No talk of term limits with Tempe City Council
Mayor: ‘I don’t think it’s a good use of our staff time’
Phoenix has them. So does Scottsdale, Mesa and Chandler.
But Tempe’s mayor and City Council members, unlike their counterparts in those cities, will not face limits on the number of consecutive terms they can serve any time soon. In fact, they won’t even discuss the idea.
A majority of council members effectively shot down one member’s proposal to study the idea earlier this month, saying voters should decide whether it’s time for an elected official to leave office.
Councilman Kolby Granville, during a public meeting earlier this month, proposed forming a council subcommittee to explore the pros and cons of bringing to voters a charter amendment that would create mayor and council term-limits.
The City Council regularly forms subcommittees of three members to explore issues with staff input and return to the full council with a recommendation.
This time, the idea went nowhere, even though two council members were willing to join Granville on the subcommittee.
“I don’t think it’s a good use of our staff time,” said Mayor Mark Mitchell. “I would never want to limit the choice of our voters.”
Mitchell was first elected to the council in 2000 and served 12 years as a councilman before he was elected mayor in 2012. He was re-elected in August. His father, Harry Mitchell, served on the City Council from 197178, then was elected mayor in 1978 and remained in that office until he stepped down in 1994. He later was elected to the state Senate and Congress.
Backing Mitchell were Vice Mayor Robin Arredondo-Savage and council members Lauren Kuby and Joel Navarro.
“I really do think we have natural term limits anyway,” Arredondo-Savage said. “We have elections. We have an educated electorate out there with our residents. I kind of think the way we’ve done it has worked pretty well.”
Arredondo-Savage’s uncle, Ben Arredondo, served on the Tempe City Council for 16 years.
Granville, in a final pitch, said he wanted only to explore the issue, which the council could reject anyway. He said at least members would have more information on term limits’ impact on municipalities.
“That’s a frustrating thing for me,” he said. “I don’t think that serves the citizenry well to say, ‘I don’t want to know what I don’t know.”’
Mitchell quickly quashed the topic: “We have consensus. We’re not going to move forward. We’re going to move on.”
Councilmen David Schapira and Randy Keating said they would serve on the subcommittee.
Phoenix, Mesa, Scottsdale, Chandler, Peoria and Goodyear are among Valley cities that limit mayor and council members to two or three consecutive terms, according to a city of Tempe report on the topic.