Council discusses city charter changes

CRESTVIEW — The Crestview city council held a special meeting Monday night to discuss adding proposed changes to the city’s charter to the August 28 primary election ballot. The council favored two separate ballot questions for deciding on the form of government and deciding whether the city or voters would select the city clerk.

The proposed change would replace the current “weak mayor” form of city government with a city manager form of government. Under that system, a city manager would be appointed by the city council to run the day-to-day operations of the city. All department heads would report to the city manager.

There has been some debate over whether to include a provision in the ballot question that states the city clerk would be appointed instead of elected, or to allow voters to decide that issue in a separate ballot question.

Scott Shirley, a Tallahassee attorney who is contracted by the city, urged the council to present a single ballot question that includes the city clerk provision.

The council members in attendance, however, had reservations about doing so due to previous failed attempts to change the city charter. City Council President JB Whitten referenced a previous council meeting where Supervisor of Elections Paul Lux told the council that the attempt to amend the charter in 2012 failed due to “voter fatigue and the amount of information in the referendum item.”

Council members argued that including the city clerk provision would be unfair to voters who might want to adopt a city manager form of government, but would prefer an elected city clerk over an appointed one.

“If you have these things tied together and you don’t like one thing, you’re going to vote no against the whole thing, and you just shot it down,” Whitten said.

Councilman Shannon Hayes echoed Whitten’s concerns.

“To be fair to all the citizens, we definitely need a separation between the clerk and the form of government with the manager,” Hayes said.

Shirley suggested that if the single ballot question failed, it could be brought up again as multiple questions on a future ballot.

“You can have a single ballot question that approves the entire charter,” Shirley said. “If it doesn’t pass, then you can have additional ballot questions on specific issues of importance.”

Councilman Doug Faircloth raised the issue that the questions would then be on a municipal election ballot, which he said have had low turnout in the past. The council targeted the August 28 primary ballot because of its historically higher voter turnout.

“I think this is about the fifth stab at this,” Faircloth said. “Everybody has worked long and hard on this and I sure would hate to see it fail just because they disagreed with one thing in that one question.”

Shirley also raised the concern that he would not have enough time to come up with two separate questions for the ballot. The deadline to have the questions to the supervisor of elections is June 15, making the deadline for the council to have the first reading of the ordinance May 14, just two weeks away.

Whitten said he was concerned that any delay could cause the question to not be approved in time to make it onto the August 28 ballot.

“I’m going to use every ounce of my body to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Whitten said.

Shirley talked about the difficulty involved in coming up with two questions on short notice.

“It is going to require some significant wordsmithing to make that happen, to make separate ballot questions happen,” Shirley said. “We can give it a shot to see if we can crank it out quickly enough if that’s what you want to do.”

Whitten then pointedly asked Shirley if he could get the job done within the timeframe.

“I don’t want you to give it a shot,” Whitten said. “If you think you can’t do it, then we’ll find someone that can, because we want this on the August 28 ballot. That’s what we want.”

Shirley said he could do it.

The council then voted unanimously to have Shirley come back with two separate questions by the May 14 city council meeting.