Just as quickly as it was added as a potential limitation on Graham’s mayor’s ability to vote on council agenda items, the subject was removed as a possibility.
Council member Bonnie Whitaker who last month had asked for a discussion on changing the city’s charter to limit the mayor’s voting except in cases of a tie be added for the city council’s August 11 agenda, this week asked that the item be removed from that agenda.
Whitaker did so at the beginning of the council’s August meeting, when council members are asked to confirm acceptance of the presented agenda. Instead, Whitaker asked that the item be removed.
Her request was unanimously granted, and there was no discussion of the issue during the council meeting.
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After the meeting, however, Whitaker explained her change of heart in an interview with The Alamance News.
“The timing was not right to make the decision in the middle of a sitting mayor’s term,” Whitaker said.
To do so, she said, “might be perceived as punitive rather than procedural.
“I decided it wouldn’t be fair,” she added.
As to whether she might revive the voting prohibition concept for a prospective application to the next mayoral term, she said she has “no plans to do so right now.”
The council’s agenda packet had included a staff report from the city’s attorneys, Bob Ward and Bryan Coleman, outlining the two options the attorneys concluded were available to the council to make a change in the charter.
One would require a public hearing after the council adopted a “resolution of intent” to consider an ordinance amending the charter.
The other would allow the council to submit the question to the city’s electorate in the form of a referendum.
