(The Center Square) — An ongoing effort to establish retroactive term limits in Bossier City receives the final vote by residents on Saturday.
Back in September, an ordinance establishing term limits for the Bossier City Council members failed to pass despite citizen concerns. The ordinance called for a special election in December proposing no person who has been elected or appointed to serve for three terms is eligible for reelection.
Residents presented a petition during a September city council meeting with roughly 3,000 signatures.
Nearly nine months later, the parish will vote on the retroactive term limits. If passed, four council members will be ineligible for reelection — Jeff Free, Jeff Darby, David Montgomery and Don Williams.
A previous JMC analytics poll reported showed between 50%-70% of citizens in each district would approve city council term limits.
The Bossier City Term Limits Coalition began the argument over retroactive term limits, while the City Council’sprevious proposed charter is prospective term limits. The council originally wanted their prospective term limits to be on the December ballot last year. However, the Louisiana Bond Commission rejected the proposal. The reasoning behind the rejection was for the council’s omittance of the retroactive term limits supported and petitioned for by citizens.
The Center Square previously reported that if the charter passed in the March election, it wouldn’t hinder the retroactive petition version from being added and voted on in future elections depending on how the courts ruled.
“If this goes forward as it is and it passes I think it could block any further action because the people of Bossier City will feel like they made their decision through their vote and that would mean that there would only be prospective term limits,” John Fleming, state treasurer and commission chair said previously.
As the May election approaches this week, citizens will cast another vote for term limits as they did in March.
While the March election did not address retroactive term limits, both propositions received a majority vote to pass some form of term limits for elected officials in Bossier.
“We think that we’re going to be successful because we’ve made such a stink of this for the last two years,” David Crockett told The Center Square previously. “We think that some of these city councilmen are going to get beat, and we may get control of the council with good people that are not doing this for self-serving purposes.”
