Next month voters around the County will once again have an opportunity to vote for council representation in many cities in addition to voting for various school board positions. Foster City has a number of interested candidates who would like to serve our community on the City Council for the next four years.
My advice to anyone wanting to serve is to be active in your community. Leadership must be guided by learning and reason. Ignorance and mis-information can handicap the progress of a city. A successful public servant must be open to change and listen to constituents.
One must be prepared to make difficult decisions as you plan for the future. Solutions to problems may be more complex and require greater skill and discretion of judgment. Don’t be too quick to react. There is much more to the job than people realize.
This leads me to discuss an important matter that the voters will have an opportunity to decide upon that has long range importance on community advocacy. Measure W on the ballot will give voters the power to change the term limits of our council members.
To take part on a city council requires the willingness to make a commitment to serve and make sacrifices for the general interest. There is no sense in trying to do something unless you give it maximum effort. This is what is called giving back to the community.
Currently the efforts of dedicating one’s self to serving their community are cut short by term limits in Foster City. An elected councilmember can serve up to 2 terms; that is, a maximum of 8 years.
Term limits were put in place due to voter resentment towards career politicians. We are seeing the affects of term limits since they played a significant role in the State budget debacle. In my opinion we don’t need to translate that problem to the local level of government.
Interested individuals in our community are eager and dedicated to serve. If they have the leadership qualifications and have participated in community service in some capacity, then the voters of the city should have the power to determine how long that public servant serves. If a council member is not doing the job of the people, they should not be re-elected, simple as that.
The potential to having a longer term in office allows a council member to follow long term projects as they affect the community. It is important that the local level of government remain stable. In my opinion, these term limits should be extended to 3 terms or 12 years.
Those serving us should have sufficient time to achieve the goals they set when we elected them. Anything short of that could have adverse affects on our success for the future. I urge Foster City residents to consider this change and vote yes on Measure W to extend term limits to 3 terms.
If anyone is wondering if my promotion to pass this measure is self serving, I have no intention of running for a third term. You may comment on this or other issues by emailing me at lkoelling@fostercity.org
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