by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
In September 2000, City Council member Warren Alvarez proposed an ordinance that would have given several Council members, the mayor and other Duval County elected officials an extra 18 months in office. The complicated ordinance affected Council members from even-numbered districts and two at-large members.
The election for those nine members would have shifted to 2006 and they would have served a two-year term while the other 10 would have been elected in 2008 to four-year terms. The staggered terms was an attempt to prevent a mass exodus of term-limited Council members. The ordinance received little support and quietly faded away.
Today, Alvarez is back with a revised ordinance that would actually short change every Council member, term-limited or not, if passed. The ordinance calls for the May 2007 City elections — and those of Duval County’s constitutional officers — to be changed to November 2006. Such a shift would also mean that all Council members elected that May would see their terms end Dec. 31, 2006 instead of June 30, 2007; six months earlier than the current four-year terms.
To Alvarez, the ordinance makes sense logistically and economically.
“When you are walking down the street in January, people come and ask why we are having another election in May when we just had one in November?” he said. “This would save the taxpayers some money and statistics show we’ll have a better voter turnout.”
Alvarez said voter turnout during presidential election years is about 50 percent and between 40 and 45 percent during gubernatorial election years. Compare that to the 20-25 percent that votes in local primaries and the 15-20 percent that turnout for the general election and it’s hard to argue with Alvarez’ logic. Financially, moving the elections would save Duval County taxpayers close to $750,000.
“It would save us the cost of two elections,” said Supervisor of Elections John Stafford. “The primary election costs us about $300,000 to $350,000 and the general election costs about $450,000.”
While Stafford agrees that saving money is certainly a good thing he’s not totally convinced that adding the local elections to the November ballot would be beneficial.
“The presidential ballot is always real full with elections and amendments,” he said. “People get tired and don’t want to deal with those big ballots. It would save us money to eliminate two unitary elections, but it would clutter the ballot. I think looking at a cluttered ballot would create a lot of confusion.”
Alvarez’ ordinance also includes the sheriff, supervisor of elections, clerk of court, tax collector and property appraiser — the county’s constitutional officers. A recent Florida Supreme Court decision abolishing term limits for those officers was upheld, forcing Alvarez to amend his ordinance before Council gets to see it for the first time. By law, Alvarez has two choices: he can simply remove those offices from the ordinance or he can move to abolish them as constitutional officers and immediately reestablish them as elected County officials subject to local election laws and term limits.
Alvarez said the second option makes more sense.
“It would be dumb to have an election for four offices,” he said. “Then, we’d really have a low turnout.”
Alvarez said he hasn’t talked to any of the other 18 members of Council about the ordinance, saying that legally he can’t without publicly noticing the meeting. However, he does plan to introduce the ordinance to Council and spend the next few weeks getting a sense of how his fellow Council members feel about losing six months of public service while consolidating local, state and federal elections.
“I’m just going to put it in the hopper and see what happens,” he said, adding he’d like to see the ordinance as referendum on the ballot this November. “If it gets hung up in Council this fall, I’ll do it in the spring. I’ve got a back-up plan.”