Mayor Kevin Johnson announced this morning that he will no longer push for his scaled-down strong-mayor plan to be on the June 8 ballot.
Instead, Johnson said he will recommend that the change-in-governance issue be debated and resolved in time for the November general election.
"In light of the serious budget deficit the city faces" and his understanding that there "is not a lot of appetite" for putting the issue on the June ballot, Johnson said he would ask the City Council tonight to move consideration of his strong-mayor proposal to a later date. That means the earliest the measure could be placed on a ballot would be in November.
"I'm disappointed we couldn't do it sooner," Johnson said today at his morning news conference.
A week ago, Johnson introduced the new version of a plan for expanding the mayor's power. It would increase mayoral authority over the budget and hiring and firing over abut 20 city department heads.
