McKinney residents are split on a proposed charter amendment on the November ballot: Should city council members be able to run for a third term?
Voters will decide four propositions to change the city’s charter in the Nov. 5 election. Early voting runs from Monday through Friday, Nov. 1.
Proposition A, which would allow the mayor and council to run for a third consecutive term, has received backlash from community members. They currently can only serve two.
Some see the change as a power grab from the mayor.
If voters approve Proposition A, Mayor George Fuller and council member-at-large Charlie Philips would be eligible to run for office again in May 2025. Having served two consecutive terms, the two council members are not eligible without voter approval of Proposition A.
Some also take issue with the ballot’s wording of the proposition, the process by which council members added it and how it will affect turnover among the seven council seats.
Those who favor extending term limits for the council say more tenured, experienced leaders will serve the growing city well, especially for long-term infrastructure projects.
Tom Michero is the treasurer of Keep McKinney Unique, a political committee against Proposition A. He has raised thousands of dollars for a campaign opposing the charter amendment. Like many opposed to extending term limits, he sees the value in more turnover in leadership.
“For there to be a vibrant democracy, there needs to be voter participation and enthusiasm for the political process,” Michero said. “The longer that a politician gets to sit in office, the less that happens because they’re more entrenched in their power.”
What’s on the ballot?
There will be four propositions to amend the city charter on the November ballot.
Proposition A would change the charter to increase term limits for the mayor and city council to three consecutive four-year terms beginning with the 2025 council election.
Proposition B would change the charter to pay newly elected council members $750 per month and a newly elected mayor $1,000 per month beginning Oct. 1, 2025. The council and mayor currently are paid $50 for each posted council meeting they attend, according to the city charter. The mayor receives $100 per month. Proposition B has received less opposition than Proposition A.
Proposition C would change the charter to correct “non-substantive” errors like misspellings, punctuation and grammar. It would also fix references to outdated state law, “harmonize conflicting sections” and update notice and publication requirements to follow state law.
Proposition D would change the charter to delete provisions, practices and policies that the city no longer uses.
How did the propositions get to the ballot?
At the beginning of the year, the council considered putting charter amendments on the May 2024 ballot. Term limit extensions were a part of that discussion at a January work session and received some negative public feedback.
The council appointed a charter review commission in May to make recommendations.
“Myself and others on council stated from the beginning that we would honor what the committee came back with and what their evaluation was,” Fuller said.
The charter review commission was made up of 21 members. Each council member, including the mayor, appointed three residents. They met several times in the summer to discuss recommendations to the council for which charter amendments to present to voters.
The commission did not make a recommendation for or against extending term limits for the council. They did advise the council to consider that the commission had mixed opinions on term limits.
In a June poll of 16 commission members, 12 in the group voted in favor of two consecutive terms for the city council, according to city documents. Four voted in favor of allowing three or more terms.
In a July poll in which all 21 commission members voted, eight voted in favor of maintaining two consecutive terms for council members, and 13 voted in favor of three or more consecutive terms, city documents show.
Because the results were mixed, they did not make a recommendation to the city council regarding term limits.
Bill Cox, chair of McKinney’s planning and zoning commission, was the group’s chairperson.
“We lacked a consensus to recommend to the city council one way or the other,” Cox said. “It was virtually 50/50 regarding extending or leaving the number of terms where they currently are. We recommended to the council that they simply review and consider that we did not have a recommendation.”
Tammy Warren was an appointed member of the commission. She leads McKinney Values, a conservative political action committee.
“We gave them our findings with no recommendation,” Warren said. “They just decided to put it before the voters anyway.”
Justin Beller was the only council member who voted against putting the charter amendments on the ballot. He said because internal polling showed a majority of the commission favored extending term limits, the city council chose to add Proposition A to the ballot despite lacking a formal recommendation.
The commission made other recommendations to the council, such as maintaining the current length of terms at four years and adding Proposition B, increasing the council’s pay. The review commission also recommended adding Proposition C and D to the ballot.
Beller said he was disappointed in the outcome.
“We kind of picked and chose which [propositions] we preferred and put those on there and kind of did what we wanted to do,” Beller said.
At the end of the day, Beller said, the council can put anything up for a charter amendment that it wants to, regardless of the commission’s recommendations.
“The purpose of the commission was to try to help engage the citizens to determine how they want to be governed,” Beller said. “The amendment package that we ultimately went with, I don’t know that you could say met with what the citizens wanted.”
Why is the proposition controversial?
Community members spoke out against Proposition A online and at council meetings.
Bridgette Wallis, an administrator of the Facebook group McKinney Citizen to Citizen, has lived in McKinney since 2007 and previously served on the McKinney Housing Finance Corporation board.
“No one in the community asked to have [term limits] extended,” Wallis said. “This was all city council-led, and it seems quite self-serving.”
Michero said the ballot’s wording is disingenuous and spreads misinformation by not specifying that setting the term limits to three is an increase. If voters don’t know that the council can serve only two consecutive terms, they might not understand that voting for Proposition A will increase how long a council member can stay in office.
“I’m against extending the term limits. But what I’m really against is this misleading language that the ballot is using,” Michero said. “It’s just not democratic.”
Michero started a GoFundMe to support the campaign against Proposition A, which has raised more than $5,000. The money will go toward getting the word out about what Proposition A means for the city and clarifying its language, Michero said.
It’s often harder to challenge an incumbent seat, and Warren said having to run against an incumbent discourages others from running.
“Our city is wonderful the way it is,” Warren said. “It’s robust, it’s vibrant. We have turnover when we need turnover, and you have to do that. You have to let new ideas be at the top.”
Those who favor extending limits said officials with more experience can serve the city well, and voters will ultimately still decide their officeholders. Cox said he took no position on the proposition as chairperson of the charter review commission but supports increasing term limits.
“I think it’s important that McKinney has experienced and tenured people representing McKinney,” Cox said. “It’s important that we are effective members of a larger body, such as statewide or nationally.”
What does the mayor say?
Mayor Fuller supports Proposition A.
“I believe that term limits should be just determined at the ballot box,” Fuller said. “If [a candidate is] running again, I want the opportunity to vote for them. And if I think they’re not doing a good job, I want the opportunity to vote for somebody else.”
The mayor said he would consider running for office again if a charter amendment makes him eligible.
“My hope is that there are really qualified, good candidates that throw their hat in the ring that I can get behind,” Fuller said. “If I’m sitting here in January and … it’s not a candidate that I could get behind … then would I consider running again? I would … But my preference is to not.”
He said the past eight years as mayor have been taxing, and he looks forward to stepping away from office.
“At the same time, I think that we have achieved some really, really great things over the course of the last eight years, and it’s important to me that we have good leadership,” Fuller said.
He said there are many qualified candidates that he would love to see run for mayor.
“Problem is … a lot of people don’t want to sign up for it,” Fuller said.
Fuller also said he supports Proposition B, which increases council members’ pay. He hopes the pay increase will make it easier to run for office if candidates know they will receive better compensation for time away from their careers.
He disagrees with the opposition calling the proposition to extend term limits a “power grab.”
“Power grab of what?” Fuller asked. “You still have to be elected by the people. … Those who are in favor [of Proposition A] will believe that extending the terms empowers the voter to have a choice, a choice that they didn’t have before.”
