You need to own real property to serve on the City of Richardson Sign Control Board. This is an advisory board. No other board (decision making board or commission), has a real property requirement for its members. You do not need to own real property to serve on City of Richardson Council, and the Council oversees Sign Control Board recommendations and can call the cases up and make a different recommendation if so desired.
Some important Charter requirements are not verified and are ignored, such as Charter residency requirements of City Council. Because this requirement is not verified and is ignored, to serve on Richardson City Council you do not have to have been a voter of that City a year prior. This would be true of anyone coming to Richardson, not any specific person.
In Richardson, all the current Council Members could be unelected at the same time. The Charter does not provide for staggered terms. This and other reasons make City Management very powerful, and very political.
The Council determines how it operates, according to the Charter, not standard, documented public administrative policy.
(The current manner of operation is largely through a combination of offline meetings, group voice mail, bullying, manipulating, throwing tantrums, and, to a lesser extent, texting, winks, frowns, headbobbing, patting, ignoring, guessing, assuming. The forming of slates is a tremendous issue, with some working more than one slate, or in a rare case none at all, to demise. Because everyone is up for election and the right people need to be elected if a certain person is to be mayor and, or, stay in control over other politicians, or to pull the strings of the Council, keep issues and policies quiet, cut deals, etc., it becomes a complicated business. Some have suggested that allowing the people to vote for who their city's Mayor will be may solve some of the slating issues.)
