Venice City Council to ponder changing length of members' terms from three years to four

VENICE – The Venice City Council will decide Tuesday whether to move toward a 120-day moratorium on new annexations prior to elections, have council members serve four-year terms instead of three year and amend the city charter to have council members limited to two consecutive four-year terms instead of three three-year terms.

Mayor Nick Pachota put those items up for discussion and possible action after Sarasota County Supervisor of Elections Ron Turner spoke to the board on Jan. 9.

Currently, at least two City Council seats are on the ballot every year. Last year, Venice was the only municipality in Sarasota County that hosted an election.

Turner noted that in 2023, when Joan Farrell and Ron Smith won seats on the council, more than 40% of the 21,814 registered voters turned out to the polls.

But annexations prior to the election complicated matters.

“What occurred last year was you had voters who were in precincts that were – up until the annexation – in the unincorporated section of the county,” Turner said. "That causes us some challenges with communicating to the voters.”

Residents newly annexed into the city of Venice could not vote in the precinct that was geographically appropriate for them because those precincts were not open.

In one instance a precinct had only two registered voters.

To alleviate that challenge, Turner asked for the city to consider a 120-day moratorium on annexations prior to elections.

The change from the current term system of up to three consecutive three-year terms for council members – for a total of nine possible consecutive years in office, before having to sit out a year to run again – to two consecutive four-year terms would be a little more complex.

One advantage is it would bring city elections more in line with other local governments, including the city of North Port and Sarasota County.

The structure of those elections would be dealt with in language drafted by city staff in a change to the city charter, but the obvious way would be to have three seats elected to a term and then two years later four seats, including the mayor, on the ballot.

That charter amendment would ultimately have to pass a citywide referendum.

The council meets at 9 a.m. at Venice City Hall, 401 W. Venice Ave.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Venice council may change term-length from 3 to 4 years