The best course of action the Lake City Council can take in regard to filling its council seat vacancy is to sit tight and do nothing. This is the best action this group can take for the good of the residents and the city business people it serves.
Leave the seat vacant. Do nothing. Move on.
The seat comes up for election in the primary in August, which is just more than nine months away and then the people who vote can decide and pick their representative.
Leaving the seat vacant leaves three council members and the mayor in place. Four members suggests the council would need to get along and work together, something this group has overlooked the past year or so. This City Council will be forced to think ahead, plan, be smart in their decisions and not fall victim to knee-jerk politics.
This council will be forced to pull together for the good of the whole, the good of the city in general and not kowtow to shouting hecklers who tend to bully their agendas and special interests.
This City Council will have to mature quickly.
If it doesn’t, we have gridlock, a lot of 2-2 votes, motions dying on the desk, exhales of frustration and probably a few tantrums like we’ve seen during the past year. But guess what? Gridlock causes the least amount of damage to what is currently a very fragile city government in a very fragile city. Gridlock, in our case, might save the City Council from itself.
A four-person council allows the mayor one more chance to do the right thing — his job — and control the meetings. The mayor must lead the council and control the audience at the council meetings.
The mayor has his hands full. Besides a rotating gallery of shouting members of the public regularly attending city meetings, he oversees what at times is a rogue council, moving radically to unsuccessfully fire the city attorney for no apparent reason, then successfully fire the City Manager without any personnel review whatsoever. These things happened.
These four Councilors have one paramount undertaking that takes precedent over all other tasks and this is to hire a competent City Manager to lead Lake City into the future. Based on all the shenanigans this City Council has enacted recently, and its self-inflicted wounds, this will be a daunting task, but it must be done with diligence. With four Councilors, there will be a consensus, a gentleman’s educated compromise, in order to make this happen.
Hiring a city manager must happen. The city is working on its second interim city manager and the clock is ticking. The city has vacancies at assistant city manager, human resources director, growth management director, police chief and fire chief and this is just at the department head level. These all are key positions that need to be evaluated and filled by a qualified city manager.
Councilors already are facing a lawsuit by a resident who finished a distant third in the last election for the seat and now is attempting to litigate her way onto the council. Will freezing the seat prompt more legal paperwork? Maybe, but at this point, pick your poison. What court is going to chastise a government entity for siding with the people’s right to choose their candidate at the ballot box? The residents, the city businesses and the city’s reputation throughout the region need a break. Drop the drama, freeze the seat until election day next August and calmly move on with the people’s professional business.