Council approves process for new councilor at special meeting

The Fort Bragg City Council held a special meeting Tuesday evening, to nominate and appoint new planning commissioners, as well as discuss promotional materials and the application process to appoint a new city councilor.

Planning commissioners reappointed

City Manager Tabatha Miller said that the terms of Jay Andreis, appointed by former Mayor Will Lee; and Nancy Rogers, appointed by new Mayor Bernie Norvell; expired at the end of their individual nominator’s last terms, which was Dec. 14. Miller told the council that it needed to nominate and appoint two new commissioners so that the formula business ordinance could be moved along without delay, for a scheduled vote at a council meeting in May. Delaying the appointment of the two new commissioners would likely delay the ordinance by more than a month.

“Planning commissioners’ terms (typically) run concurrent with the council member who nominates them,” she said, but pointed out that there “was nothing that said (the council) can’t appoint planning commissioners, today” held in the city code.

“It would be nice to have five commissioners in place as soon as possible so we can continue to move forward,” Miller said.

Council then began to discuss nominations. Immediately, Mayor Norvell renominated Nancy Rogers, “She seems like she’s always on (top of) it and she’s a big part of the planning commission, so I think she deserves a second term.”

Councilor Tess Albin-Smith renominated Andreis, calling him

“instrumental,” and that she was impressed with his work. Lindy Peters seconded both nominations separately.

Both Andreis and Rogers were unanimously re-elected to the Fort Bragg Planning Commission, 4-0, with the one unfilled seat on the council.

New councilor likely to take seat in February

The second item on the council’s agenda was to finalize any documents regarding the appointment of a new city councilor to fill that open seat.

“One of the reasons we wanted to move swiftly on this was to hit the ground running in 2021,” said Peters, who served on the ad hoc nomination committee along with Councilor Tess Albin-Smith. However, Peters said both he and Miller agreed that the application’s due dates could be moved back a little to accommodate as many applicants as possible.

Vice Mayor Jessica Morsell Haye said that she would like to see all applicants come before the council, and Peters said that he and AlbinSmith will cull applications only if there are more than 12-16 applicants, so as to reduce the number of interviews the full council is required to hold.

Since there are only four councilors, a 2-2 deadlock or disagreement on enough applicants will likely trigger a special election in November. The council discussed the idea and decided to send out marketing materials within the next week and meet applicants by early February and seat them by the end of that month.

That means the council will only meet three times — unless there are more special meetings, such