BRADENTON — Voters will decide in the November election whether the city’s elected officials will have term limits and whether Bradenton’s mayor will remain a member of the City Council, which has Sunshine Law implications.
Council members voted unanimously on June 10 to move the two city charter amendments onto the ballot. No public comment was offered on either issue.
One amendment would set a 12-year term limit for elected city officials, allowing three consecutive four-year terms.
The other amendment would remove the mayor as ex-officio president of the City Council, eliminate the mayor’s ability to cast a tie-breaking vote and provide that the mayor is not a member of the City Council, which would result in exempting the mayor from Sunshine Law provisions that apply to council members, according to City Attorney Scott Rudacille.
Rudacille told council members on June 10 that removing the mayor’s ability to break a tie would remove his voting power, but if the mayor continued to serve as ex-officio president of the council, “it suggests the mayor is still a member of the council,” making him subject to the Sunshine Law, even as a non-voting member.
A portion of the Sunshine Law prohibits two or more members of the same elected board from privately discussing any matter that could foreseeably be voted on by the board.
Mayor Gene Brown favors the change, saying it would allow him to communicate better with council members, for example, informing them about projects he is working on with the administration.
Council member Lisa Gonzalez Moore said that while she thinks it is appropriate for voters to decide the issue, she wondered whether it should instead be addressed in a charter review, which the city’s charter does not currently require.
A committee review of the city’s charter would take 24-36 months, Brown said.
Previous discussions about a charter review became “very political,” Vice Mayor Jayne Kocher said, adding, “I hate to see us go down that road.”
Term limits
A 12-year term limit gives elected officials enough time to learn the ropes but not too much time to become complacent, council members said.
Four years is not enough, Gonzalez Moore said, adding, “You are literally just learning something so new.”
Eight years is “definitely not enough,” Councilwoman Pam Coachman said. “I’m in my second term and some of the things I hoped to see in my first term — it wasn’t gelled yet.”
“We need to listen to the voters,” Councilwoman Marianne Barnebey said. “It’s their government and they pay for it.”
Bradenton is 123 years old, and there have been 20 mayors, said Brown, in his sixth year as mayor, adding that most cities that age have had 40 or more mayors, and that in the past 61 years, there have only been three mayors.
Brown has been mayor since 2021. Wayne Poston, the former executive editor of The Bradenton Herald, served from 2000-2021, and Bill Evers served from 1980-2000.
Cindy Lane is a staff writer for the Tampa Bay Beacons. She can be reached at clane@tbnweekly.com.