Limit on Council Terms Rejected for Ballot

San Diego’s Charter Review Commission on Monday quashed Mayor Maureen O’Connor’s hopes of enacting a two-term limit for the mayor and City Council members, and refused to ask voters to repeal a 69-year-old provision that gives many residents free trash pickup.

A proposal to limit the mayor to two terms in office failed by a 10-1 vote, with only Commissioner James Milch supporting the idea. A second proposal to enact a similar ban for the mayor and council members was rejected by a 7-4 vote.

In April, O’Connor urged the commission to place on the ballot in 1989 an amendment to the City Charter limiting the mayor to two terms. She sent a representative to repeat the request Monday.

O’Connor also suggested last week that the council place such a measure on this fall’s ballot, but she received little support for the idea and made no formal proposal.

Voters “see the two-full-term limitation as providing opportunities for greater citizen participation in the local elective process,” the mayor’s spokesman said Monday.

Milch agreed, saying that “the mayor, as the leading political light in the city administration . . . should be able to fulfill their political goals in an eight-year period of time.”

But commission Chairman Ed Butler said a two-term limit “diminishes, derogates and extinguishes what little leadership abilities are afforded to the mayor by the charter.”

Ken Seaton-Msemaji, speaking of the proposal to limit all council members to two terms, added that “no proponent of this measure of limiting terms has been able to say we’ve had a problem” with the existing system, which allows council members to hold office for as many terms as they can be reelected.

In a separate vote, the commission decided that repeal of the 1919 “People’s Ordinance,” which gives free trash pickup to any city resident willing to take trash to the curb, is not an appropriate matter for inclusion in the Charter and agreed not to put it on the ballot.

In effect, trash service is free to about 290,000 San Diego households in single-family homes, small apartment and condominium complexes and small businesses, according to Richard Hays, the city’s director of waste management. Most large, multifamily dwellings and large businesses pay to have trash removed by private firms, Hays said.

The free service will cost the city an additional $10 million to $20 million beyond the current cost of about $20 million as the city’s Miramar landfill reaches capacity and closes by 1995, because hauling costs will climb when a more distant landfill is selected, Hays said. Paid trash pickup would cost homeowners about $6 a month, he said.

The only way to change the ordinance is by a vote of the city’s residents, and the commission agreed to discuss it at the urging of City Council members. But, in a 10-1 vote, the commission decided not to put the issue on the ballot in 1989.

The commission turned down, by a 7-4 vote, a proposal to recommend that the council place such a measure on the ballot.