By Kirk Ross, Staff Writer
Chapel Hill — The swearing in of the new mayor and council members takes place in early December, but the constitution of the town’s governing body will be incomplete until they take up the vacancy left by the resignation of Bill Strom early in the campaign season.
Strom, whose term would have expired December 2011, resigned on Aug. 1, after the end of the filing period. The timing meant that the vacancy would not be added to the ballot.
Mayor-elect Mark Kleinschmidt said the timing also put him and his colleagues in a tough spot.
“I think given the division in our town that was so clearly defined in last night’s results, it didn’t leave us in a healthy place,†Kleinschmidt said.
He said he thought it had been important that the current council signal to the voters that their expression on Election Day would matter. Agreeing to defer the decision to the new council, Kleinschmidt said, also was important to reassure voters.
He was happy to wait for the new council and said the decision not to automatically appoint the fifth-place finisher to the election was important.
Council member Matt Czajkowski, who lost to Kleinschmidt by a slim margin, said he would continue to advocate that the fifth-place vote getter be appointed to the vacant position. He said he understood why some council members said they wanted to look at the outcome to see if the fifth-place finisher was an incumbent, someone who had not applied for the position or was separated from the top four vote getters by a wide margin.
The fifth-place finisher was Matt Pohlman, who had closely aligned himself with Czajkowski.
“What we have here is quite simple,†Czajkowski said. “Matt Pohlman lost by a couple of hundred votes.â€
Czajkowski said he would prefer the council act quickly on the vacancy. Rather than wait until January, Czajkowski said the mayor could call a special meeting to deal with the vacancy before the end of the year.
One concern raised as last night’s vote totals came in was that incumbent council member Jim Merritt’s loss means there will be no African-Americans on the board for the first time in decades.
Newly re-elected council member Laurin Easthom said the importance of African-American representation will play a role in the decision-making on the vacancy. She said Merritt, a native of Chapel Hill’s Northside neighborhood, was an important resource on the council.
“Jim is a friend and he will be missed,†she said. “There will definitely be a void, and I know the council will take that into consideration.â€