At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, the council voted unanimously in favor of a motion that allowed discussion of repeal to take place July 28.

The vote came after a discussion that included a public hearing regarding an ordinance that updated Titles 1 and 2 of the Clinton City Code.

Term limits are contained in Chapter 2-17.

“There were some legislative changes in some of these areas over the past couple years that we haven’t actually updated our own code to reflect,” Clinton Mayor Marie Dougherty said at the meeting. “And so this will do that and get these sections in line with state code, clarifying some procedures, updating references to the Utah Open and Public Meetings Act and GRAMA, just kind of making sure that those are clear, that our code references that.

“We’re hoping that in some of these cases … we can take those sections that the Legislature seems to continue to meddle with and just reference the state code instead of repeating the state code in our own code, and then every time they meddle with it, we have to go back and fix our code. We’ll just cut out our own part of our code and just reference the state code. And then we can let them have at it.”

Speaking specifically of the term limits chapter, Dougherty explained that the city had received feedback from the deputy director of the Utah League of Cities and Towns, Justin Lee, who she said was also the former state election director.

“He works and worked a lot with the Utah Attorney General’s Office, and they have been advising municipalities that term limits could very likely be illegal under state code,” she said. “Now, there are other people who might say that they think it’s just fine. And so that’s just the advice that we got from those groups that are invested in those topics.”

Dougherty said Lee explained that the state code outlines candidate requirements, which relate to residency and registered voter status.

“And so their position that he described to me is that because the code already very particularly outlines the requirements, that it’s very possible that a court would say their intent was not to add more requirements here or to allow the adding of more requirements here because they so specifically laid out the requirements,” she said.

Dougherty said the chapter has not been challenged in court and Clinton is one of “only like three municipalities in the entire state that has even attempted to do this.”

She said the ordinance being discussed Tuesday included a repeal of the chapter “on the assumption that it is not conducive to a court challenge.”

Council member Chris Danson inquired what studies had been done.

“The previous council, I guess, just decided to do this, or was it actually discussed and actual research done about it?” he asked.

Dougherty, who was a member of the council at the time and voted against the ordinance, said the council didn’t do a whole lot but that there aren’t “really good studies about municipal term limits.”

Council member Dane Searle, who voted in favor of the ordinance a year ago, said there was input from City Attorney Todd Godfrey.

“And I would like to hear from him as well,” Searle said. “We discussed it over the course of multiple meetings and work sessions. … I’m sure if we go back to the agendas we can find it. But I would like to hear from Mr. Godfrey, his opinion as well.”

Clinton City Manager Trevor Cahoon said he didn’t remember a lot of work session conversations but said he did have a conversation with Godfrey around the time of the meeting a year ago.

“He had the same opinion at that point, (which) was you could implement this. There’s nothing in state law that expressly prohibits it. But there’s also nothing in state law that expressly allows it, and so you have to rely on some inferences from other codes in making that determination,” Cahoon said.

Dougherty said she voted against the term limits last year because there wasn’t time to study it and the council had not gone through a work session on it.

“And in fact, we got it in our agenda on a Friday night over Memorial Day weekend, and the vote occurred on Tuesday,” she said. “And so I scrambled that whole weekend. It ruined my entire weekend … so I thought that our process was not conducive to finding what the best result would be in the first place.”

Dougherty said the consideration of repeal was put on the agenda at the request of Council member Spencer Arave, who also voted against the ordinance last year.

“He had reached out to me and said, ‘Can we put that on the agenda?'” she said. “And so I was, you know, responding to his request as a council member … so we can have that discussion today.”

Arave said he had done “a ton of research on term limits” and found that Syracuse City discussed it and came to the conclusion that it “potentially could be against the law.”

He said the initial comment from people regarding term limits is one of support, but when asked about local elected officials and increased familiarity with them, he said there was a shift.

“So the more conversation I had with people about term limits, it wasn’t the initial idea that a lot of people agree on with federal term limits,” he said. “It was when we got to the specifics of local elections, they were like, ‘Oh, no, that doesn’t make sense as much.'”

He noted appreciation for being able to bring term limits up “seeing that it would fit in with this agenda item” and for Dougherty for hearing him out.

Council member Adam Larsen said he was “all in favor” of more conversations about term limits.

“I remember at the time it was passed, I was attending the meeting as a citizen and really never had a good understanding of what the motivation was to be putting (in) that provision,” he said. “I think the only response that was given was that it’s very difficult to beat an incumbent, and then we proceeded to have two incumbents beaten in the next election. So I’m not sure that’s a good argument for having term limits is because it’s too hard to get somebody out. If somebody’s not doing a good job, they’ll get voted out, and we’ve seen that.”

Searle said he had no problem discussing term limits again.

According to the minutes from the May 27, 2025, meeting that were included in the June 10, 2025, agenda, Searle said the proposal was a “fair and balanced step forward” but acknowledged it could be revisited or amended at a later date.

“What we are doing tonight is a starting point–not necessarily the final word. We can refine this,” he said, according to the minutes.

Council member Jennifer Christensen said Tuesday she had more of a comment than a question.

“My concern right now as we’re looking into these updates – you know, term limits is not the hill that I’m dying on today,” she said. “You know, I have opinions and I would like to look at it more fully, but overall, I feel like I personally would like to be more involved in conversations pertinent to the business of our city.”

She said regarding the clarifications and opening a public hearing, “it would have been nice to have heard more about some of these things earlier in the process.”

During public comment, the lone person to speak, Daniel Martinez, said he didn’t understand why term limits would be “a thing for local municipalities.” He said they limit the pool of people who run.

Contact Standard-Examiner editor Ryan Comer at rcomer@standard.net.