This November, Santee residents will have two choices regarding term limits for elected officials, who now can serve as long as voters re-elect them.
The City Council on June 10 voted to place its own term limit measure on the Nov. 3 ballot, competing with one that was put forward in 2018 by a citizens coalition led by Councilman Stephen Houlahan and the environmental/political action group Preserve Wild Santee.
The city’s measure would establish a limit of three four-year terms for City Council service, regardless of which of four districts in Santee is represented; a limit of two four-year terms for mayoral service, separate from and in addition to the term limit for City Council service; and that a partial term of more than two years will be considered a full term.
The citizens’ ballot initiative restricts members of the City Council and the mayor to three four-year terms and any portion of a term, whether by election or appointment, would count as a full term.
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Houlahan was the lone member of the City Council not backing the city’s own council-sponsored measure.
“It weakens this council,” Houlahan said of the one created by City Attorney Shawn Hagerty. “It gives the impression of impropriety and grasping for power. I am absolutely against putting forth an additional term limit measure. This looks very, very bad for the council.”
Whichever measure gets the most votes will be the one to go into effect, and Santee will become the second East County city to limit how long elected officials can serve.
Many residents complained about the competing measure, with letters decrying it read into the record during the meeting, held virtually because of public health concerns related to COVID-19.
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Resident Janet Garvin said she signed the citizens initiative two years ago and said its “reasonable term limits” are consistent with other term limits from around the state. Garvin took Mayor John Minto and the City Council to task.
“This is nothing more than a self-serving conspiracy to confuse the voters who are looking for more honesty, integrity and transparency in our local government,” Garvin said.
Councilman Rob McNelis responded to Garvin’s comments by saying: “This provides the citizens of Santee to have options and having options is democracy. More choices doesn’t make us self-serving; it gives an opportunity to those who want something different.”
It will cost the city between $10,000 and $20,000 to put its own term-limit measure on the ballot, and is in addition to the cost of the regular City Council election. Districts 3 and 4 as well as the mayor’s seat will be on the November ballot.
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Van Collinsworth, who heads Preserve Wild Santee and author of the citizens initiative, said the city’s version giving the mayor two additional terms sets up “a potential 20-year career on city council,” which he said could lead to an increase in “the ability to entrench corrosive special interest relationships.”
Resident Lori Scribner called the citizens initiative a fair compromise of three four-year terms and railed against the city’s own.
“To think that our own leaders would try to kill the will of the voters by coming up with their own term limit option, at the expense of us, the taxpayers, when we obviously already approved a ballot initiative is ridiculous, and at a cost of $10,000-$20,000 to Santee citizens,” Scribner said. “How dare you. We do not want a monarchy in Santee. And we absolutely do not want council members to milk the position for all it’s worth for two decades.”
La Mesa voters in 2014 overwhelmingly approved Proposition K, which puts a limit of no more than three consecutive terms for a member of the council, mayor or any combination. The cities of San Diego and National City as well as San Diego County also have term limits for elected representatives in their jurisdictions.
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The citizen term-limits initiative needed the signatures of 10 percent of the city’s more than 32,000 registered voters, and had 3,530 signatures verified by the San Diego County Registrar of Voters.
City Council members Laura Koval and McNelis spoke about the difficulty of the job as a city representative without personal staff help. Councilman Ronn Hall said the institutional knowledge gained while in office makes them better.
“It takes several years before you get grasp of who’s who and what’s what,” McNelis said.
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Santee council votes to put competing term-limit measure on November ballot - The San Diego Union-Tribune
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