Here’s how a City Council works

Editor’s note: While researching this article, the City of Oviedo provided OCN with outdated salaries for the Oviedo City Council. The article has been edited to include the Council salaries, which were increased in October from $15,340 to $16,260 for Council members and from $17,531 to $19,513 for the mayor. 

Oviedo’s five city council members are tasked by voters to make key decisions about the present state and future of the city. But what goes into being a city council member, exactly?

As the council swore in its newest member, Group 3’s Alan Ott, during its Dec. 2 meeting, Oviedo Community News wanted to provide a deep dive into how the body functions.

The rules and guidelines of city council — elections for which are to be nonpartisan — are set forth in the city’s charter, which states that it is to be made up of five members, one of whom is the mayor. To be eligible for a city council seat, a person must be a ‘qualified elector and residing within the city limits for a period of at least 12 consecutive months immediately preceding the date of qualification,” according to the charter.

Council members, including the mayor, are elected for two-year terms. While Ott beat Darrell Lopez for outgoing member Bob Pollack’s seat in November, incumbents Keith Britton and Jeff Boddiford ran unopposed — something Britton at least is used to. He has run unopposed in all of his elections except for his initial run in 2006, during which he beat incumbent Regina Bereswill, and in 2018, when he beat challenger Melissa Debach.

“I like being up there and I do work hard,” Britton said. “I try to make decisions that are good for the city as a whole, not just for certain individuals or certain sections of the city, but what’s good for the city, and that seems to be a good formula. I don’t really play favorites, I avoid the partisan stuff because we are supposed to be nonpartisan.

“I think it’s a benefit because our local issues are not related to partisan issues,” he said. “We don’t have constitutional questions before us on City Council. We have stuff [such as] whether we want to approve a development or buy a park. It has nothing to do with partisanship.”

Mayor Megan Sladek and Council member Natalie Teuchert, who first beat incumbent Judith Dolores Smith in 2021 before running unopposed in 2023, are up for reelection in 2025.

Annual council member compensation is set by council itself, and is currently $16,260, while mayoral compensation is $19,513. Council members must follow the general powers and duties listed in the charter:

“The way I look at it is that it’s citizen oversight of the city government,” Ott said. 

Despite previously being a regular attendee of council meetings, often speaking at the podium during public comments, Ott said he has noticed a difference being on the other side of the dais.

“It moves pretty fast up there. It moves faster than down in the audience,” he said. “You’ve got to be quick to get in during the discussion, is what I’ve found.”

From his experience in the audience, he hopes to see others go to meetings and have their voices heard.

”I love having resident involvement and just hearing from people, hearing what their perspectives are on any given issue,” Ott said.

While he has not received any advice for being on council from fellow members yet, he was reminded that city government takes time.

”[Someone said], ‘don’t try to make it go too fast,’” he said. “There’s kind of a way things go, and sometimes people get in and they’re not used to working with local government, and there’s kind of a process for everything.”

The mayor of Oviedo has additional duties and powers than the others on council:

But while members have guidelines to follow, they don’t tell them everything.

“There’s a learning curve [for new members],” Britton said. “I would tell them to have their eyes open and learn from what’s going on, and try to be as prepared as they can be for the meetings and the issues that have come up.”

In addition to attending meetings, the role of a council member includes additional workshops, events, parades, meet-and-greets, preparation work and other responsibilities. And, since the compensation makes it only a part-time job for most, with many members having other careers — Sladek is an attorney and real estate agent, Teuchert is an engineer and business owner, Boddiford is a regional sales manager, Ott is a director of platform software and Britton is retired after working for more than 30 years in the aerospace and engineering field — in addition to their public service, why undertake the significant time commitments?

“It’s something I enjoy, so it’s not a burden on me,” Britton said. “I thought I could make a contribution … that’s why I [initially] ran.”