Title
Presentation / Discussion: Council District 3 - Council Candidate Forum
Body
1) In accordance with the process to fill a vacancy of the City Council, the City Council shall hold a special session to conduct a public candidate forum and select the new District 3 Councilmember
2) Each candidate wishing to be considered for nomination shall take part in the Screening Forum:
• The forum shall be moderated by the Mayor (similar to public hearings)
• Each candidate shall have two minutes to give an opening statement.
• The Mayor shall ask questions of each candidate. The Candidates have one minute to answer. The first speaker will change with each question. A maximum of 6 questions will be asked.
o Residents shall be invited via the city Clerk to submit questions for candidates with the same deadline as the application deadline. Those questions will be dispersed to the City Council for consideration.
o The questions asked shall be from those submitted by Councilmembers in advance of the special session during the application period.
o The questions shall be reviewed and consolidated by the Mayor.
o Each candidate will have two minutes to give a closing statement.
3) The Council will take a short recess so that any persons wishing to speak in support of a candidate may determine who among them will speak. No more than 5 speakers. Groups will be asked to consolidate and determine who will be the spokesperson.
4) Public Comment - General public comments (limited to 5 speakers) - max 1 minute per person
5) Public Comment - Candidate Support - max 5 minutes per candidate total, time to be divided among those wishing to speak
6) Additional questions or discussion by Council - limit to 30 minutes
***Recess for Council to deliberate. ***
7) Voting process:
• The Mayor will accept nominations from the sitting Council from among the eligible candidates for the vacant seat. A second to a nomination is not required. At the close of nominations and prior to voting, any Councilmember may provide comments about a candidate.
• Following any comments, the Mayor shall request that a roll call vote be taken. Each Councilmember shall state which candidate he or she wishes to vote for. If any single candidate receives, a majority of the votes cast by the remaining Councilmembers, including the Mayor, then he or shall be declared appointed.
• In the event that no candidate receives a majority of the votes of the remaining members of the Council, including the Mayor, then only the candidates with the two highest vote totals will remain in nomination and all others will be removed.
• In the event there is a tie resulting in more than two (2) candidates remaining in nomination then those candidates and any other candidate receiving the next higher number of votes shall remain on the ballot and up to two additional roll calls may be taken as described in Section 7 above.
• If no candidate receives a majority of the votes of the remaining Councilmembers, including the Mayor, after the third (3rd) ballot then the Mayor shall declare the nominations null and reopen the floor to nominations and the process shall repeat. (Ex. If the resulting vote is 3-2-2-1 then only the candidate who received 1 vote will be removed.)
Presenter
Mayor J. Beto Lopez