Voters in Temecula will decide whether or not the city will establish term limits for city council members this Election Day.
“Before I got on, [term limits were] brought up by other council members,” said Mayor Pro Tem Brenden Kalfus in an interview with The Riverside Record. “It just never came to fruition, and always got voted down prior to being able to be put on the ballot.”
If approved by a majority of voters, Measure M will limit people to serving more than three four-year terms during their lifetime. Kalfus, whose platform included bringing term limits to the city, said the goal was to ensure the council would continue to have a diversity of perspectives.
“This, hopefully, will make it easier for people [to run for office],” he said. “It’ll improve the turnover, and it’ll make for a larger pool of people that are able to serve their community.”
Other reasons the council discussed included the size of the city and providing an opportunity for more residents to serve without the power of long-standing incumbency.
“When you go in against an incumbent who, you know, they have all the backing of fire and police and the unions and city staff, it’s a huge weight to overcome,” Kalfus said. “And it makes it difficult for people.”
When Kalfus was elected in 2022, he beat long-term incumbent MaryAnn Edwards, who at that point had been on the Temecula City Council for 17 years.
As stated in the ordinance, the term limitation will be applied prospectively, which means past or current council member service is not included. As an example, Kalfus will still be eligible to run for an additional three terms after his current term ends in 2026.
“In theory, I could do 12 more years after this four,” he said. “I could technically put in, you know, 16 years or four terms.”
The limit would also not apply to those who are appointed or elected to finish a partial term of two years or less, which means whoever is elected to fill the District 1 vacancy will still be eligible to run for three additional terms if they so choose.
The council last year discussed putting the measure on the ballot at the Feb. 14 meeting and subsequently voted to put it on the ballot at the Feb. 28 meeting.
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At the Feb. 14 meeting, four members of the public commented and one wrote a letter to the council that was read during the meeting. All of the comments were in favor of putting the measure on the ballot. And while Councilmember Zak Schwank, who was mayor at the time, voted against moving forward with the measure at the Feb. 14 meeting.
“I’m not a huge fan of term limits,” he said at the time to audible laughter from the audience. “We went through this last year.”
Schwank said he felt that a lot of the success of the community was due to previous long-serving council members and the ability for the city to have that continuity and preservation of institutional knowledge.
“Fresh ideas don’t always equal, and in fact rarely equal, good ideas,” he said. “So, I have a problem with that.”
Schwank later voted in favor of the resolution putting the measure on the ballot and signed onto the city’s argument in favor of Measure M, which was included in the Riverside County voter information guide.
“This is one of the things that I believe Temecula wants, and Temecula is ready for,” Kalfus told The Record. “I think it’s been years in the making, and I think, you know, now is just the time that it was finally brought forward to the voters.”
Those who have not yet cast their vote have three options to do so. They can drop off their signed vote-by-mail ballot at a secure ballot drop box, vote in person at a vote center, or mail their signed vote-by-mail ballot through the United States Postal Service.
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