Wednesday, November 19, 2003

City Hall term limits

A Citizens Committee on Charter Review has recommended that City Council member term limits be extended to eight years and that they be paid $31,000 per year ($41,000) for the mayor.
Personally, I would like to see the term limits go away altogether because I believe they are undemocratic. People should be allowed to vote for whoever they want for as long as they want (provided that person is not in jail).
Likewise, the pay issue seems obvious to me. For a city the size of San Antonio, the city council and mayoral jobs are pretty much full-time. If the people holding down the jobs are independently wealthy or have other jobs that make the supplemental income unnecessary then they could donate the money back to the city coffers or give it to a charity. We should at least pretend to make it so that anybody can be on the city council. As it is now, I could never afford to do it (not that anyone would ever vote for me) and I'm sure that goes as well for the vast majority of citizens living here.

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