How long should they serve?
Yorba Linda’s voters and elected leaders are conflicted when it comes to limiting the number of years residents can serve as council and commission members.
The latest chapter in this long-running saga is a vote to adopt term limits for 20 council-appointed city commissioners, which include five members each on the Planning, Parks and Recreation, Traffic and Library bodies.
A plan to limit commissioners to three consecutive four-year terms permits panelists to sit out a period of time and serve again later, unlike council members, who, since 1996, are allowed only three elected four-year terms.
At a Nov. 20 meeting, Councilman John Anderson said a “sit out” period defeats the purpose of term limits, and Mayor Allen Castellano noted the council names new or reappoints incumbent commissioners every four years.
Residents have voted for council term limits three times but ignored the restrictions to re-elect a handful of council members to additional terms.
In a 1992 advisory measure, voters supported a two-term limit, 17,604 to 4,817; but two years later, Gene Wisner won a third full-length term—and a fourth in 1998.
Voters in 1996 approved measures for both two- and three-term limits, with the three-term restriction becoming law because it won by a larger margin, 15,087 to 6,096, than the two-term measure, 13,008 to 8,517.
On the same ballot, voters returned Mark Schwing to a third term and Hank Wedaa to a seventh term, placing them first and second in an array of eight candidates. And last June Wedaa was elected to an eighth term.
As transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson counseled in his 1841 “Self-Reliance” essay, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
A FINAL NOTE
Normally, a split 3-2 city council vote raising a city manager’s salary after a performance review might result in the top executive perusing employment ads.
But the council members opposing Tamara Letourneau’s new $209,592 pay don’t fault her performance as much as the 44.5 percent increase since her 2004 hiring at $145,000 and the $26,906 boost in salary and benefits over last year.
Although Hank Wedaa called Letourneau “a keeper,” he joined John Anderson in criticizing the size of the increase and the 12-city survey on which it was based.
At the same session, council voted 5-0 to bump the hourly wage of the city’s lowest paid employees—maintenance worker trainee, office clerk and recreation aide—to the state-mandated $8 minimum.
The latest chapter in this long-running saga is a vote to adopt term limits for 20 council-appointed city commissioners, which include five members each on the Planning, Parks and Recreation, Traffic and Library bodies.
A plan to limit commissioners to three consecutive four-year terms permits panelists to sit out a period of time and serve again later, unlike council members, who, since 1996, are allowed only three elected four-year terms.
At a Nov. 20 meeting, Councilman John Anderson said a “sit out” period defeats the purpose of term limits, and Mayor Allen Castellano noted the council names new or reappoints incumbent commissioners every four years.
Residents have voted for council term limits three times but ignored the restrictions to re-elect a handful of council members to additional terms.
In a 1992 advisory measure, voters supported a two-term limit, 17,604 to 4,817; but two years later, Gene Wisner won a third full-length term—and a fourth in 1998.
Voters in 1996 approved measures for both two- and three-term limits, with the three-term restriction becoming law because it won by a larger margin, 15,087 to 6,096, than the two-term measure, 13,008 to 8,517.
On the same ballot, voters returned Mark Schwing to a third term and Hank Wedaa to a seventh term, placing them first and second in an array of eight candidates. And last June Wedaa was elected to an eighth term.
As transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson counseled in his 1841 “Self-Reliance” essay, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
A FINAL NOTE
Normally, a split 3-2 city council vote raising a city manager’s salary after a performance review might result in the top executive perusing employment ads.
But the council members opposing Tamara Letourneau’s new $209,592 pay don’t fault her performance as much as the 44.5 percent increase since her 2004 hiring at $145,000 and the $26,906 boost in salary and benefits over last year.
Although Hank Wedaa called Letourneau “a keeper,” he joined John Anderson in criticizing the size of the increase and the 12-city survey on which it was based.
At the same session, council voted 5-0 to bump the hourly wage of the city’s lowest paid employees—maintenance worker trainee, office clerk and recreation aide—to the state-mandated $8 minimum.
posted by Jim Drummond at 12:00 PM
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