McKinney City Council term limits, compensation put to a vote

Tammy Warren, who served on a citizen commission that evaluated the city charter, said she has not heard a “compelling reason” to change the charter, including to allow for increased term limits.

“McKinney has just grown exponentially,” Warren said. “There’s so much talent here ... look at how many boards and commissions we have, ... we have so many leaders, and you have to let people have a chance to lead.”

The specifics

A 21-person charter review committee was convened by the council in May and charged with reviewing four key areas of the city’s charter—council term lengths and limits, council member compensation and the composition of the council.

Only three of the four propositions were formally recommended by the commission—propositions B, C and D. The committee gave no formal guidance on Proposition A, which could increase the current two-term limit for council members.

A poll of the committee conducted in July indicated that eight members supported retaining a two-term limit, 11 members supported increasing the limit to three terms and two members were in favor of allowing more than three terms.

The council ultimately decided the specific propositions to be included on the ballot in a 5-1 vote on Aug. 6, with council member Justin Beller voting against and council member Charlie Philips absent.

“That commission shared their preferences to the council on several issues,” Beller said in an email. “It was my preference to put all of those initiatives to the citizens for a vote, but council chose to only put two of them.”

Proposition A: Shall Section 9 of the McKinney City Charter be amended to provide that mayor and city council members shall have term limits consisting of three (3) consecutive, four (4) year terms beginning with the 2025 election?

Proposition B: Shall Section 16 of the McKinney City Charter be amended to provide for compensation of $750 per month for newly-elected council members and $1,000 per month for newly-elected mayor beginning October 1, 2025?

Proposition C: Shall the McKinney City Charter be amended throughout to correct non-substantive errors such as misspellings, punctuation, grammar and sentence structure and revise references to obsolete provisions of state law and harmonize conflicting sections and conform notice and publication requirements to state law?

Proposition D: Shall the McKinney City Charter be amended to delete provisions, practices and policies which are no longer employed by the City of McKinney?

Also of note

Proposition B, if approved, would see an increase in pay for council members.

All council members currently receive $50 per City Council meeting attended, a $100 monthly cell phone allowance and the mayor also receives an additional $100 stipend monthly. The pay was set in 2001.

Beller said the rate increase would “lower the barrier” for future City Council members.

“We need good leadership in this community, and that doesn’t need to be isolated to those that can afford to run a campaign or take unpaid time out of their day,” he said.

Paul Chabot, who leads the Collin County Citizens for Integrity PAC, said the council’s choice to put Proposition B on the ballot was “tone deaf.”

“So many people are hurting financially with inflation in McKinney,” he said. “This is not the right time to ask citizens to give you a raise.”

If approved, Proposition B would be effective beginning Oct. 1, 2025, meaning it would not affect any council members currently serving or any elected in the May 2025 election. Increased compensation would cost the city about $66,000 annually, which the city’s Director of Strategic Services Trevor Minyard said is “unlikely to significantly impact the overall budget or tax rate.”

Council members began considering calling a charter amendment election in January, with the option to add it to the May ballot. The council chose to wait until the November general election in hopes of a higher turnout, Mayor George Fuller said at a May 7 meeting.

“[If] we’re going to put something on the ballot, this November being a presidential election, [I] couldn’t imagine a higher turnout,” Fuller said.

The charter review committee was convened in May and met four times prior to forming recommendations.

“We took a number of samples and polls ... As we all became more educated about what the topic was, the results changed,” Charter commission chairman Bill Cox said.

Municipalities must wait a minimum of two years between calling for a charter amendment election, Minyard said. The city’s most recent charter amendment election was conducted in 2019.

The council term limits and compensation structure currently in place were set in a 2001 charter amendment election, which saw just over 3,000 votes cast on each of those propositions, according to the Collin County Elections Office.

• “We believe that Prop A is getting us one step closer to allowing residents to vote for who they feel would ... the best candidate, and not hindered by an arbitrary number of terms," Sally Riche, president of the Citizens for McKinney PAC, said.
• “Democracy is based on participation of the citizens, and what [we can] do to encourage participation from the citizens is to have new, viable candidates that come and represent citizens," Tom Michero, president of the Keep McKinney Unique PAC, said.

Beller, who was elected in 2021 and represents District 1, said he will vote against Proposition A.

“We’ve had a two-term limit for over 20 years in McKinney and I think it has served us well,” he said in an email. “We are a large community with lots [of] good leaders. We should constantly be growing and preparing new leaders and then providing opportunities for them to serve.”

Tom Michero, who started the Keep McKinney Unique PAC to oppose Proposition A, said term limits encourage “participatory leadership” and help to mitigate some of the advantages incumbent candidates may have.

Chabot criticized the ballot language for Proposition A as being misleading, noting voters may read it as instilling term limits rather than increasing current term limits.

“Government needs to be open and honest, and Proposition A meets neither of those,” Chabot said.

Cox said increasing the council’s term limits could provide consistency in leadership, specifically in seeing through city partnerships and projects.

“There are situations to where current council members and current mayors ... are doing good work,” Cox said. “It takes time to get commitments from state and local and federal leaders, and to have turnover, oftentimes you lose that experience.”

Riche, whose Citizens for McKinney PAC supports Proposition A, said City Council members and the mayor are some of the few elected officials who have term limits imposed, noting the only other political appointment McKinney residents vote for that is subject to term limits is the president.

“Any member wishing to continue serving would have to campaign, and voters, through an election, will decide which candidates will serve,” Fuller said in an email. “It is always the will of the voters that [prevails] in our democracy.”

Looking ahead

If approved, Proposition A would be effective for the May 2025 election, in which four council member seats are up for election. Of those four, only two council members will have completed two terms in their current seats—Fuller along with council member Charlie Philips.

Council members also indicated at an Aug. 6 meeting that another review of the composition of the council should be conducted. Due to state law, the next charter amendment election that could be called in McKinney for any item, including composition or any propositions that may fail in the upcoming election, would be for the November 2026 election.

Mark your calendar

The next City Council election is May 3, 2025. Seats up for election include:

• Mayor, currently occupied by George Fuller
• District 1, currently occupied by Justin Beller
• District 3, currently occupied by Geré Feltus
• At Large 1, currently occupied by Charlie Philips