Charlotte Council eyes doubling terms from 2 years to 4. This isn’t the first time.

Members of the Charlotte City Council will explore whether to extend their terms from two years to four ahead of the 2022 elections — bringing back a debate that goes back decades in Charlotte.

Council members also said Monday they will look into creating a new city council district. Both issues will fall to the the Budget and Government Committee, which will research the issue and report back to the full council.

Council members and city attorney Patrick Baker said they’s unsure whether creating a new council district would require a referendum vote or whether the council could take that action on its own.

Neither council members nor the mayor explained their opinions related to increasing the length of council members’ terms. They did, though, decide to look into the issue before the 2022 general election rather than wait for a new council to take up the issue once they get in office.

City Council seats will be on the ballot during a primary election that is currently scheduled May 17.

Two years or four? An ongoing debate.

Elected leaders in Charlotte have debated extending their term limits since at least the 1980s. They got close to putting the issue on the ballot in 2019, but ultimately decided against it because it was seen as widely unpopular among voters.

At the time, the council determined that they had the power to take the action themselves, rather than putting it on the ballot for voters to decide. If they did, though, opponents could have gathered 5,000 signatures and brought the issue to voters anyway with a recall referendum.

In the end, the council shot down the idea in a 7-3 vote. Two of the “yes” votes came from members who are still on City Council: Braxton Winston and Larken Egleston.

Other members, including councilman Greg Phipps, said at the time that he supported four-year terms in principle but voted “no” because he worried about how voters would react. Mayor Vi Lyles said she also supported four-year, staggered terms for council members.

Republican members Tariq Bokhari and Ed Driggs both opposed the measure in 2019.

Proponents of four-year terms have said the current two-year terms are often too short to make headway on major policy initiatives.

They aren’t alone in wanting longer terms.

In 2015, the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners tried to extend their terms to four years with a referendum vote. Voters shot it down by a 2-1 margin.

Before the 2019 vote, Egleston gave the council some advice: “If this dies tonight,” he said, “whoever is sitting around the dais next term, don’t bring it back to life.”

This story was originally published February 7, 2022 at 7:44 PM.

Will Wright

The Charlotte Observer

Will Wright covers politics in Charlotte and North Carolina. He previously covered eastern Kentucky for the Lexington Herald-Leader, and worked as a reporting fellow at The New York Times.