Council discusses how to choose president - The Southeast Sun: Elections

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Council discusses how to choose president

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Posted: Wednesday, September 6, 2017 2:12 pm

How to rotate the Enterprise City Council presidency was a topic of discussion at the Enterprise City Council work session Aug. 31.

Currently the position of city council president rotates through the districts numerically, beginning with District 1.

The council voted at their first meeting after being sworn in to office in November 2016 to select the council president by set rotation of the position between council district representatives, beginning with District 1 Councilman William “Bill” Cooper serving as president and District 2 Councilman Eugene Goolsby serving as president pro tem from November 2016 until August 2017.

At that time Enterprise City Councilman Turner Townsend cast the single dissenting vote.

Under the original rotation between districts plan, Goolsby would serve as council president and District 3 Councilman Perry Vickers would serve as president pro tem from September 2017 until June 2018.

Vickers would serve as council president and District 4 Councilman Wallace “Al” Miller Jr. would serve as president pro tem from July 2018 until March 2019.

Miller would serve as council president and District 5 Councilman Turner Townsend as president pro tem from April 2019 until December 2019.

Townsend would serve as council president and Cooper as president pro tem from January 2019 until October 2020.

Cooper, serving as council president at the time, was named mayor after then Enterprise Mayor Kenneth Boswell resigned to accept a state level appointment in May.

At that point, Goolsby became council president to fill Cooper’s unexpired term as council president.

At the work session Aug. 31, Goolsby asked how the council would prefer to proceed with the rotation process. Under the original plan, Goolsby would continue to serve as president, this time as the District 2 Councilman.

Enterprise City Attorney Rainer Cotter distributed a possible alternative to rotating the presidency redistributing terms divided into about eight months for each of the councilmen.

“I think everyone knows how I feel about the rotation so just for the purposes of clarity, I will restate my opinion that I don’t think we should rotate the position,” Townsend said. “I think it should be an elected position.

“Three of our last five mayors have come through this rotation which is in essence a game of musical chairs,” Townsend said. “It's a fairly silly way to pick three of the last five mayors.

“At some point enough is enough and I think we should decide amongst ourselves (a president,” Townsend said. “Not only are you president of the council but you are in essence vice mayor and you are the next man up so I think it should not be done arbitrarily.

“I think (election of a council president) should be done with much thought and discussion amongst us of who sits in that seat,” he added. “With everything we do we set precedent so we either say this is a good system and we put our stamp of approval on it….or we say no we don’t agree with this and our actions will determine what happens in the future.”

Miller said that he agreed with the rotation method and wanted that to continue. After some discussion among the council members, it was agreed to continue the current term rotation by district.

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