{"id":4404,"date":"2019-11-06T10:29:06","date_gmt":"2019-11-06T15:29:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=4404"},"modified":"2019-11-06T10:29:21","modified_gmt":"2019-11-06T15:29:21","slug":"voters-reject-lakeland-electric-charter-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2019\/11\/06\/voters-reject-lakeland-electric-charter-change\/","title":{"rendered":"Voters reject Lakeland Electric charter change"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Two of the three proposed Lakeland Charter Amendments were\napproved Tuesday night. The public referendum that would have changed the legal\nprocess to sell the municipal-owned Lakeland Electric or the city\u2019s water\nplants was rejected with 64% of votes against the change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charter Amendment #2 found strong support of 61% of voters in favor of stricter term limits of 12 years in office, regardless of position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charter Amendment #1<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDo you favor an amendment to the Lakeland City Charter eliminating unnecessary or obsolete references and provisions; amending any gender-related references; adopting applicable state law provisions; providing periodic commissioner pay adjustments similar to city employees; eliminating reduction in force provisions; creating a charter review committee and providing a periodic charter review process every 8 years; delegating regulation of taxi cabs to the City Commission; eliminating obsolete references to the Hospital Board?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Voters narrowly approved Charter Amendment #1, resulting in\nthe first widespread revision to Lakeland\u2019s city charter. There were 51.9%, or\n5,215 votes, for versus 48.1%, or 4,834 votes, against the change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charter Amendment #2<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDo you favor an amendment to the Lakeland City charter that\nreduces the maximum allowable terms of city commissioners and mayor from 4\nterms to 3; defining a term as any service in office over 2 years; allowing\nexisting incumbent commissioners to serve a total of 4 terms as a commissioner\nand mayor combined?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stricter term limits for Lakeland\u2019s elected officials sailed\nthrough receiving 65% of voters\u2019 approval, versus 34% who were against.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All elected officials taking office in 2020 or later will be limited to serving a maximum of three terms, or 12 years, regardless of office. Any individual who serves more than two years of a term will have it counted toward one of their three terms in office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This change does not apply to commissioners and the mayor\nwho are currently in office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Charter Amendment #3<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDo you favor an amendment to the Lakeland City Charter that\nchanges the approval necessary to sell any water plant or electric utility from\nthe existing requirement of 2\/3 of all electors qualified to vote to 2\/3 vote of\nthe City Commission and 65% of those actually voting in the next general\nelection following City Commission approval?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were 64% of votes, or 6,476 ballots received, against changing the Lakeland city charter with regards to Lakeland Electric. By comparison, only 35% of voters supported it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two of the three proposed Lakeland Charter Amendments were approved Tuesday night. The public referendum that would have changed the legal process to sell the municipal-owned Lakeland Electric or the… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"12","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4404\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}