SEBASTIAN — Voters in the City of Sebastian will be allowed to decide whether they want their city council members to serve for four years. They won’t, however, be asked if they want to impose term limits.
Council members Andrea Coy and Eugene Wolff voted against removing the city’s Charter Review Advisory Committee’s recommendation to ask voters about term limits. The remaining three, Mayor Jim Hill, Vice Mayor Don Wright and Councilman Richard Gillmor, said they either didn’t see term limits as a necessity or should be put to voters in a separate question.
“It was a fail-safe,” Charter committee member Bob Zomok told the council Wednesday night of including the term limits.
He told them that the issue of moving to 4-year terms was the most discussed and debated item the committee addressed – and to help allay some concerns about having longer terms, the committee struck a compromise, if 4-year terms passed, then there would be term limits.
“I think there is some merit,” Coy said of putting the question of term limits to the voters, though she added she personally doesn’t agree with them. “We should let the public tell us.”
Wright, who also disapproves of term limits, said combining the two issues “muddies the water.”
Gillmor agreed, noting that if they were to tie the two questions together, some voters might approve it for the term limits, others for the 4-year terms, and other might disapprove because of one or the other. Splitting the issue, he said, would make the vote clearer.
Wolff said it would be “disingenuous” for the City Council to separate the issues. He noted that he had read closely the minutes of the Charter committee’s discussions regarding the matter and pointed out that before the term limits were added to the issue, the committee was split evenly for and against 4-year terms.
Only after the committee added the term limits did the issue receive majority approval, Wolff said.
The only other Charter amendment that did not garner unanimous support from the Sebastian City Council was the issue of how the council would address filling vacancies on the dais between elections.
Wolff was the lone dissenting vote, expressing concern that it would be “self-serving” for the council to appoint someone to fill an open seat until the next election.
Instead, he would have preferred the pool of candidates be that from the prior municipal election race.
“It sets up the council to be perceived as an invalid body,” Wolff said to do otherwise.
Gillmor disagreed, noting that if the voters approved the 4-year terms and a vacancy occurred a few years into that term, it would be difficult to track down the candidates who ran in that race.
Sebastian voters will have eight Charter amendments to approve or disapprove in November.
The other amendments include:
- Section 1.02: Delete references to “poor houses,” “dairies” and “slaughter houses.”
- Section 4.07: Repeal section relating to manner of how elections are to be called and held.
- Section 2.11: Delete references made to penalties for failing or refusing to follow orders from city council.
- Section 3.03: Modify language pertaining to the removal of charter officers.
- Sections 2.04, 2.06 & 4.08: Modify language relating to the commencement of council member terms.
- Sections 2.09 & 4.13: Amend sections to provide that the Florida Division of Elections, the Florida Elections Commission or the courts determine issues relating to the qualifications and election of city council members rather than assigning these responsibilities to the city council.
