Lakeland voters approve raising term limits for city leaders

LAKELAND Fla. — City commissioners will soon be able to serve in office for much longer. 

Voters approved modifying term limits so that elected officials are no longer limited to three complete terms.

The move has received praise from local leaders, including former Lakeland Mayor Howard Wiggs, who said he knows firsthand how it feels to be rushed out of office.

“I was at least one example of folks who were termed out and couldn’t serve but one term as mayor,” he said.

Wiggs was term-limited back in 2018. He says during his four years as mayor, he felt pressured to hurry through his agenda.

“You can’t cram everything in a four-year term, and so when you try to do that, I think it’s the citizens that really suffer the most,” he said. “You don’t have the leadership that you need, you’re trying to do more things than you probably should try to do because you just don’t have enough time.”

That’s why he says he supported modifying Lakeland’s term limits. Currently, leaders can serve a total of three terms, equaling 12 years. Amendment 2 will increase that to 20 years — 12 as commissioner and eight as mayor.

Some argue the change could cause city officials to lose touch with voters the longer they’re in office. But college professor and former congressman Dennis Ross says that concern wasn’t reflected at the polls.

“Eighty percent of registered voters didn’t care, and that’s what’s disconcerting to me,” Ross said. “I believe term limits should be at the polls, and I think the only effective way of having good term limits is getting more people out to vote. And this is representative of why we probably need to have term limits, because people aren’t interested in voting.”

As for Wiggs, he believes more people will eventually support the extended terms. He said it’s not about what’s best for leaders “but rather doing what’s best for the citizens,” he said.