|
Only have a minute? Listen instead
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
HARLINGEN — Two years after voters set limits on the mayor’s and commissioners’ terms, city commissioners are proposing boosting terms from three to four years as part of a plan to drive up turnout.
As commissioners launch a revision of the City Charter, Commissioner Ford Kinsley questioned why they didn’t set up a seven-member charter review committee as proposed last July.
During a meeting, Commissioner Daniel Lopez proposed aligning the city’s new November elections with presidential or gubernatorial elections to help boost voter turnout.
“My thought was, do we want to reduce the years or the terms to two years or extend it to four years, or how do we figure (it) out (so) all elections will either fall on the governor’s election or presidential election,” Lopez told commissioners during the Feb. 29 meeting.
In response, Commissioner Rene Perez said commissioners were counting on boosting turnout when they proposed pushing back the city’s May elections to November two years ago.
“When we switched the election, the whole point was to get higher turnout for voting,” he said, adding Brownsville and McAllen have set their mayors’ and commissioners’ terms at four years.
While officials have held the commission’s regular meetings at 5:30 p.m. for decades, Perez proposed calling for a proposition specifying setting the meetings “after 5 p.m.”
“That would be a good thing to make sure our city commission — the most important meetings for our city — always remain accessible to the working people of Harlingen,” he said. “It shows the commission has a commitment to make our meetings accessible to working people here in Harlingen or the ones that work 8 to 5, at least.”
During discussion, Kinsley wanted to know why the city hadn’t set up a seven-member committee as commissioners proposed during a meeting last July.
“I’m disappointed we didn’t make our assignments,” he said. “We were tasked with nominating people for this committee many months ago. So we can’t just sit here and arbitrarily say we don’t want to go with it.”
In response, City Manager Gabriel Gonzalez said commissioners had made three nominations to the seven-member ad-hoc committee requiring four members to officially meet in a quorum.
Now, time’s running out to propose amendments for November’s election ballot, he said.
“That’s up to the commission how we want to decide how you want to handle it,” Gonzalez told commissioners. “I don’t know what the commission’s intent is regarding the charter review committee, but at this point we need to get started in order to provide direction.”
During discussion, Commissioner Frank Morales said he, Kinsley and Commissioner Michael Mezmar had made nominations to the seven-member committee.
“That would mean more eyes on this charter and have better input,” Morales told commissioners.
In response, Perez said commissioners could propose amendments to the charter, as they did two years ago.
“We didn’t really need a charter review committee to do that — this is just my personal opinion,” Perez, the city’s mayor pro tem, told commissioners. “In a way, I kind of see the charter review committee as just another double bureaucracy. You realize it’s like another layer because ultimately whatever they decide is going to have to come to us. We are the ones who eventually are going to make a decision so I think it’s best if we ourselves decide what we want to change about the charter instead of using a charter review committee.”
In a presentation, Gonzalez told commissioners the city had revised the charter in 2006, when a charter review committee helped propose amendments, and in 2022, when commissioners proposed the changes.
Gonzalez said he planned to hold meetings this month to consider any proposals while calling on commissioners to propose amendments by Aug. 1.
“What I’d like to do is ask everybody to start going through the charter,” he said. “I think we probably ought to look at every single article. Just make notes about what within the particular article we would like to see changed and bring those changes back and as a whole we can consider … the proposed amendments and then move forward from there.”
Last July, commissioners called for a seven-member committee to propose any amendments to the charter, with each commissioner nominating a member while Mayor Norma Sepulveda would make two nominations.
During the July 19 meeting, Sepulveda, who didn’t attend last week’s meeting, added, “we need to make sure we’re including the community and not just placing things on the ballot as a commission.”
Amid discussion, Lopez opposed Sepulveda’s suggestion a commissioner also serve on the committee.
“It keeps us kind of out of it,” he said, referring to the committee’s proposals.
The committee, whose members commissioners were set to nominate last August, was expected to hold monthly meetings aimed at reviewing the charter before presenting commissioners with its report this August, officials said at the time.
On November’s election ballot, Perez’s District 5 seat along with Mezmar’s District 3 seat and Morales’ District 4 seat are up for grabs.
In 2021, the city’s past commission began working to propose amendments to the charter.
In a May 2022 special election, residents overwhelmingly voted in favor of an amendment limiting the mayor’s and commissioners’ tenures to four, three-year terms while pushing the city’s May elections to November beginning this year.
As part of a third proposition, residents overwhelmingly voted in favor of an amendment creating a seven-member airport board, allowing each commissioner to make an appointment to the board while the mayor appoints two members.
Since 2006, the charter had given the mayor sole power to appoint members to the prominent board, which had been made up of nine members.
