It seems to me that, if you are going to look for a compromise, the second option seems like a reasonable one to go for. There is the question of how many elections people would need to try it. I think it would have to be a minimum of two. One is simply not enough. Ideally, it would be three elections, but of course that's pushing it down the road quite a bit, so it's going to be a tough discussion to decide if that's actually reasonable. I would say, yes, a referendum after the fact is a better idea.
On October 7th, 2016. See this statement in context.