Fort Valley faces runoff election amid charter confusion, audit delays
Fort Valley is headed for a runoff election for city council in December, and the City Administrator says it could have been avoided.
FORT VALLEY, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) – Fort Valley is headed for a runoff election for city council in December, and the city administrator says it could have been avoided.
However, state representatives say that’s not the case.
“The current charter states for majority of votes cast, so that is it,” State Rep. Patty Stinson said. “That is the end of that conversation.”
The Fort Valley City Attorney says a revised charter was submitted to state Rep. Stinson last year, proposing a change from majority to plurality votes being the determining factor for who wins an election. Stinson says the charter revision listed on the city’s website is inaccurate.
“In the charter that the legislative council actually worked on in the section pertaining to elections, it read simple majority. What was on the website had the word plurality,” she said.
Even with any potential requests to make adjustments to the current charter, she says the city has bigger issues to deal with first.
“But because we discovered the city of Fort Valley was severely delinquent with their audits to the Georgia Department of Audits, I decided to help redirect their focus to what was of extreme importance, and that was the audit,” Rep. Stinson explained.
Being behind on an audit can put any charter in jeopardy and impact a city government being recognized. Fort Valley City Administrator James Woods says the city still has 2020 through 2023 audits to complete. Rep. Stinson says she’s putting a hold on any new proposals for charter revisions until the audits are caught up.
“There still needs to be more time to work on these audits, because we just got 2019 completed and we’re going into 2024,” Rep. Stinson said.
City Administrator James Woods says the document posted on the website is being removed.
Fort Valley says changing elections from to plurality to majority means the winning candidate has the most votes even if it’s not the majority. Until those changes are made, the winner needs 50% of the vote plus one.
Three city council races will be decided in a runoff on December 5.
