In 1966, Atkinson was elected to an unusual five-year term as vice mayor under the Metropolitan Charter, which had been adopted by voters four years earlier to merge many of the functions of Davidson County and the Nashville municipal government. In one of the charter's many compromise provisions, most of which had been included to overcome the objections which had led to the defeat of an earlier Metropolitan Charter proposed during the 1950s, it was agreed that the second group of office holders elected under the charter would serve for five years rather than the usual four in order to take the metropolitan offices out of the election cycle for statewide offices such as governor and state legislature and holdover county offices such as property assessor, court clerk, and the like. Ostensibly this was in the interest of a shorter ballot and to give these offices the weight of importance that they deserved; to critics this provision meant to move the offices to being elected at a time when only persons with a strong interest in the local government — most notably municipal employees and their families and friends — were likely to vote.