(Texas Scorecard) – McKinney citizens are concerned that a ballot proposition allowing city representatives to stay in office longer will mislead voters because it fails to mention existing term limits.
Last month, McKinney City Council members voted 5-1 to place longer term limits on the November 5 ballot, along with three other city charter amendment propositions.
Proposition A would extend term limits for the mayor and city council members from two to three consecutive four-year terms.
But the ballot language approved by council members—which voters will see when they go to the polls—simply states:
Shall Section 9 of the McKinney City Charter be amended to provide that mayor and city council members shall have term limits consisting of three (3) consecutive, four (4) year terms beginning with the 2025 election?
McKinney resident Tom Michero, who has started a “Vote No” campaign against Proposition A, called the proposal a “self-serving power grab.”
“Let’s hope we can educate people to the deceptive wording of the Proposition so they don’t unwittingly vote ‘yes’ thinking that they are imposing stricter term limits. Quite the opposite is true,” Michero commented online.
“The official ballot deliberately omits wording that indicates term extensions,” local government watchdog Bridgette Wallis posted on her McKinney Citizen to Citizen page. “I’m so disappointed and aggravated with the City Council’s decision to push term extensions for themselves, even though the charter committee clearly did not recommend them.”
Wallis noted that the immediate beneficiaries of McKinney’s proposed change from two to three terms are Mayor George Fuller and At Large Councilman Charlie Philips.
Without the change this November, both men will term out of office in May 2025.
Fuller cannot run for a third term as mayor in 2025 unless voters approve the longer term limits.
However, Philips could run for mayor in 2025 with or without the change.
City data suggests that the charter amendment election to extend city officials’ term limits and increase their pay will cost McKinney taxpayers at least $90,000.
“We are again being forced to waste our city tax dollars on something the citizens never brought forward on their own simply because some CC members talk of a ‘vision’ that can only be realized by giving the current mayor another term,” added Wallis.
In 2021, citizens in nearby Allen exposed a similarly deceptive campaign to extend the city’s recently adopted term limits from 12 to 18 consecutive years.
A PAC supported by city officials framed the vote as either for or against term limits.
Allen officials’ attempt to increase their time in power failed.
Early voting in McKinney’s charter amendment election begins October 21.
Election Day is Tuesday, November 5.