The Montclair City Council next week will take as many as two final stabs at seeing whether its current four members can come to an accommodation on appointing a fifth member.
The election of then-Council Member Javier “John” Dutrey as Montclair mayor in November resulted in a vacancy on the city council when he was sworn into office at a special meeting of the city council on December 10, 2018. Pursuant to Government Code Section 36512(b), the city council is required to “within 60 days from the commencement of the vacancy, either fill the vacancy by appointment or call a special election to fill the vacancy,” meaning the city council must make the appointment by Friday, February 8, 2019 or schedule an election.
At is meeting on December 3, 2018, the city council selected the option to make an at–large appointment to the vacancy on December 10, 2018. Efforts at the December 10 meeting to appoint former Mayor Ginger Eaton to the council by Councilwomen Carolyn Raft and Trisha Martinez did not garner the support of Dutrey or Councilman Bill Ruch, and subsequent efforts to that effect on December 17 and January 7 also failed.
At the council’s January 22, 2019 meeting, its members approved an application and interview process to facilitate making an appointment to the city council vacancy, and continued the item to the February 4, 2019 regular meeting.
The board has the option of making the appointment Monday night. If that does not occur, the council has also given itself the option of considering the list of applicants who have expressed an interest in being appointed to the council and determining which of those will be interviewed at a special meeting of the city council scheduled for 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, February 5, 2019. By scheduling that meeting, the council has given itself the authority and option of making the appointment at that meeting, at what will be the eleventh hour, as the necessity of committing to an election to fill the position will be triggered once the February 8 deadline elapses.