By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
St. Joseph city officials have put forward some amendments to the city charter on the upcoming April ballot.
City Manager Bryan Carter says the headline of those amendments would switch city councilmembers to serving staggered terms.
"Currently, the city council is elected every four years, and the entire body is elected, the mayor, and then four At Large and four district councilmembers, so nine people are elected at the same time," Carter explains to KFEQ Hotline host Barry Birr.
Carter says the change would make it so there's a municipal election every two years.
"So, it would essentially in the long term remain four-year terms, but in one election you would elect the mayor and at large, and the next election you would elect your district council person," Carter says.
Carter says the unique element to this transition is one term being a bit different where the council members elected in 2026 would be up for reelection in 2028, transitioning from a two-year term to a four-year term.
Carter says ultimately staggering it this way works best with the voting process.
"Because the voting locations that are established by the county clerk, don't necessarily line up exactly perfectly with the city council districts, in fact there's no correlation at all," Carter points out.
Carter says with the whole city voting for mayor and the at large seats and that separation in districts, this was the easiest way to stagger the elections.
Carter says St. Joseph is unique in that there are not staggered terms for city councilmembers, but say the city is pretty well equipped to handle that turnover.
"The last election that occurred in '22 we turned over seven of nine, and we lost a little bit of time on getting some things done, we had to go through quite a bit of education, but it was still something we were able to do," Carter says. "I don't think there was anything that suffered a major detriment by having to go through that with seven of nine new people.
Carter says he's not sure of any other city the size of St. Joseph that has gone all at once for as long as it has here.
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