Group wants vote on Seminole mayor, commissioner term limits
Seminole Tax Collector Joel Greenberg is among a group of residents who want voters to elect a countywide mayor who’d oversee the day-to-day operations of Seminole County government and serve alongside county commissioners, similar to the system in Orange County.
The group also wants charter referendums placed on the November ballot asking voters if county commissioners should be elected in nonpartisan races, be limited to two four-year terms and represent individual districts rather than serve countywide.
Currently, Seminole’s five commissioners hire a county manager to run the daily operations and oversee staff. Races for four-year commission terms are partisan and those elected don’t face term limits. Commissioners are elected countywide but must reside in one of five districts in a system that guarantees diverse geographic representation.
The political group Citizens for Effective Government last week submitted petition forms to Seminole Supervisor of Elections Michael Ertel for the four county charter amendments. A fifth charter amendment the group proposes would require that Seminole’s five constitutional officers — the sheriff, property appraiser, tax collector, clerk of the circuit court and supervisor of elections — serve independently from the County Commission.
After Ertel’s office approves the forms — most likely by mid-January — the group would have six months to gather at least 21,898 signatures from registered county voters before the referendums can be placed on the general election ballot.
“It’s a really tight time frame, but it’s doable,” Ertel said.
Greenberg, who was elected in November 2016 over a nominal write-in candidate after earlier defeating longtime tax collector Ray Valdes in the GOP primary, has clashed with commissioners since taking office. Most recently, commissioners were leery about his proposal to sell four branch offices for $13.2 million and use the proceeds to buy shopping centers in distressed areas and locate drivers-license operations within them.
The state Department of Revenue said the plan lacked a cost-benefit analysis and was unrelated to his duties.
Greenberg referred questions about the proposed charter amendments to group representative Daniel Day. Day did not respond to requests for comment.
Since the early 1990s, Orange County voters have elected a county mayor. Or-
ange commissioners are elected in nonpartisan races within their districts and limited to two four-year terms.
Elsewhere in Central Florida, Lake County has the same system as Seminole, with commissioners living in districts but elected in partisan races and serving countywide.
Osceola, like Orange, has single-member districts, but commission races are partisan. Whereas the Seminole group is seeking voter approval for single-member districts, a federal judge in 2006 ordered heavily Hispanic Osceola to switch to single-member districts from an at-large system, saying Hispanics had “no reasonable opportunity to elect members in an atlarge election.”
Seminole Commissioner Lee Constantine, who after a long career in the Legislature was elected to the commission in 2012 and re-elected in 2016, said he welcomes giving residents a chance to vote on the issues.
“I’m fine with everything being debated and discussed,” he said. “I’m fully supportive of citizen’s initiatives being put on the ballot.”