A committee tasked with recommending changes to the Islamorada village charter backed the idea of asking voters about staggering the five council seats.
At a Feb. 9 meeting, the Village Charter Review Committee began discussions about the current election model, which sees candidates filing and vying for one of the five seats, versus an alternative popular vote method, where the top five voter getters in the field take the seats.
Eventually, talks transitioned to staggering the seats so all five aren’t up for election every two years. Sentiments of support were heard from members of returning to a concept where potentially three seats are up for election one year, while the other two are up another year. It could mean potentially giving certain seats three-year terms, but that remains a point of further discussion for the Feb. 18 meeting.
“Right now, the prospect of what happened in the last election, where you can lose all five (council members) at the same time and be sitting there with five brand new people, just doesn’t make any sense at all,” said committee member Joe Roth.
The committee’s recommendation ultimately goes to the council for consideration and approval. If the council signs off on the idea, a question would be posed to voters on whether to stagger council seats in the November election.
All village council seats were up for election during the 2020 cycle, following announcements from then-councilmen Jim Mooney and Mike Forster that they’d be seeking state and county offices respectively. Chris Sante, who filled the seat after Cheryl Meads resigned, chose not to run, while councilwoman Deb Gillis termed out. Former councilman Ken Davis was seeking re-election that year, but tragically passed away in September 2020.
As a result, new council members were elected to seats at the November 2020 election. They included Pete Bacheler, David Webb, Buddy Pinder and Mark Gregg. Newcomer Henry Rosenthal went uncontested in his race with Davis’ passing. A complete council turnover hasn’t been seen since then. However, all council seats have been up for election every two years.
Chairman Ty Harris was the planning director for the village from 2018 to 2021. He said there’s time needed for new council members to develop working relationships with village staff. And new council members’ priorities won’t be the same as the prior council.
“To have some continuity, having two or three existing council members makes it easier to transition for staff, because when you get all five at the same time, it makes it incredibly difficult to define what priorities have changed,” Harris said. “We used to have a strategic plan that floated from council to council. Those items were on a 10-year plan. Those items would go up, depending on the council, and some would go down.”
Craig McBay, too, noted how a complete turnover on the council is a problem for staff and residents.
“Every two years, they’re (council members) moving along with something. It just got approved, and a new council comes in and it gets thrown in the garbage, staff turns direction. It’s really taxing on everybody,” he said. “Having a little more continuity, having a new council try to kind of carry on, at least respect what past councils agreed to do, makes a lot of sense.”
How to stagger the terms was a subject of much conversation by the committee. Some members floated the idea of three-year terms for a certain number of seats, and two-year terms for the others.
Lynn Tipton, director for the Florida League of Cities University, told committee members that of 2,270 council and mayor seats in Florida, 700 turn over each year.
“Some of that is term limits, some of that is people who either pass away in office or resign. The rest don’t get elected in the electoral process. The vast majority, 90%, are staggered seats for reasons you discussed.”
Committee vice chair Susan Raffanello said the term lengths should remain at two years for several reasons, including accountability to the public and avoiding potential costs for a special election. Committee member Richard Black, too, backed two-year terms.
Roth, McBay, Harris and committee member Lorie LaLonde supported the idea of staggering seats with some getting three-year terms. Roger Young said he’d like to see how other municipalities like Pinecrest stagger their seats. Discussion will continue at the Feb. 18 meeting at the Founders Park Community Center.
