City Secretary Releases Statement on Term Limits Petitions

McAllen City Secretary Annette Villareal states the following in reference to petitions presented seeking to amend the McAllen city charter to provide term limits for elected officials,

“At approximately 2:30 p.m. on Friday, August 17, 2012, several individuals delivered over 1000 pages of petitions seeking to amend the McAllen City Charter to provide for term limits for elected officials. Upon receiving the petitions, I requested that the Hidalgo County Elections Administrator provide me with a certified total of the number of registered voters residing within the City of McAllen as of August 17, 2012. The number of registered voters varies from day to day as new registrants are added to the list and the names of persons who have moved, died, or otherwise become ineligible to vote are deleted. Because the petition must contain signatures amounting to at least five percent of the number of qualified voters in the city, the first step in verifying a petition is to obtain an up-to-date number of registered voters in the city. I received the certified total at approximately 4:30 p.m. this past Friday. The number of registered voters certified by the Elections Administrator is 59,812. The petition must contain 2,991 valid signatures in order to qualify to be placed in the ballot in the next election.
My staff and I are currently engaged in testing the petitions to determine if they contain the necessary number of valid signatures. As soon as we determine whether the petition signatures can be verified, I will recommend that the item be posted in compliance with the Texas Open Meetings Act so that the city commission can vote on submitting the proposition to the voters.”