ATLANTIC BEACH, Fla. — Voters in Atlantic Beach had a longer ballot than most this election.
All six city charter referendums were approved with overwhelming majorities.
Mayor Curtis Ford explained the city commission does a charter review every seven years, just to catch anything that may be outdated as the world changes.
He said these referendums, which all passed, were strengthening some things, removing others and generally cleaning it up.
“These were important things to our citizens, so they brought it forth," said Ford.
Ford says one of the things the charter review committee deemed important are the city’s parks.
One of the ballot referendums voters approved requires any sale of parks to be approved by a city-wide vote, as opposed to just commissioners.
“We have really a wonderful park set-up in this community, so we’re not going to leave it to a potential rogue commission in the future to make a mistake," said Ford. "It has to be decided on by a majority of citizens by referendum in the future.”
Future elections will look a bit different in Atlantic Beach as well.
Anyone interested in running for office will need to have lived in the city for at least four years, as opposed to the old rule of two.
“We really felt like, if you’re only here two years, maybe you don’t quite understand what made this community so popular and so great," said Ford.
Thanks to one of the new referendums, the local elections in Atlantic Beach will feature primaries going forward.
“You could literally have a commissioner or mayor elected with less than a majority vote, so we decided to put a primary option back in," said Ford. "This would only happen if you have more than two candidates running.”
Ford said those primary elections would be nonpartisan – simply the top two candidates of all those running would move to the general election.
He said they’ll work with the supervisor of elections to line those up with other county and state races as best they can so they aren’t on any ballots by themselves.