Council moves quickly to fill vacant seat

ROYERSFORD >> The borough council wasted no time in replacing Councilman Joseph Moskal, who resigned at the Feb. 9 meeting.

At its next meeting, two weeks later, the council unanimously appointed Ryan Conroy to fill Moskal’s seat.

Moskal won reelection to his seat in the November 2019 elections. As a result, Conroy will have to run in the May primary and the general election in order to complete the remainder of Moskal’s term.

Moskal “was absolutely an outstanding council member and

great community guy who earlier this month moved outside the borough,” Council President Anil Dham wrote in a Feb. 23 email response to a query from The Mercury.

In that email, he also confirmed council did not announce the council vacancy on the borough

website or through social media, but focused on a single candidate and interviewed that candidate privately.

“Upon Joe Moskal’s resignation, we made the announcement publicly at the council meeting on Feb 9 that we would be accepting interviews for candidates for the seat and to submit resumes with contact info/ email,” Dham wrote.

“Typically, when there is a vacancy, the process is

as follows — council has 30 days to appoint someone to fill the seat for the remainder of the term. As we have done in the past, an interview process gets conducted based on recommendations made to me of interested individuals who are a registered voter, have resided in the borough for at least one year, and are involved in committees or other community-based groups,” Dham wrote.

“The interview gets conducted involving myself as council president, our personnel committee chair, and one other council member with a wide array of questions regarding their vision of Royersford, their level of involvement in community activities, their background, and much more,” according to Dham.

“Ryan Conroy, who has served on our Parks and Rec committee and serves

on the Spring-Ford Area Historical Society, is the candidate whom the personnel committee is going to recommend. It is then up to Council to decide to approve or reject that,” Moskal wrote a little after 3 p.m. in the Feb. 23 email.

Roughly four hours later, Conroy was appointed.

Royersford does not post council meeting agendas on its website so it is unclear if the appointment

was listed for action that evening. Minutes of that meeting are not yet posted on the website.

Council had 30 days to fill the vacancy, but got the task done in 14 days.

Conroy “is a well regarded member of our community,” Dham wrote of Conroy in a March 3 response to a follow-up query from The Mercury in which he confirmed the appointment had taken place.