The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Three consecutive terms, allowed to run after two-year break
By Kendra Walker
The Mt. Crested Butte town council is narrowing in on its ballot language as they prepare to ask voters to consider amending the town charter to extend council term limitations. The council has been split in previous meetings on what the extension would allow, and earlier this month voted 4-3 for the ballot question to allow council members to serve for three consecutive four-year terms (12 years total) and be allowed to run again after being out of office for two years. Last week during their July 18 meeting, in a 5-2 vote the council approved the first reading of the drafted ballot language.
Currently, a person is not eligible to run again for council after having served two consecutive four-year terms. However, it’s been 15 years since the town had a contested town council election because there were never more candidates than seats to be filled. The council is proposing an extension to term limits on this November’s ballot to expand the pool of available and qualified candidates for town council, allow more people to run in future elections and encourage more participation.
The council worked with town attorney Gerald Dahl to include explanatory language in the ballot question to better convey the town’s reasoning to voters.
The drafted language reads, “In light of the fact that the town of Mt. Crested Butte has not had a contested town council election since 2008 and in order to increase the number of eligible candidates to stand for election to the town council, reduce the need for appointment of councilmembers to fill vacancies, reduce the need to cancel elections, and to encourage competitive council races and more robust representation of the citizens of the town by the elected town council, shall the home rule charter of the town of Mt. Crested Butte, Colorado be amended to extend the consecutive term limit for councilmembers to three terms, with terms considered consecutive unless separated by a single two-year election cycle?”
The councilors who voted against the ballot language have previously expressed their concerns that the proposed changes ask for too much or may be confusing to voters.
“I’m looking to see what’s going to be most likely to succeed at the ballot,” said councilmember Michael Bacani. “I’m looking at this and I’m seeing that somebody who is term-limited wants another term. It may look like someone is greedy. We know that’s not the case, but it feels like a power grab for an extra term in my opinion. I think that could be spun that way for people that would be opposed to this.”
“In two years, we’re losing our mayor and mayor pro tem (due to term limits),” said councilmember Roman Kolodziej. “This is trying to give us a leg up until more people want to serve. If somebody is reading the actual language, there is intent behind this. If I read that in the booth, I would probably say, ‘yeah, that seems to make sense, it’s not just some power grab by somebody.’”
The council will review the second reading for approval during their August 1 meeting before sending the final ballot language to the Gunnison County Clerk and Recorder. Election Day is November 7.
