VENICE — Another grassroots group — Save Annual Venice Elections — has sprung up, spawned by the City Council’s 4-3 decision to ask voters whether they want Council terms to be three or four years.
SAVE launched Tuesday to oppose a referendum on November’s ballot that would increase terms to four years, implementing the change by adding a year to the terms of Council members Rachel Frank and Rick Howard and Mayor Nick Pachota, all of whom voted to hold the referendum.
Council Member Helen Moore, who’s not running for reelection, was the fourth vote.
Vice Mayor Jim Boldt, who is unopposed so far in a bid for a second term, and Council members Joan Farrell and Ron Smith voted against the referendum.
The change would eliminate odd-year elections and align city elections with county, state and federal ones, saving roughly $50,000 every two years.
Council terms have been three years since Venice was first incorporated in the 1920s.
SAVE is “a group of residents from across the political spectrum who are deeply concerned about the changes being proposed to the Venice City Charter,” a news release stated.
According to its website, SaveVeniceFL.org, SAVE is nonpartisan and is not accepting donations from “developers, anonymous dark money donors or special interest groups looking to influence the Venice City Council.”
A similar group, Venice Unites, formed two years ago to invoke a city procedure that would have led to a referendum on new land-development regulations. The Council’s decision to negotiate some changes the group advocated avoided the referendum.
Members of the group later founded Venice Thrives, whose mission is “to ensure that Venice, Florida, remains the historic, charming City on the Gulf founded on the principles of John Nolen’s plan,” its website states.
Doing away with annual elections would reduce Council accountability because it would take four years instead of two to replace a majority of Council members, the SAVE website states.
And, it adds, it would make Council elections more expensive because candidates would need to spend more to get voters’ attention when there are more races competing for it.
“The consequences of these changes would undermine responsive governance in Venice, which is why residents should vote no,” SAVE Chair Jackie Mineo stated in the release. “Keeping our 100-year-old tradition of yearly elections ensures annual accountability, by giving voters the choice of electing up to three new City Council members each year.”
Former mayors Dean Calamaras, Ed Martin, John Holic and Ron Feinsod have also expressed opposition to longer terms.
“City Council should have turned this major change in our City Charter over to a charter review committee, an advisory board that exists for this very purpose,” Holic, a founding member of SAVE, said in the release. “Instead, they rushed through a process that would allow them to avoid facing the voters as often in the future, without considering additional methods to accomplish that objective and without a recommendation as to the advisability of that change.
“To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time a major change in the Charter is being proposed without a charter review and citizen recommendations.”
The financial justification for the proposed change in term lengths is “empty,” Mineo stated in the release.
“Annual elections cost us just $1 per registered voter per year,” she says. “That’s an incredible value to be able to exercise one of our most fundamental rights as Americans.
“We need the agility to replace people who don’t work out, who don’t respond to the voters who put them there and instead complacently green light every development put in front of them without question. Vote no on this referendum and keep that control.”
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