Gardens voters will get chance to alter charter
They will decide whether anyone should serve 9 straight years.
One of the three questions on the Aug. 28 ballot will be whether City Council members should be allowed to serve three terms.
PALM BEACH GARDENS — Palm Beach Gardens voters will decide on more than just congressional candidates in the Aug. 28 primary election.
Voters will see three questions asking them to change the City Charter, which is comparable to the city’s constitution. City officials rewrote the questions after a judge tossed two of them from the March 13 ballot, alleging they were misleading.
The three separate, reworded questions will ask voters if:
■ Council term limits should be changed to allow council members to serve three, consecutive full terms instead of two. This would apply to sitting council members.
■ The City Charter should be repealed and replaced with a new charter that eliminates outdated language and provisions that conflict with state law.
■ A requirement that the city manager be a resident should be eliminated. The city council would be empowered to determine a residency requirement as part of the manager’s employment contract.
Councilman Matthew Lane continued to oppose the proposal to increase the number of terms a council member can serve. If voters approve it, a council member could serve 18 years in a 21-year period, divided by a three-year break.
“For those of us who believe in term limits, this creates a problem,” Lane said.
An incumbent can form such strong relationships and “amass such a large campaign war chest” that it becomes almost impossible to get rid of him or her, he said.
Councilman Mark Marciano acknowledged the desire for term limits in Palm Beach Gardens and across the country but said the incumbent’s advantage is long gone after three years.
The council is trying to do the right thing to make sure the city has both consistency and natural attrition over the years, he said.
Mayor Maria Marino said people wanted term limits, but after they voted for two, three-year terms — the only choice on the ballot in 2014 — they realized it wasn’t enough time.
Major road projects take years to complete, and officials who aren’t up to speed may get pushed aside, Marino said.
Nine years is enough, she said. “After you’ve served nine years, and you have to sit out for three years, I would really venture to say that you’re not going to see a lot of people that are going to come back,” she said. “It is time for someone else to do that job.”