Working continues on appointment bylaws

Final draft could come at upcoming meeting

NORTH WALES » Borough officials are continuing to work on writing bylaws spelling out rules for filling vacant seats on borough council. Councilman Sal Amato said Tuesday he has received plenty of feedback from fellow council members on how to modify a proposal he first made last month, to spell out specific rules for the appointment process.

“I’ll take out all of the red highlighting, put it in in black, and it’ll eventually go into our bylaws,” Amato said.

Starting in early June, Amato asked if council could revisit and formalize its rules and regulations on how vacant council positions are filled, and on June 27 presented a first draft of codes that would allow more candidates to be nominated for an open council seat, before one is chosen for a vote. A second draft, presented earlier this month, spells out details on how several nominations would be fielded before any vote is held. Amato said this week that feedback from that draft has been incorporated into another revision.

Councilman Dan O’Connell said he agreed with much of the latest draft, but asked how a provision in the new bylaws would be enforced.

“It says, ‘Full council attendance is expected when voting for a vacancy.’ I understand what it means, and I think it’s a great idea, but I wonder if we’re creating a loophole,” O’Connell said.

In other words, if one of council’s nine positions is vacant, and eight are left to vote on filling the vacant spot, could a new member be appointed by what is technically a minority of council — four votes against three — if another one of the eight is absent?

Borough Solicitor Greg Gifford said he and Amato discussed that question when reviewing the latest draft, and said since the bylaws would not carry the full force of a borough resolution or ordinance, the “full attendance is expected” rule would be council’s decision to follow.

“It’s a guideline, a general rule to encourage everyone to be here,” Gifford said. “It’s limited only to the fact that, if you all agree as a council to the bylaws, you’re doing it this way and that’s how you’ll vote on things.”

Court cases have held that the vote could be held with members absent, despite what is said in the bylaws, according to Gifford, and each council could adopt or change the bylaws as it sees fit.

“You have to say, ‘We’re following these bylaws,’ That’s how you give it authority — otherwise, it’s just a guideline,” Gifford said.

Gifford and Amato said the latest draft will be discussed, and could be formally adopted, at a future council meeting.

In other business Tuesday, borough officials discussed certificates of appropriateness for two homes located within the town’s historic district and approved repairs or upgrades that had been vetted by the Historic Architecture Review Board. According to Borough Manager Christine Hart, the owner of the house at 132 Shearer St. has proposed installing a new railing designed to match the materials used on other historic houses nearby, and the owner of the house at 215 Church St. has proposed demolition of an existing porch and construction of a new one.

In response to a resident question, Gifford said the borough has begun internal talks on whether to adopt new borough codes governing medical marijuana facilities, as other local municipalities including Upper Gwynedd and Lansdale have recently written their own rules to be in compliance with new state laws.

At this point, Gifford said, only “small slivers in the borough” could host medical marijuana growers due to state regulations on distances from schools and other facilities, and the specific medical marijuana use could be addressed when the borough tackles the next update of its overall zoning map.

“Where it is in the borough is very limited, and when we redo the zoning — because it’s not completely impossible — we need to make it clear,” Gifford said.