Denton City Council terms would double in length, and members could serve a total of two more years before reaching their term limit, under a plan Mayor Mark Burroughs hopes to put before the council this month.

Burroughs said he’d like to scrap the existing limit of three consecutive two-year terms in favor of two four-year terms. He also wants to reword the city charter to settle a dispute over whether council members can bypass the limit by running for a different seat or taking a break before running again.

Mark Burroughs

“I know that it [the charter] is written badly; it could have been much more clear than it is,” Burroughs said. “But, secondly, I have a particular view of the six-year term limits that we have now, and I want to review that.”

Burroughs’ announcement, in an interview this week, virtually assures that the term limits debate will resume this month after largely overshadowing last spring’s council races.

A hearing is set for Aug. 12 in a lawsuit that challenges the city’s interpretation of the term limits provision. The council is tentatively scheduled to discuss Burroughs’ plan Aug. 19.

For council terms to change, the council would have to call an election and place charter amendments before voters. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the council would push to include amendments on the Nov. 4 ballot.

“I think probably it would be doable from a legal standpoint,” City Manager George Campbell said. “Whether or not there’s enough time to actually prepare for it, I don’t know.”

Burroughs’ stance

Burroughs, one of three candidates targeted in the lawsuit for alleged term limit violations, said the current limit is too rigid. He served three terms on the council from 1998 to 2004 before running for mayor this year.

“The six years, I believe, is insufficient to establish a continuity and basically to allow council members to become learned enough about the system … to make some real strides leadership-wise,” Burroughs said. “It keeps the council less informed than they need to be; it destroys continuity of leadership; and also, because we have an election every year, it wastes tremendous resources, both at the city level and personal level” and leads to voter burnout.

A committee called to vet changes for the last charter election, in November 2006, rejected a move to two three-year terms. The council left the change off the ballot in light of public opposition and questions over how it would be implemented.

“It was going to take like seven or eight years to work through the whole process to get it to the two three-year terms, so it just became too cumbersome to deal with,” said Jerry Mohelnitzky, an insurance salesman who led the charter committee.

Burroughs urged the committee to consider endorsing a change to three three-year terms, but the idea went nowhere. He said this week he believes two four-year terms would be better because they would allow for every-other-year elections while maintaining staggered terms.

Currently, the four district council seats are elected in odd years, while the three at-large seats, including the mayor, are chosen in even years.

Lawsuit looms

Some residents said the council should wait to change the charter until the lawsuit is resolved.

“It almost seems like bad timing,” said Justin Bell, a plaintiff in the suit and candidate for mayor in 2006 and 2008. “There’s been a question through the years that the city’s just kind of sat on. Now that something’s been done about it, now we see it coming up as a potential charter revision.”

The suit is pending in a Denton County district court and could jeopardize the service of Burroughs and Mayor Pro Tem Pete Kamp. Former Mayor Perry McNeill, the third candidate targeted, lost his re-election bid to Burroughs in a June 14 runoff.

The suit claims the candidates were ineligible because each had already served at least three terms on the council.

Lead plaintiff Bob Clifton, a political activist who vigorously opposed Burroughs’ campaign, called Burroughs’ term limits proposal “a little hasty.”

“I think a lot of his problems are going to be solved on the 12th of August,” Clifton said. “And by the 19th, he may not be around to have any recommendations.”

The term limit provision, adopted in 1980, says the mayor and other council members  “shall be elected for two-year terms and shall not be eligible for election to more than three consecutive two-year terms.” But a 1985 city attorney’s opinion, made public this year, concluded the charter only limited a council member from serving more than three consecutive terms in a single position.

City attorneys have supported that interpretation ever since. That allowed officials like McNeill and Kamp to be elected to three terms in one council position and run for a different seat without a break.

Burroughs, meanwhile, has said the charter’s use of the word “consecutive” means his eligibility is beyond doubt.

Plaintiffs argue that the charter disqualifies anyone from election to more than three terms in any position, regardless of a break in service.

Council members react

Council member Chris Watts said the existence of such conflicting opinions shows the need for a charter election to clarify the issue. He first called in May for the council to consider an election, saying he’d prefer that residents, not a judge, resolve “ambiguity” in the charter.

Watts said this week that he wasn’t planning to suggest any major changes, such as those proposed by Burroughs.

“If he wants to propose that, he’s the mayor and I think that’s something he can do,” Watts said. “I’m not sure how everyone else feels.”

Council member Charlye Heggins said four-year terms would be too long. She said she’d support an election to clarify the term limits language, but that it was too early to say how the provision should be worded.

“I would like to hear, first of all, from the community before I make any judgment on that one,” she said.

Kamp said she too would support calling an election but wasn’t yet sure what an amendment should say. She won an at-large seat in May after serving the last five years as the District 2 council member.

“I want more input from [city] staff, the other council members and, most importantly, the citizens,” Kamp said. “But the discussion does need to take place.”

Tight schedule

The council would have to act fast to get charter amendments on the Nov. 4 ballot. The city would need approval from the Justice Department to call an election outside its normal May date, a process that takes 60 days, City Secretary Jennifer Walters said.

“There would be enough time, legally, to get it on the ballot” if the council acts soon, Walters said. “Of course, then we have that consideration of it being a presidential election and if the county would even let us put it on their ballot.”

The next uniform election date would be May 9, 2009.

The council didn’t call the 2006 election until late August, after the charter committee and city attorneys vetted the proposed changes. It was Denton’s fourth charter amendment election since voters adopted the charter in 1959.

LOWELL BROWN can be reached at 940-566-6882. His e-mail address is

lmbrown@dentonrc.com.