Charlotte City Council might ask voters to double members’ terms. Would they say yes?

Three years ago, when the Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners asked voters to approve switching from two- to four-year terms, voters made their answer clear: A resounding “no.”

The 2015 referendum lost by nearly a 2-1 margin, with 66 percent of voters opposed. Now, with the Charlotte City Council considering a similar referendum on the 2019 ballot that would ask voters to give them four-year terms, it’s unclear that such a measure would have any greater chance of success.

“There hasn’t been a groundswell of recommendation or support from the community for this,” said council member Greg Phipps. The Budget & Effectiveness Committee, which he chairs, last week endorsed the idea of four-year terms and recommended that the full City Council consider putting the issue to a referendum.

“I would think the outcome would pretty much be the same (as in 2015),” Phipps said. “I think they like keeping us on a short leash.”

He’s a supporter of four-year terms, as are a majority on council, and voted in favor of the change in last week’s committee meeting. But like others on council, he’s not sure of the best course to get to four-year terms without provoking a public backlash.

The full City Council is likely to consider the issue next month at its strategy session.

Around the nation, local governments vary widely, but many of Charlotte’s peer cities have four-year terms for local elected officials. Indianapolis, Nashville, Denver, Seattle, Washington, D.C., Columbus, Ohio and Atlanta are among those with four-year terms. But Fort Worth, Dallas, Raleigh and Durham have two-year terms (though the Dallas mayor serves for four years).

In North Carolina, many cities and towns have four-year terms, including Asheville, Cary, Greensboro, Wilmington, Gastonia and Winston-Salem. Fayetteville city council members tried to switch to four year terms with a referendum this year, but it went down to defeat by a nearly 2-1 margin.

Pineville switched to four-year terms for its town council in 2015, with no backlash from voters, but the other municipalities in the county, such as Matthews and Mint Hill, have two-year terms. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board has members who serve for four-year terms, while the county commissioners serve for two.

A referendum isn’t necessary for the City Council to go to four-year terms: Council members could make the change themselves, by a simple majority vote. Council member LaWana Mayfield said at the committee hearing last week that council should go ahead and make the change themselves.

“This community has historically voted against its best interest,” she said. “We have the political ability to do this.”

But under state law, all it would take to force a referendum after such a vote is 5,000 signatures on a petition, which City Council members predict wouldn’t be hard to find. A referendum could nullify the City Council’s vote on four-year terms.

“If this moves ahead on the basis of no referendum, I’ll be on the forefront of collecting signatures,” said council member Ed Driggs, who opposes four-year terms. He predicted a referendum would struggle. “The whole thing seems like a long shot.”

A review of the results from the county commissioners’ referendum in 2015 doesn’t suggest results would be radically different if the election were limited to the city of Charlotte, as it would be in 2019. All but five out of 168 precincts in the city voted against the four-year terms referendum. And the five precincts that favored the measure did so by a total combined margin of just 77 votes.

Forward Charlotte, a political advocacy group that backs business-friendly policies, commissioned a poll in October that found there was just 28 percent support for extending council terms. Sixty-two percent of Charlotteans surveyed said they oppose the idea, while 7 percent were undecided.

‘Something that’s been percolating’

Many City Council members have long supported the idea of longer terms, possibly staggered, which they say would give them more time to dig into the issues and avoid wholesale turnover on the board. City Council positions are part-time, and members have to learn the intricacies of everything from wonky zoning and land-use regulations to budgeting to the police and fire departments.

Incumbents on City Council typically enjoy a big advantage, but some years can see lots of turnover if incumbents lose primaries or retire. Five of the 11 members elected in 2017 were new, and a sixth, Dimple Ajmera, was appointed months before the election to fill a vacant board seat. That means a majority of the council was made of new members.

With elections every two years, council members complain they have to spend the first months of a new term getting up to speed and the last six months gearing up for reelection. Some board members say that doesn’t leave enough time sandwiched in between to put in work.

“I just think it’s a complete waste of taxpayer money and time,” Mayor Pro Tem Julie Eiselt said of the current election cycle. She pointed to long-term plans like the push to develop a 2040 plan for Charlotte and update the city’s zoning and land-use ordinances, which will likely take until at least mid-2021.

But she said the City Council should take more time to build public support and win voters over.

“We’ve got to have a more methodical process where the public can engage,” she said. “I don’t think we should ram this thing through.”

The issue of four-year terms has been a perennial one on the City Council. City staff said it’s been studied at least three times since the 1980s, though no one’s taken action on it yet. The most recent study, from a community group led by former Charlotte mayors Harvey Gantt and Richard Vinroot in 2011, recommended leaving terms at two years.

“It’s been bubbling around,” said Phipps, who said he remembers council members talking about longer terms when he was appointed to fill a departing member’s seat in 2005. “It’s something that’s been percolating.”

Indeed, the Observer archives show council members have been discussing such a change for decades, citing the same reasons: increased efficiency and less frequent turnover.

“As a new council member, I’ve realized that when you first come on council, it takes close to a year to get your feet on the ground,” said Tom Mangum, a council member elected to represent south Charlotte in 1989. He was quoted in a 1991 Observer story about the City Council weighing the change, though they decided not to move forward.

And for Mecklenburg County commissioners, the 2015 referendum wasn’t their first attempt at four-year terms either: identical measures failed in the 1980s and 1990s as well.

The current push for four-year terms appears to have started with council member Braxton Winston, who asked City Attorney Bob Hagemann to outline the legal process and options for changing term lengths. Hagemann did so in an Aug. 30 memo, which was distributed to the City Council. Mayor Vi Lyles referred the issue to the Budget & Effectiveness Committee after that, in September.

A spokeswoman said Lyles was unavailable this week due to Thanksgiving plans. Winston could not immediately be reached.

Council member Tariq Bokhari, who opposes four-year terms, said he doubts there’s enough public support to win a referendum.

“Nobody campaigned on this,” said Bokhari, who’s serving his first term on the council. In a city with a weak mayor and a manager-led government, Bokhari said staff can run the city fine even with council members’ campaigns and turnover every two years. “I have been here for a year now, and I’ll tell you we’re not that important.”