Charter Amendments Series

I'm going to do a series on the Charter Amendments to lay out what they are and then give you my own opinion about where I stand on the issues and why. I'll take each issue individually so that I can be thorough about them.

Tomorrow we start with the pay raise for city council because it is by far the most controversial.

But I wanted to briefly talk about an issue that was first raised by City Rep Lily Limón.

During the presentation made before council by the ad hoc committee set up to look into a few charter amendment ideas, Limón pressed former Mayor Joe Wardy, who was presenting, on whether or not the committee looked into creating a charter amendment issue to change back to the strong mayor form of government.

To my knowledge the only people on council calling for this change has been Limón and former city rep Eddie Holguin. There was more of a conversation to revert back to the strong mayor form of government back when Joyce Wilson was the City Manager but that was pretty much just during the ball park discussion days.

Mayor Wardy indicated that the committee only had a few issues it was tasked to review and that wasn't one of them. However that does not mean the idea is dead. The city council can indeed vote to include that item in the election if they so desire, so Rep Limón will likely be able to start that conversation with her colleagues in a meeting. I'm not sure I think there are enough votes to get it on a ballot, but she will certainly have her chance to start the community discussion on the issue.

After his presentation last week before city council I had a chance to ask Mayor Wardy about the idea of putting an item on the ballot to revert back to the strong mayor form of government. Interestingly the former mayor is opposed to the idea. Here is audio of our interview and you can hear exactly what is rationale is.