The Brownsville City Commission will vote during Tuesday’s meeting on an item that if approved will let citizens decide if they want the mayor and city commissioners to have term limits.
If approved, these recommendations may be considered toward a Charter Amendment Election (Special Election) to coincide with the May 1, 2021 City General Election.
“The Charter Amendment process in any community is a citizen-driven initiative,” City Manager Noel Bernal said during a phone interview on Monday.
“It can be started by the commission, for example, if they have items that they want to bring before the community or they can send a charter committee to do that and bring those items before the commission.
We had our department heads review their departments to see if there’s anything in the charter that might need to be updated to align with current operations.”
Bernal said the recommendations to have the term limits came out of the charter committee work and added the reason why it is outlined into 10 different items is because the commission needs to consider each possible amendment on its own. The commission needs to decide for each item and whatever gets approved will then go before the voters at the May election with each amendment as a separate proposition item.
Some of the items on the agenda states the following:
1) Consideration and ACTION, if any, by City Commission regarding Charter Amendments presented by Charter Review Committee.(Charter Review Committee/Office of the City Secretary)
a) Term Limits Mayor
b) Term Limits City Commission
c) Appointment of Municipal Judge(s)
d) Initiative
e) Citizen Referendum
“They actually have two meetings which is tomorrow and January 19,” Bernal said. “If there’s anything that they’re not prepared for or if they want to discuss more as a body, they can still come back on January 19 to approve any one of those items.”
The deadline to have the items approved on time to make it to the election is Feb. 5th.
