HomeMy Public PortalAbout2016_tcmin0208SPEC COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING February 8, 2016
Council Chambers, 25 West Market Street, 6:30 p.m. Vice Mayor Burk and Mayor
David S. Butler presiding.
Council Members Present: David Butler, Thomas Dunn, Suzanne Fox, Katie Sheldon
Hammler, Marty Martinez and Vice Mayor Burk
Council Members Absent: None.
Staff Present: Town Manager Kaj Dentler, Deputy Town Manager Keith Markel,
Town Attorney Barbara Notar, and Executive Associate I Tara Belote.
AGENDA ITEMS
1. CALL TO ORDER
2. ROLL CALL: Showing all members present
3. APPOINTMENT/SELECTION PROCESS FOR MAYOR AND COUNCIL
MEMBER
a. Appointment of Mayor
On a motion by Vice Mayor Burk, seconded by Council Member Martinez, the
following was proposed:
MOTION
I move that the Town Council publicly advertise an opening for the interim mayor
for five business days on our website and any other available media. The town
council will seek resumes from interested individuals to fulfill the duties of the
mayor. After five days, the Council will convene a special public meeting on
Februaryl8, 2016 to review the resumes and select an interim mayor. This will
ensure fair and transparent selection that allows all interested town residents to
participate in the process.
Council Comments:
• Burk: The reason I have asked us to do this —made this motion today is
my concern that there are people in the community that don't know about
how the process is going to work. So, we had one meeting where we
started the process and we were not able to conclude it. Mr. Dunn made a
motion to postpone discussion to the next meeting. But that next meeting
was cancelled due to the snow and so this is the following meeting that we
have had. This is the second meeting on this particular topic. Council
Member Butler and Fox called for a special meeting and so that is why we
are meeting here today. I think I have been on the record the whole time
that we have been through this process that I do think it is important that
the public have input and be involved. So, therefore, that is why I have
moved this motion.
• Martinez: I know on our last meeting that we discussed this, I made a
motion that we do this and it got shot down. I think that for those of us
who ran our races, our campaigns, a lot of the discussion was open and
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transparent and allowing the government, or not the government, the
citizens to participate in our process and what we do. Now, open and
transparency doesn't mean easy. It is when you have to make hard
decisions and you know, involving the public even though there are
mechanisms that we can push this thing through without any citizen
input; without allowing the public to have some insight in our processes.
There are mechanisms in place to do that. I don't think we should use
them as easily as we are currently doing. This is not easy. We need to
bring the public in. There are plenty of qualified candidates out there that
we can review and can hold the interim mayor spot. The difference
between my resolution and Kelly's is that she has a date certain on which
we have to get this thing done, which I am totally in favor of. So, I
believe that if we all agree that open and transparency mean bringing
public input in—giving the public a chance to weigh in on the discussion,
then you should support this. Any other thing says that you are willing to
go ahead and bypass the process and not include the public or include our
citizens.
• Fox: By having a special meeting, does that preclude the public from any
input from this meeting? It does, so they have no say in it whatsoever but
what they have seen in the papers and things like that.
• Butler: Point of order. We have no problem. We are all here. So, we
can open up a council comments, or not council comments, public
comments, if we wish. Since we are all present, we can actually in theory
transact any business that we want to at a special meeting.
• Burk: True, but the public didn't know that we would be doing this, so
they might have wanted to have been here if they could have known about
it.
• Fox: I disagree with that. I have seen many members of the public say
that there is a meeting tonight. They are aware of it and people should
show up for it.
• Hammier: Just for the record. When I check the record, I believe that
Tom Dunn and I both supported in December having a work session
about this very topic. So, this really should have been done in December.
It was decided that we did not, for whatever reason, as the will of Council
was not to do it, so it is a little inconsistent relative to deciding after a
special meeting is called that we have to reschedule and do another special
meeting, but clearly there is validity in as much public input that the
public would like to provide.
• Dunn: I have a long standing history of being opposed to just about any
type of special meeting. I think we should conduct our business during
our normal business hours and that there should be very little reason
unless it is an emergency to call for a special meeting. I understand the
desires of those who asked for this meeting of trying to select an interim
mayor so we can start going forward with our regular meetings effective
tonight with a work session and then tomorrow with our regular meeting
with potentially a new interim mayor leading those. And I can
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understand that. I would say to this motion that I would be for this if after
our meeting now that we have actually drug ourselves out and these poor
people that we should conduct some business other than just saying that
we are now going to go back and punt and have another meeting later on.
I would be fine with this, if we cannot come to a conclusion this evening
for either an interim mayor and/or a potentially open council seat, but
since we are here now, I would just say let's go forward and see what kind
of business we can do or discussion we can have and then if we can't
reach a conclusion, then I am all for doing what we said originally, which
I think is still on the agenda. By the way I forgot to get my new book. I
have got the old book from the other meeting, that we should be having a
work session tomorrow night on this. From that work session, we should
be citing what our process would be. So, if we can't come up with a
decision tonight, we should be going to what our process should be
tomorrow. So, I feel that this motion is still out of order because we
haven't all agreed to that. There has been no discussion about, actually
what is our process. By the way, there was some discussion over the
phone today—I talked to Katie about that today that our process is we are
not dictated by anything other than we either appoint someone or if we
can't do that, the court will select someone or in certain circumstances, the
court will select someone and there could be an election depending on
what the seat is and the length of time, so there is no dictate as to how we
would do that. It is up to us to decide how we do it and I am always very
interested in hearing from the public but I think that since we are here
now, we should just go ahead and see what type of business we generate.
If we can't, then we should have a work session on it tomorrow to decide
what the actual process will be—not just decide that on the fly with this
motion.
• Hammler: Because Tom referenced a conversation we had earlier and I
sent to Council, thanks to our Town Attorney, from my perspective and it
seems logical and the citizens would expect that an interim mayor would
presumably be the vice mayor. The vice mayor has been selected and we
made that decision to serve as the mayor and absent the mayor being on
the dais or any other function. It got rather complicated when Kelly
announced publicly that she would not seek the interim mayor position so
I was just checking the duties thinking at some point that is what the
community expects from us, so it was pointed out to me today that
technically according to our charter, we are not dictated by appointing,
necessarily the vice mayor, but to me it seemed logical. Obviously for the
record, I did not vote for Kelly last time because I was sort of taken up
heart because she said she wouldn't take the seat and it requires special
election so we had to do a little bit more research on how the special
election would work. So, for the public's benefit what essentially happens
is anyone running for council could, if the vice mayor were selected to be
interim mayor would be able to run for the special election on the
November ballot if that were the date of the special election because
Kelly's term doesn't end until 2018, and could also run for any of the open
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three staggered council terms. If somebody wanted both those seats, then
we would be right back to where we started from needing to appoint
someone given again the staggered terms. So, probably the thing that this
Council has learned is when we chose a vice mayor that person should be
willing and able to serve if the mayor determines he or she isn't going to
finish her term given when that person's term ends. So, we are now back
to presumably we will be looking towards a different solution and I would
certainly support after this is all over having a better defined resolution
that defines the continuity of Council operations because this has
obviously been rather complex given how this has evolved. But that is a
little background on why I had this discussion about, you know,
ultimately are we bound, quote on quote, by any specific town charter
verbiage.
• Dunn: Just to expand on it a little bit just so that the public is aware that
again there is no dictate that we must chose the most senior council
member. There is no dictate that we should choose the person who got
the next closest votes to getting elected. There is no dictates that we—the
vice mayor is automatically in that position. The only thing that it says is
we must choose in some form or another. So, we are working well within
the very liberal guidelines that have been set before us. By the way, I
don't think it is proper for the vice mayor to have to take that position,
especially since the vice mayor was not elected to that position by the
people. The vice mayor was chosen by at least four people here on
Council. Only council makes a vice mayor, the citizens do not. So, the
next person in line, should not, in my view become mayor because
meaning the vice mayor should not become mayor just by that position
because the citizens had no say in that unless they don't like that decision,
they can vote down those people who put that person in that position. So,
yes, we have all the cards that we have been dealt. We are using them and
it is basically select somebody from amongst yourself. If you can't do
that, the court will do it if we reach a certain time frame and under certain
circumstances, there could be an election depending on the position and
the time that empty seat is open.
• Hammier: Point of order. Tom, were you tabling the motion by saying
that you want to wait until later in the meeting. I was a little unclear.
• Dunn: Are you talking about last meeting?
• Hammier: I'm talking about this motion on the table. You said somehow
we were going to have town business conducted, but now this motion is
being called for a vote. Were you planning to vote on this motion or table
it until later in the meeting?
• Dunn: I am planning on voting against this motion for the reason I
mentioned earlier, which is we come out to conduct business. We have
announced that. A lot of folks are here looking for us to do something. I
would not have made this motion and however I am for expanding the
process, which I was before the same reason I voted to postpone our last
vote to our next meeting, which is tomorrow—well, it's tonight, actually.
It is at our work session. I keep forgetting this is the night we are actually
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COUNCIL SPECIAL MEETING February 8, 2016
having two meetings. So, yeah, technically if we don't get this decision
made tonight, we should be having a work session on this tonight.
The motion failed by the following vote:
Aye: Butler, Martinez and Vice Mayor Burk
Nay: Dunn, Fox and Hammier
Vote: 3-3
On motion by Council Member Hammier, seconded by Vice Mayor Burk, C. Terry
Titus was nominated for interim mayor.
Council Comment:
• Hammler: I would just like to mention that we have, I think a lot of the
public was aware of what we were doing and in fact probably expects us
to act tonight. Terry was willing and able to serve in the interim position
previously. He has served on Council and has had many leadership roles
for decades within Leesburg and Loudoun County.
The motion failed by the following vote:
Aye: Hammier, Martinez and Vice Mayor Burk
Nay: Butler, Dunn and Fox
Vote: 3-3
On a motion by Council Member Hammier, seconded by Council Member Fox,
Council Member Butler was nominated for interim mayor.
Council Comment:
• Hammier: I believe we didn't officially have a vote, but we certainly had
enough discussion at a work session—other avenues that it is certainly a
benefit to have somebody on Council serve as the interim mayor and
ultimately Dave has served as Vice Mayor and he has served on Council
for eight years. I personally tried to find votes for in order of seniority on
Council, could not get that in terms of Vice Mayor Burk, Marty Martinez,
even myself, who is next in line—I think Dave would be a very effective
interim mayor and I hope we could break the stalemate.
• Burk: I will not be voting for Mr. Butler for reasons that I stated before. I
feel very strongly that this should be someone who has not declared that
they are running—that this shouldn't be a position that gives an unfair
advantage to one person over another. I believe that there are many
people out in the community that would obviously be willing, able and
very talented to serve. So, for that reason, I will not be supporting this
motion.
• Martinez: I supported Terry because he set a precedent in helping us with
the Council previously when we had a vacancy. I believe he is one of the
most non-partisan, community oriented people. I am sorry that we didn't
vote him in. Though, personally I would rather this go through public
input where we do a candidate search. I think that a lot of the arguments
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about having to have somebody on Council be mayor is really—it is-
there are a lot of people come onto this Council that haven't had any
experience that do a fine job and with Terry or others —there are a lot of
qualified people out there that could step in and do just as well. I don't
think it's necessary and I also believe that anybody who is running for any
kind of office should not be interim mayor. It ends up being a political
free for all when that happens so I can't support having anybody on
Council and that includes the Vice Mayor. I would not vote for her.
• Burk: I am crushed.
• Martinez: I know you are crushed, but we talked about this before.
• Burk: I am only kidding.
The motion was approved by the following vote:
Aye: Butler, Dunn, Fox and Hammler
Nay: Burk and Martinez
Vote: 4-2
Council Member Butler was sworn in as Mayor by Clerk of the Circuit
Court Gary Clemens.
On a motion by Council Member Hammier, seconded by Vice Mayor Burk, the
following was proposed:
MOTION2016-003
I move that we publicly advertise an opening for interim council member for five
business days on our website and any other available media. The town council will
seek resumes from interested individuals who can fill the duties of interim council
member. After the five days, we request that staff coordinate with all members of
Council to find a date the week of February 15 that works for all council members
for that special meeting to select the interim council member.
Council Comment:
• Dunn: Again, I think that there was three council members who were in
favor of Mr. Titus being on Council. I would be willing tonight to go
ahead and join those three in voting for Terry to take the empty seat and
not belabor this issue.
• Burk: This obviously is the same motion that I made in regard to the
Mayor's position, so obviously I am in support of it. I think that, again,
the public needs to be aware of the process and what is going on and
taking five days to notify the public, I think is the least that we can do. So,
I most certainly will be supporting this.
• Martinez: I echo Council Member Burk's comments. You know there is
no disrespect to you, Mr. Titus. I respect everything you've done. I just
feel that we need to be open and transparent about what we are doing for
selection and I do respect—and I really appreciate you coming down here
and willing to step in.
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• Fox: I think I agree with opening up the process and giving a little bit of
time for resumes to come in. I think the mayor should have come on
record of that and there are several reasons for that and it can be agreed
with or not agreed with, but when it comes to Council and opening it up, I
do agree with that.
The motion was approved by the following vote:
Aye: Burk, Dunn, Fox, Hammler, Martinez, and Mayor Butler
Nay: None.
Vote: 6-0
4. ADJOURNMENT
On a motion by Council Member Martinez, seconded by Vice Mayor Burk, the special
meeting was adjourned at 7::20 p.m.
QJi(gt,t14..,
David S. Butler, Mayor
Town of Leesburg
Ai T' `T
`410 '/ice
Clerk of Coin
2016_tcmin0208pec
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