposed for Yakima -- it's why she voted no Tuesday night. She just didn't have time to look it over. This gave her and the others more than a day.

"I want them to vote it in," Bechard said. "We've got to get rid of these gangs, it's dangerous."

Action News also learned forgetting a step in the voting process happens all the time in the country, but it hasn't happened for awhile in Yakima.