Responding to mayoral candidate Sam Yoon's call for term limits, fellow candidate Michael Flaherty said that should be left up to Boston voters.

Voters should file an initiative petition to establish the term limits, he adds.

"...[W]hen it comes to making any decision about term limits, we must recognize that we are talking about limiting voters’ choices about who is representing their interests at the government level," Flaherty said in a statement. "For that reason, I believe government officials have no business deciding whether we should impose term limits. If residents truly believe that the issue of imposing term limits should be debated, then [I] think it should be debated by the residents, not public officials."

As the State House News Service noted in a recent story, voters have until Aug. 5 to file initiative petition proposals for November 2010, along with 10 valid signatures, with Attorney General Martha Coakley.

The State House News Service adds: "If certified by Sept. 2, campaigners must gather 66,593 signatures and certify them with Secretary of State William Galvin by the first Wednesday in December. After that, the Legislature has until the first Wednesday in May 2010 to act on the petition or allow it to proceed to the ballot. If they allow it to proceed, organizers must gather an additional 11,099 signatures by July 2010."

Meanwhile, South End businessman and fourth mayoral candidate Kevin McCrea said on his blog that Yoon stole his idea for term limits.

"When Menino was 12 years into his career and Yoon was wearing a 'Labor for Menino' sticker on his lapel he didn't think 8 years was all that a Mayor should have," McCrea wrote. "He didn't figure this out when he at the Kennedy School of Government? He hasn't thought it was important the last 3.5 years he has been in the City Council? He hasn't introduced anything to the council for these term limits. What changed over the weekend? Did he eat some bad shellfish?"

Menino has said that term limits are unnecessary - that elections held every four years are, in essence, term limits.