Charter Amendment Discussion -- Inside River Oaks

[ Show ]

Support VoyForums

[ Shrink ]

VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, [3], 4, 5, 6 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 21:00:03 04/21/19 Sun
Author: Johnny
Subject: Charter Amendment Discussion

Lets have a serious discussion on the Charter Propositions coming up on the ballot:

Prop A is to allow council the option to appoint a council member should a member step down before their term is up and not have a special election.

Let's turn back the time machine for a second. At the town hall meeting when they proposed the charter props. to go from two year terms to three year they gave three reasons why it was good deal for the voters. 1. it would create stability on council, although we had two step down. 2. It would save the city money. that's been proven way wrong. A special election and three very expensive run-offs. Lastly, it was to give YOU the VOTERS the chance to elect a replacement should one step down because under the old two year terms council could pick the replacement.

The reason to VOTE NO on this PROP is you're giving up your right to vote for the replacement and one thing about once someone is on council, it's generally high 80 to low 90% that they get re-elected where an open seat would be up for grabs.

Now for the biggie: PROPOSITION B CITY MANAGER FROM OF GOVERNMENT.

As it stands now your council and mayor do the hiring and firing and make the business decisions for our city. If you vote in a city manager he will do all the hiring and firing and other normal duties that council and the mayor deal with.

Reasons to VOTE NO:

1. is the extreme expense that would be added to our budget by hiring a city manager. Currently, we pay the mayor 200.00 a month and city council 100.00 a month, plus small payments for meetings attended. Now, where is this money going to come from for a city manager? You can google check average salaries for a city manager and will probably drop your phone. We are already cutting the hours of our library to save money. We are suppose to be adding more full-time paid fireman to our shifts. so where is this added money going to come from. MORE HIGHER PROPERTY TAXES? Although there is development coming to our city, most of our city is already developed.

If you watch the news regularly you can see city managers making the news pretty regularly and not for good reasons.

Next reason to VOTE NO is your hiring an un-elected bureaucrat who will not be accountable to citizens and voters of our city. And I can see in instances of firings and unwanted development in our future, council hiding behind the city manager rather than take responsibility for their actions. It's been said at council meetings many times before that they stand behind their people. So if they pick a city manager you can bet they will stand behind the city manager no matter what. After all, they're the ones hiring them.

Another reason to VOTE NO is a city manager will want a guaranteed contract. Can the city afford to fire a city manager with a guaranteed contract?

NOW TO THE POWER OF THE VOTER: To get rid of an unwanted city manager it would take three elections despite what your council person said. Let's do some easy math. If you approve this year they would hire a city manager. At the next election the mayor and Place 5 is up for reelection. So that's one council member. Then the next year Place 2 and 4 or up. That's three council members and the place 1 and 3. this charter amendment has written into it rules that require a super majority to fire a city manager. So that means four council members would have to vote to fire one. This exact situation happened in a city I'm very familiar with. Citizens banded together and in two years got rid of three council members and mayor, but could not achieve the super majority vote to rid their city of the city manager and the projects he was pushing.

The choice is yours. Keep the power at the ballot box. Or let an un-elected official decide your fate! On a side note to all of this: for many, many years some of the very people promoting this plan for a city manager have been screaming about how the school boards don't have control of their superintendents. Not to mention have you noticed any business when they hire a new boss how there is a huge turn over in employees. City managers could come in a clean house. If you had been at the joint board meetings between Council, EDC and Planning and Zoning and heard the retired city manager telling our council and boards to ignore the citizens it would concern you greatly on who could wind up running our city!

Let me take a breath now and let us move on the PROP C.

PROPOSITION C is changing the quorum rules.

This is pretty cut and dried. It makes the quorum of council members needed to conduct a meeting to three. This will mean three council members without regard of the mayor will constitute a quorum. I guess if you pass Prop B the mayor doesn't matter anyway since he would be strictly ceremonial anyway and only break ties.

PROPOSITION D: employees as candidates for city council

Our city for years as not allowed employees to run for council and that also included volunteer fireman who were officers of the FD. This is being brought up because the State of Texas has changed the govt. code. More than likely the reasons for not allowing this in the past was you didn't want employees pushing pay in program that would benefit them personally.

My recommendation is VOTE Place 1 John Claridge.

VOTE NO on Props A and B.

VOTE Yes to Props C and D

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]