Beavercreek voters to look at charter changes

Council votes to place proposed amendments on November ballot.

Voters will decide in November if fewer signatures are required to run for council, when council members must run for re-election.

Voters in Beavercreek will decide in November whether fewer signatures are required to run for a council seat, and whether appointed council members must run for re-election with less than two years left on the four-year term.

Council unanimously passed a resolution Monday night to place the proposed charter amendments on the Nov. 6 ballot.

Beavercreek Councilman Charles Curran said he plans to run for re-election in November in order to finish out the remaining year of the term he was appointed to fulfill in January.

City Manager Pete Landrum said the charter’s language became an issue after the appointment of Curran, whose term expires in January 2020.

Landrum said if Curran ran again next year and was re-elected to serve a full, four-year term, he would be “term-limited” out of council at the end of that four years, according to the charter, after serving less than six years on council.

If voters approve of the charter amendment, council appointees with less than two years to finish out a term would not have to run for election in order to do that. Appointees with more than two years to serve would still need to be elected by voters to finish out the term.

Mayor Bob Stone said the potential changes would better align Beavercreek’s election-related ordinances with that of the state and other neighboring counties.

Stone said in Curran’s position, it doesn’t make sense for him to collect signatures and run an election campaign only to serve one more year on council.

“Why force someone to go to that trouble,” Stone said.

The other charter amendment that voters will consider in the same ballot issue is whether to reduce the number of signatures required to run in a council election from 75 to 50.

Councilman Zach Upton said he is in favor of reducing the signature requirement, which would “give more people the opportunity to run for office.”

“The signature requirement currently for city council is higher than any county office or state legislature ... it would be easier to run for county commissioner than city council or mayor,” Upton said.

Curran said he remembers collecting around 1,200 signatures when he ran for Dayton City Commission.

Curran said he’s not sure whether he will run again in November 2019.