Currently, a citizen review committee is considering recommending changes to the Amarillo City Charter. While one charter amendment has been popular among committee members, there is one specific change that must be included in order to earn voter support.

One of the major changes being pursued by the committee would increase the terms of Amarillo City Councilmembers to four years each, instead of two years. A similar ballot proposition, which would have set all five members of the City Council — including the mayor — at four-year terms was defeated by voters in 2020.

In our opinion, this item is likely headed for another defeat at the ballot box unless the committee — or the City Council — provides that the mayor’s term will remain at two years.

The argument for increasing the length of terms deals closely with the position that the members’ terms should be staggered. Essentially, the theory goes that it is bad for voters to be able to remove all elected officials at one time and start with a fresh slate. While that theory can be debated, the math of staggered terms works out so that moving all the members of the City Council to four years would mean that, in every other city election, only a minority of the council will be up for election. This means that if things are going wrong at City Hall during this election cycle, voters won’t have the opportunity to usher in a mandate for change.

In our opinion, voters should have the opportunity each election cycle to elect a new majority to the City Council — staggered terms or not. And the only member of the City Council who it would make sense to keep at two years would be the mayor.

The city’s mayor doesn’t have many more powers than the average member of the City Council. However, the mayor does have some important ceremonial duties, oversees the body’s meetings, and plays an important role in setting the vision for the city’s legislative direction.

If something is going wrong at City Hall, many voters blame the mayor anyway. Therefore, if they feel that a change is needed, they should always have the opportunity to change out the city’s top elected official.

Going to four-year terms for other members of the City Council and keeping the mayor at two years wouldn’t make us an anomaly among Texas cities. For example, Lubbock voters have a system that includes staggered terms, while keeping the mayor at two years. That system has served Lubbock well for decades, and if local voters truly crave staggered terms, then Amarillo should follow Lubbock’s lead and adopt this type of system.

Keeping the mayor at two years is the only way to ensure that voters have the chance to hit reset every two years — without disrupting the entire city government. If we’re really going to go down the staggered terms road again, this is the way we need to do it. Otherwise, a change that is essentially a reheated version of the failed term extensions from 2020 is destined for defeat at the ballot box again.