The item was tabled indefinitely in a 6-1 vote, with council member Geré Feltus voting against tabling the item.
The details
The charter amendment election was first considered at a Jan. 16 work session meeting. An ordinance that, if approved, would have added the election to the May ballot was presented for action at the Feb. 6 meeting.
The ordinance included three propositions, with the first two being “clean up” items, such as grammar revisions typically included in charter amendment elections, City Attorney Mark Houser said.
The third proposition listed in the ordinance was regarding increasing the number of consecutive terms allowed for City Council members from two to three.
Council members currently serve four-year terms with a limit of two consecutive terms in one position, Houser said at the January meeting. They are also able to serve for up to 16 consecutive years if they are elected and serve two full terms as a council member followed by two full terms as mayor, or vice versa, he said.
What they’re saying
During public comment periods at the meeting, 10 community members spoke against the proposed charter amendment election, with many citing their support for the existing term limits.
“I want to keep the current system in place,” McKinney resident Don Silver said. “We can get fresh faces, fresh ideas if there aren’t just incumbents.”
Feltus, along with council member Rick Franklin, said they asked for the item to be added to the meetings’ agenda. Feltus said the city has seen “positive move” in the past seven years that George Fuller has served as mayor.
“A lot of people were not aware that we had term limits, and a lot of people were not aware that potentially we could lose our leader of this community,” Feltus said, referring to Fuller.
Franklin said he added the item to the agenda because he would like to continue serving on the council with Fuller.
“I would like to see him continue as mayor, but that’s his decision, and it's the voters decision on whether we do this or not,” Franklin said.
The mayor said he did not ask for the charter amendment election to be added to the agenda, noting that he has not said whether he would run again if the opportunity was available. Fuller was elected to his second term as mayor in 2021 and is currently limited to two terms, according to the city charter.
“I don’t know that I would run [for election] again,” Fuller said. “There’s a handful of things that would cause me to want to run again if it was an option, but I haven’t talked about running.”
Fuller said that he would prefer the potential charter amendment election be considered closer to the November election.
“If we're going to have a discussion on term limits, let's do it as we move closer to November,” Fuller said. “I do think that if there's going to be [an] ask of the community, it should be by the larger turnout and where there's the greater engagement.”
