Norcross sticks with two-year council terms, for now

The Norcross City Council recently voted to keep the terms for the mayor and city council members at two years instead of proposed new four-year terms. The decision followed a lengthy debate that had carried over from the previous month. Ultimately, the decision to keep two-year terms, instead of moving to four-year terms, came down to a strong desire to allow the public to vote on the matter.

Under the city’s current charter, Norcross does not have the ability to hold a non-binding referendum vote on the matter. Non-binding referendums allow the city to ask voters their preference for or against an issue, but do not automatically make that resulting decision progress into a law.

Based on this restriction, and because non-binding referendums can be useful to revisit this and other issues, the council moved to make ask staff to draft a change to the city’s charter allowing for future non-binding referendums.