Charter Review Committee suggested for Lake Worth

Comment Up

Charter Amendments were the order of business at today's Workshop.

Initially, the City Commission’s term of office and salary were brought up by Rachel Waterman during the September 20, 2011 City Commission meeting. Therefore, the city manager placed the entire subject of Charter Amendments and our Charter on the agenda with the excuse that a review is "healthy for a city to evaluate its Charter." All the Charter Amendments that have passed by the voters over the last 7 years were on the agenda.

A Charter Review Committee is being pushed by our city manager, Susan Stanton. The Reason? She says that she is being threatened with termination every election year and wants "stability" within our government. On top of all of that, she said, "The public doesn't always know what's best. The length of term has everything to do with "stability of leadership." The reason given for even putting the entire thing on today's discussion is that there are certain "housekeeping" issues (according to the city manager) that need to be cleaned-up in our Charter, our Bible, our Law, such as residency for fire chiefs. This is an excuse to open up the can of worms. We should not be screwing around with our charter and treating it so lightly by opening up the door with the pretense of "housekeeping."

It was mentioned that charters need to be up-dated to fit into the economic times in which we now are involved. Scott Maxwell asked how does the economy impact our Charter. He was given no logical explanation by the CM or anyone else for that matter. Stanton asked the commission--"You need to decide what sort of government you want." A strong mayor or a city manager? Well, the people have already spoken. We want what we have right now. What we would like, however, is a stronger commission and not one that agrees with the city manager so easily.

Christopher McVoy, Jo-Ann Golden and Suzanne Mulvehill agree with the city manager. Waterman was absent for this session. McVoy even went so far as to say that a 3 year term was "valid." He believes that 3 year terms will bring more stability to the administration. Mulvehill wants to know how we get a Charter Review Committee. Golden asked if they could make a motion to change the Charter from the dais and she was told by the City Attorney, "No, it must go to a vote of the people." Now how come this question was even asked? Aliens.

Now get this, Stanton says that in many places a Charter Review Committee can out vote the city commission. In other words, this is another attempt to grab more power by the city manager to once again reduce the balance of powers under our Charter. This commission is getting less and less powerful and they are doing it to themselves. If we change our city government to a 'strong mayor" type of government, Stanton should run for office.

Now, one more time, we just voted on this term issue 3 & 3/4 years ago and told the commission then that we did not want 3 year terms. It won with 68% of the vote. We didn't want longer terms then and we certainly want them even less today.