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Century Voters Approve Two Charter Amendments, Reject Third
November 6, 2024
At the polls Tuesday, Century voters approved two amendments to the town’s charter while rejecting a third.
Maylor Luis Gomez, Jr. had encouraged residents to approve all three questions for “securing a strong future for Century” and for “shaping what is next for our town”.
Question 1 PASS
Yes – 299 (57.83%)
No – 218 (42.17%)
What it says: Amends the 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.
The issue: One of the big problems for the town has been a hard spending limit in the charter of $200 for the mayor without council approval. The mayor has often been forced to wait weeks for council approval before making purchases deemed necessary.
What happens next: The town council will develop policies and procedures for purchasing, bidding, contracts and related practices. That will include new spending limits for the mayor. The policies and spending limit can be changed in the future by a council vote. A date for the change has not been set but the council is expected to begin the process soon.
Question 2 FAIL
Yes – 196 (37.91%)
No – 321 (62.09%)
What it says: Amends the 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.
The issue: The town charter requires the mayor to hire, and fire, employees only after getting approval from the town council. And over recent years, there has been a lot of tension and even a stalemate between the mayor and council over hiring employees. The mayor can’t hire employees without council approval, even down the lowest level employee.
What happens next: Nothing changes since voters rejected the chance. Without council oversight and approval, the mayor cannot hire, terminate, or suspend any employee.
Question 3 PASS
Yes – 372 (72.09%)
No – 144 (27.91%)
What it says: Amends the charter to correct scrivener’s and codification errors, and to conform charter provisions to the requirements of the Florida Election Code.
The issue: Scrivener’s errors, by common definitions, are typographical errors, misspellings, omitted words or other common errors–essentially typos. There are multiple errors in the old charter, including some that don’t agree with current Florida law.
What happens next: The town will go to work to correct the errors in the charter, presumably with guidance of their attorney and approval of the town council.
What’s a charter?
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 over 40 years, and that often creates problems in the operation of the town.
One of the big problems for the town has been a spending limit for the mayor of under $200 without council approval. And over recent years, there has been a lot of tension and even a stalemate between the mayor and council over hiring employees. The mayor can’t hire employees without council approval, even down the lowest level employee.
The charter has other issues with outdated provisions not following changes in current state law.
How did the recommended changes come about?
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 snafus along the way, from the pandemic to wrong documents, which delayed the process.
The volunteer charter review committee spent about three years creating a draft of a completely new charter from beginning to end. The town attorney submitted another draft build around a town manager and no mayor, but the council later shelved that version.
The town council tossed out the full charter review committee recommendations made by the local citizens’ committee, instead opting for three changes of their own, but not a complete re-write.
Vote totals in this story are complete, but unofficial results.
NorthEscambia.com photo and images, click to enlarge.
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