Niceville, You Have Two Charter Amendments on the Ballot in 2025. Details:

Coin Flip Tie Breaker

The first measure would allow the Mayor to vote as a tiebreaker if the council needs to replace a councilperson and the vote between two council members is tied at 2-2.

The council added the measure to the ballot on a 4-1 vote.

Earlier this year, the four remaining council members reached an impasse as to who should replace resigned council member Abner Williams. The decision, as required by the city’s current charter rules, required the tie between now-councilman Doug Stauffer and Doug Tolbert to be broken by a coin flip.

Now-Councilman Doug Stauffer won the toss and was appointed councilman. He emphatically supported the measure to take the chance out of the equation and insert the Mayor’s opinion instead.

“Listen, I won the coin flip, don’t get me wrong,” Councilman Stauffer said, “But I would like to see our Mayor be the deciding vote for a city council member, because that decision just changes everything. It affects everything. That is why I would like to see that change. That’s why i’m wanting to vote for it.”

Councilman Bill Schaetzle, the lone no vote on the dais, said that he worried the additional power could put the Mayor in a position where he could violate Florida’s Sunshine Laws. The Sunshine Laws require that members of any voting body refrain from discussing any business that could or will come in front of the body outside of a meeting that has been noticed to the public in advance.

“If we ever get into this situation again, it’s a tie vote two to two, and the mayor has talked to numerous people, then he has just violated sunshine, and I don’t want to see him put in that predicament,” Schaetzle told the other members of the council.

Other council members noted his concern and agreed that they would not discuss this specific situation with the mayor if this measure were to pass muster with the voters.

Schaetzle’s concerns were enough to kill a third measure, which would have extended voting powers to the Mayor in any scenario where there was a tie on the council – as members believed this would make it impossible for the Mayor to serve as a non-sunshine-impacted conduit of information that could aggregate the council members thoughts and opinions in between meetings and liaise with city staff. “

Clerk’s Residence

The other ballot measure that will appear when you enter the polling booth for the March 11th municipal elections has to do with where one person lives.

Currently, the Niceville City Charter requires the City Clerk to live within the city limits of Niceville or move within the city limits within one year of taking the job. This referendum, which the council voted unanimously to add to the March ballot, would remove that requirement from the charter.

At the November meeting, City Manager David Deitch announced that longtime City Clerk Dan Doucet would retire on December 1 from the city – after 32 years of service.

He also announced that current Deputy City Clerk Wendy Farmer would serve in the interim, saying, “I wouldn’t want to sit next to anybody else the second Tuesday of the month.”

Currently, no property is homesteaded in the city limits of Niceville by a Wendy Farmer.