TUSTIN : Voters to Have Choice of Term-Limit Plans

The City Council this week set up a competition between November ballot measures designed to limit council members’ terms in office.

By a 3-2 vote, the council agreed to offer voters a three-term limit measure as an alternative to the two-term limit it had placed on the Nov. 8 ballot last month. The limits in both measures apply only to consecutive terms.

Mayor Thomas R. Saltarelli, Councilman Jeffrey Thomas and Councilwoman Tracy Worley voted Tuesday night to place the new option before voters. Councilmen Jim Potts and Michael J. Doyle voted against the new proposal, saying that three full terms--12 consecutive years--is too long a period to serve on the council.

Worley cast the swing vote on term limits and another hotly debated issue to also go before voters: how the city’s solid-waste collection contract should be awarded.

Potts and Doyle contended that city voters should decide whether or not the contract, now held by Great Western Reclamation Inc., should go out for open bidding every seven years. But Saltarelli and Thomas argued that the issue should be decided by council members.

Worley said she was originally leaning toward keeping the issue off the ballot. But she said her mind was changed after she heard a series of presentations by trash industry representatives, who said that the lack of open bidding was driving up prices for residential and commercial customers in Orange County.

“It really seemed like other cities are not putting it out to bid,” she said. But with a voter-mandated open-bidding process, all the qualified trash haulers would be eligible for consideration. “I just don’t believe in monopolies,” she said.

Potts warned about cities signing “sweetheart deals” with “shady” trash haulers. An open-bidding process “takes away the schmoozing” between trash haulers and city officials, he said.

After Worley made it clear that she supported putting the trash contract issue before the electorate, Saltarelli and Thomas joined the other council members in voting unanimously for the measure. Thomas added that he had grown tired of “going to the mat” in council debates, and offered to work peacefully with Potts on future city matters.

“I feel kind of purged, you know,” Thomas said.

The council must approve the new term-limit measure and the trash measure on second reading later this month before they can be placed on the ballot.