TOLEDO, Ohio — If you have voted early in Lucas County, you may have seen signs urging you to reject Issue 9, which would extend the limit of consecutive terms that a Toledo mayor can serve from two to three, as you pulled into the board of elections.
Many of those signs were displayed by Toledo resident Harold Harris, who is voting against the proposed amendment to the city charter on Election Day.
"When you keep the same leader, you keep getting the same old, same old, same old," Harris said.
"You play by the rules that are set. You don't change the rules to suit yourself," he added.
BJ Fischer, a spokesperson for a group of business leaders who petitioned for the amendment, believes it's an important decision to give to voters.
"Rather than having to every eight years automatically and arbitrarily stopping, bringing in new staff, new leadership, new programs, wouldn't it be better to at least give voters a choice?" Fischer said.
When asked for comment, Toledo Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz told WTOL 11 to speak with Fischer. Kapszukiewicz is in his second consecutive term and would be barred from running for a third consecutive term if the amendment does not pass.
In August, the group submitted 10,852 signatures to the Lucas County Board of Elections for the petition. Days later, Toledo City Council approved the proposal.
This proposal is not new, though. Two years ago, it was packaged with 12 other changes as part of Issue 21 and voters rejected it by 53%.
Fischer said the proposal needed to stand alone on the ballot this year.
"We wanted to have one unambiguous vote for people to take on whether or not they think this direction is right for the city of Toledo," he said.
Toledo resident Terry Waugh says he voted in favor of Issue 9 Wednesday afternoon.
"I think they should be allowed to do the three terms and then if they want to do more terms, I'm okay with that," Waugh said.
Former Toledo mayor Carty Finkbeiner, however, does not support the amendment. He says Kapszukiewicz just wants more power for himself.
"That's the way it should be done, to follow the charter of the city of Toledo, and Wade (Kapszukiewicz) is seeking to get the city charter altered, simply because he wishes to have four more years," said Finkbeiner, who also served three mayoral terms — two consecutively from 1994-2002 and a third in 2006.
Harris agrees with the current limit of two consecutive terms.
"We like term limits," Harris said. "We want to keep them. When you look at our president, he serves two terms, eight years, he gets on Air Force One, waves goodbye and says 'cha-cha!'"
Below is the full ballot language presented for Issue 9:
"Shall the proposed amendment, set forth by citizen-initiated petition, to Chapter VI Section 87D of the Charter of the City of Toledo to limit the number of consecutive four-year Mayoral terms to three from two, to be consistent with the term limits applied to Toledo City Council, be adopted?"