City Council Candidate Q&A: Term Limits

The election for San Marino City Council and is next Tuesday so Patch wants to recap where the candidates stand on different issues.

In addition to , San Marino residents will vote on Tuesday whether or not to impose term limits at the city council level so that city council members can serve for only two consecutive four-year terms and then must wait two years if they wish to run for city council again.

If the measure is approved, it will go into effect with council members whose terms begin Nov. 8, 2011 or later, so it will not limit those already in office to two consecutive terms. .

Four members of the San Marino City Council voted at a June 24 meeting to approve an ordinance establishing the term limits, dependent on its approval by voters in the Nov. 8 election.

Council members Richard Ward, Eugene Sun, Vice Mayor and voted in favor of the term limit ordinance in June and Councilman Kneier was absent.

See the full text of the term limits measure attached to this article or on the city's website.

Responses from three of the city council candidates--, and --as to whether or not they will vote for city council term limits are on video attached to this article. Below is ’s response.

To see the entire Patch interviews with each of the city council candidates, click on the candidate's name:

Will you vote for or against term limits?

Stephanie Johnson:

I’m going to vote no on term limits.

I realize there was an advisory vote two years ago and it had a majority [for term limits].

I think the public should be able to vote for whomever they want and if they feel someone has been in office for too long they won’t vote for that person. So I don’t think it’s a prudent thing to do to limit the choices the public has when they are voting. We did find in 2007 that the two incumbents who had been in office for many, many years were defeated and I think that just affirmed my opinion that people will decide if you have been there long enough, they’ll vote for someone else.