City voters might weigh changes to council term limits

Fort Collins voters might get a shot at giving city council members more time in office.

The council on Tuesday will consider four potential ballot issues for the April 7 municipal election, including a measure that could change term limits for council members and the mayor.

Colorado law limits state and local elected officials to two consecutive terms in office, in most cases. The law allows voters to change term-limit rules for local officials.

In Fort Collins, council members are limited to two consecutive four-year terms while the mayor, who is elected to a two-year term, may serve three terms, or six years.

Council members are scheduled to consider three options for establishing term limits in the city charter, which currently does not address the matter.

•Leave the city’s term limits as they are; two terms for council members and three for mayor

•Allow council members to serve three consecutive terms, or 12 years, and the mayor four terms, or eight years

•Set no limits

When the issue of term limits came up in 2012, a poll conducted at the behest of the Fort Collins Board of Realtors found 67 percent of those polled opposed extending term limits for council members and the mayor.

Other measures that will be considered for the ballot are for charter changes considered “housekeeping” items, said City Clerk Wanda Nelson in an email to the Coloradoan.

The measures are intended to provide clarity related to the election process, Nelson stated. Potential ballot issues related to the charter are:

•Regarding citizen initiatives, changes include moving the deadline for submitting petitions from 60 days prior to an election to 90 days and removing language that invalidates both signatures if a petition is signed twice, instead allowing the first signature to be counted.

The charter change also would make clear that a person may protest the sufficiency of insufficiency of a petition and allow the city manager to appoint someone other than the city clerk to conduct protest hearings.

•For candidate nomination petitions, remove a requirement that a petition circulator certify the number of collected signatures since that number is self evident.

•In recall elections, change the charter to conform to a Colorado Supreme Court ruling that a person does not have to vote on the question of a recall for his or her vote for a successor candidate to be counted.

The council is not scheduled to consider placing a measure on the ballot seeking approval of the city’s next capital improvement program, which officials have been referring to as Building on Basics, or BOB, 2.0, and continuing a 0.25 percent sales tax to fund it. That discussion is tentatively scheduled for Jan . 20.

On the agenda

•The Fort Collins City Council will meet at 6 p.m. Tuesday at city hall, 300 LaPorte Ave. The meeting will be broadcast on cable Channel 14. Topics on the agenda include:

•Final reading of ordinances setting the salaries of employees who work directly for the city council: City Manager Darin Atteberry, Interim City Attorney Carrie Daggett and Municipal Judge Kathleen Lane. All are in line for pay increases.

•Resolutions related to a strategic plan for the Fort Collins-Loveland Municipal Airport and the intergovernmental agreement between the cities regarding for the airport’s governance. The proposal calls for establishing a seven-member commission whose duties would include approving contracts, establishing rates and service levels, and directing the airport manager.