Special Election Fairest Way to Resolve Vacancy

By Mayor David Glass

There has been a good deal of talk in the community as to whether or not the city council was correct in taking a vote on appointing Jason Davies to the currently vacant city council seat.  

Davies  came from virtually nowhere at the start of his campaign in August to finish a strong fourth with three being elected in November. In my opinion it was imperative to begin the search process with a vote on the next highest vote getter.

Many in the community are of the opinion appointing Davies in this situation is the morally justifiable course of action. He is up to speed on all of the issues, and the public must have liked what he had to say because he was a virtual unknown in early August and surpassed everyone in the field except two well-backed incumbents and the former fire chief.

And if one looks at his vote totals on election day I believe he was in the top three on that day. Of course all of the early votes count as well but it demonstrates the more voters saw of Davies in his limited campaign the more they liked him. However, the council vote to appoint Davies to the vacant seat January 3rd ended in a deadlock at three each.  

The next logical step was then to decide if the council wanted to conduct a search for an appointment or choose to send the issue directly to the voters for an election. Although the charter says the council shall make an appointment to fill a vacancy, it is possible for the council to make a decision that the criteria to decide upon the appointment is to directly follow the wishes of the voters and call for an election.

The council decided not to declare  an election, but rather to seek applicants from the community and make an attempt to fill the seat through an appointment. That is fine. No one should be upset about that.

However, given the situation everyone should realize the potential of not being able to arrive at a conclusion different from the results of the first council vote on Davies. On a personal basis I agree with those in the community that have suggested such a situation would best be decided in advance by criteria that requires an obligated method of determining who shall be appointed when this type of vacancy occurs. 

This vacancy occurred as a result of an election. It is not a vacancy that occurred because of a death or a council member moving out of town. Since the vacancy is the result of an action taken in an election, one could easily deduce the remedy could be solved with a charter amendment that requires the council to appoint the next highest vote getter in the same election that resulted in creating the vacancy.

But for now, no such requirement exists. Many Petalumans think it should have been required by the past city council before the results of the election were known. Unfortunately that is not a course of action that was achievable under the law. One city council cannot obligate the actions of another city council.

Although the current council  vacancy is the result of a November election the vacancy itself was not created in reality until I was sworn in as Mayor along with the new council on January 3rd. When our city charter is updated, and it needs to be,  I would hope there would be language that would require the same action that members of the public wanted the last council to take and under the law simply could not.

Now we will have a public outreach effort looking to fill a void while many speculate the voting public is about to be cut completely out of the process. There are lots of ways to slice and dice election results, and no doubt we will see many if not all of those ways in the upcoming days. I also look forward to seeing the applications of people that applied for the vacant seat.

We will soon know who has applied for the seat on the city council. Meanwhile I would expect those that ran in the past campaign will apply for the vacant seat, and I think they should. The challenge will be to agree on a candidate that either ran for office and finished out of the money, or appoint someone who did not run for office.  

Looking at this issue from a practical standpoint, the only time the appointee's vote will count is when the council is deadlocked.  How often, and on what type of issues would that occur? Only on the most controversial of issues. 

Most of the votes at City Hall have to do with routine consent calendar items that pass unanimously. So as a member of the public what you need to ask yourself is how you will feel on the controversial issues when you see the council voting counter to what you want done on a four to three vote?

In the event the seat is filled by someone who did not run for office, every four to three vote will by definition be decided by the vote of the appointed council member the public did not get a chance to vote for or against. Now let's assume there are reasons and real differences in values that cause certain votes to be split along rather consistent lines.

An appointed council member could be consistently one sided in their votes and as a result would probably anger about half the town. If  the council could find that truly independent voice that would achieve impartiality to the point that their vote would be split right down the middle between what the media refers to as two political camps, how do you think Petaluma would react?

In that event, I believe this appointed person's votes  might result in making the entire town angry. After many years of being involved in local politics, I have come to the conclusion that the public expects you to be perfect on the first day on the job, and then improve. And of course whether or not one is perfect and improving is directly correlated to how one votes on the most controversial of projects.  

I cannot say for sure this is how it would play out, but it is a risk that everyone should recognize does exist. That is why at the end of the day the most prudent investment in our community could be an election that would appoint the deciding vote on the most controversial of issues.  

At the same time, we could also amend the charter to require a method of determining the criteria that results in an appointment  to make sure this situation does not keep re-occurring. 

This letter has been edited for clarity