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Century Gives Final Approval — With No Details — To Charter Changes For The November Ballot
September 18, 2024
The Century Town Council Tuesday night gave final approval to three charter amendments for the November 5, 2024, general election ballot.
As we reported early this week, the town submitted the charter questions to be placed on the ballot without a final approval, and the ballots were printed.
Escambia County Supervisor of Elections Robert Bender and Chief Deputy Supervisor of Elections Sonya Daniel attended the council meeting Tuesday night and sat quietly in the back of the room.
Bender said they attended the meeting to answer any questions. However, the county’s top two elections officials were never even verbally acknowledged during the meeting by Mayor Luis Gomez, Jr. or the town council.
When the town council gave first approval in July to the three ordinances to place the items on the ballot, they contained the ballot language and details on the exact changes to be made if voters approve. By the second approval Tuesday night, details on the charter changes to be made had disappeared from the ordinances.
Bender said following the meeting that he has required signed copies of the approved charter change ordinances for review. He said he expects any decisions regarding the ballot changes to come quickly because vote-by-mail ballots have upcoming statutory deadlines.
The Century town charter is the document that establishes the town, outlines its powers and spells out how it should operate. The charter has not been updated in almost 40 years, and that often creates problems in the operation of the town. In recent years, the town sat a charter review committee to create a new draft charter, and the town council set about reviewing those changes. There were several snaps along the way, from the pandemic to wrong documents, which delayed the process.
What are the three chanter questions on the ballot?
The exact ballot questions for voters were not actually approved Tuesday night.
The ballot questions that were submitted without final approval were as follows:
Question 1:
TOWN CHARTER AMENDMENT PROVIDING FOR TOWN PURCHASING TO BE GOVERNED BY COUNCIL-APPROVED PURCHASING POLICIES
Amending the Town of Century Charter to remove specific bidding, contracting, purchasing, and expenditure requirements and procedures from the Charter, and provide that Town bidding, contracting, purchasing, and expenditures will be governed by Town ordinances, policies, and procedures adopted by the Town Council. Shall the above-described amendment be adopted?
Question 2:
TOWN CHARTER AMENDMENT CONCERNING MAYOR’S EMPLOYMENT AUTHORITY
Amending the Town of Century Charter to expand the Mayor’s powers to select, appoint, suspend, and remove town employees and appointive administrative officers, by limiting the requirement for Council approval of such actions solely to the selection, appointment, suspension, or removal of the Town Clerk, Town Attorney, and Town Manager. Shall the above-described amendment be adopted?
Question 3:
TOWN CHARTER CLEANUP AMENDMENT
Amending the Town of Century Charter to correct scriveners and codification errors, and to conform charter provisions to the requirements of the Florida Election Code. Shall the above-described amendment be adopted?
NorthEscambia.com will provide more coverage before the election on the specifics of each ballot questions.
Pictured: Escambia County Supervisor of Elections Robert Bender and Chief Deputy Supervisor of Elections Sonya Daniel sit quietly in the back of the room at a Tuesday night Century Town Council meeting. NorthEscambia.com photo, click to enlarge.
Comments
11 Responses to “Century Gives Final Approval — With No Details — To Charter Changes For The November Ballot”
@This Guy—- dont feel sorry for the residents of the town as i’m certain that there are hundreds of people there that are light years ahead of the current town government in intelligence and reasoning ability. They choose to watch their town’s demise from the sidelines instead of helping and then add insult to injury by voting these low functioning individuals into office again and again. The silver lining is that the town government is so disfunctional that they saved all of us non residents millions of dollars in grant funds, funds that can be used by other needy towns that have financially responsible and morally accountable town leaders.
On paper, yes. BUT “ While communism theoretically advocates for a stateless society, in practice, communist states have often been governed by authoritarian regimes.” “more accurate to say that pure communist governments are more prone to facilitating dictatorship, with their single party, lack of general elections, and state control of just about everything. In the communist countries, the party runs everything. With the government dictating everything, it is a lot easier for a genuine dictator to take over.” Quotes not mine. But speaks better than I can.
Disregarding folks endorsed by the government, with unlimited experience, tells us the sad state of affairs in the Century region . Such a great and beautiful area to be overrun by developers . Hope it works for all .
Opportunist is probably the more correct term.
If no one in oversite roles at the State holds them accountable, it gives them opportunities.
Coyotes then.
Century Black Coyotes instead of Century Black Cats.
And… please do your own research and learn what the difference is between “dictator” and “communist.”
You might be surprised to learn that those terms are mutually exclusive.
This isn’t anarchy. Boiled down, Anarchy is rules without rulers. In other words, no ruling class or hierarchy. It literally means “without rulers”.the opposite of what we have now. Gomez is more dictator/ communist.
The Black Cat is a symbol for anarchy. As well as circle A.
Laws don’t apply here apparently.
Sitting council member with a loan still voting even after the Grand Jury advised against it, Gomez still there, unelected after the Grand Jury in 2019 recommended the state be made aware of financial emergency and do critical evaluations and audits over the past five years, and voila. Nothing happened.
Remember the scence from Black Mass where Whitey Bulger advised his child that if nobody sees it, it didn’t happen?
Where here we have it in plain daylight and apparently it doesn’t matter. Nothing happened.
The kicker will be if the about 100 who even vote, give the unlimited power to this one guy. If it makes it to the ballot. It shouldn’t be there.
Schrivener error? Like maybe the decimal point was in the wrong place?
Ole Gomez blocked Boutwells hires and now he want unlimited power, without council approval to hire.
What a crock. (Crook)
Bender could stop this by applying the law evenly. What’s he gonna do now, follow other candidates around and help them with their paperwork?
Uneven application of the law is wrong.
This is actually fraud but as usual, no one in a position of oversite does anything.
And they laugh all the way to the bank. Getting 97% of heath insurance paid in full.
Meow.
I swear, this is getting beyond ridiculous. I don’t live in Century thankfully, but I sure do feel for the people there. At what point does someone get fed up and rally the people together to take the town back by force? It seems as if the State of Florida has little interest in doing anything about what’s been going on. Surely, there is something that can be done by the townspeople to put a stop to this.
The person’s comment regarding a need for a lawnmower has inspired me. One has to ask, when will a responsible adult in government start the process to put an end to this town council. It is sadly dysfunctional in many ways as reported over the past year and yet, it continues.
I have a real love/hate relationship with the town of Century.
I love all the free daily entertainment the city provides-you think it can’t get any worse, but it does-and it happens all the time!
I hate to see the corruption, incompetence, and narcissism of a government entity.
I read northescambia.com every day and will miss the entertainment if or when TOC is gone!
Have a blessed Tuesday!
I wonder what the starting bid on all the lawn care equipment might be once the assets of the former town of Century are up for grabs? I really need a lawn mower!