Scheduled city elections, term limits also on workshop agenda
By Teresa Sargeant
Reporter
The Wednesday, March 19, charter amendment workshop ended with an agreement to aim for next month for the City Council’s first and second readings of the proposed amendments to meet the deadline from the Orange County Supervisor of Elections.
The workshop, which started one hour before the regularly scheduled City Council meeting, didn’t result in any action.
On the workshop’s agenda for discussion were the following topics: changing the date for city elections, establishing term limits for all elected positions—including the mayor—of no more than three consecutive terms at a time, changing the form of government from strong mayor to council-manager, employment contracts, and authority of city clerk in election qualifying.
Currently, the city has the strong mayor-form of government, in which the mayor acts as the chief executive in the city’s day-to-day operations. The city is considering a change to the council-manager form, in which an elected council creates the policies, and the employed city manager enacts policies and manages daily operations.
“It’s not to change the charter, per se, as if it’s to send the questions about possibly changing the charter to the voters,” city attorney Cliff Shepard said in a Tuesday, March 18, interview with The Apopka Chief. “I’ve drafted an ordinance that has a number of questions – I can’t remember how many – and they [the City Council] can say at that time, ‘Well, we decided we don’t really want to put this one out there, but we want to put these other ones out there,’ or whatever.”
That would unfold on the first reading, Shepard said.
“On second reading, it should be everything is finalized as to what they want to send to the voters,” he said. “And then they vote on it. They approve it. Then it goes to the voters at whatever the next election is.”
The charter review process is not set by law but can be influenced by the passage of time and changing societal norms, Shepard said.
The workshop also touched on the possibility of changing the governing body’s name from “council” to “commission” for language consistency, since both words are used in the charter. Shepard said there is no difference between a council or commission.
“I asked them, ‘Do you want to be a council? Do you want to be a commission?’ Because in the charter, it reads both ways, and it needs to pick one and stick with it,” Shepard said.
Shepard noted that the city’s last charter review was likely before his time as the city attorney. He suggested that a charter review might be necessary every five to seven years.
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