Sometimes things don’t work out but sometimes they do. Something happened recently that could’ve gone all wrong but it went all right.
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Last December a good friend and servant of the community moved on to do something else well—be supportive of his wife and family in faraway Nashville, Tennessee. But doing this left a hole in our City Council, and a challenge to a system used to a certain well practiced routine. How would we fill an empty council seat outside the normal election cycle?
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The process for selecting a new councilmember was left up to the remaining councilmembers themselves. The choices presented to the body were to appoint the next place finisher in the recently held elections (in this case third place), hold an open public application period and select from the group applicants, or hold a special election. I’m not going to go into the details of why the council selected their final choice but it was the one that I supported so I was happy.
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The process was decided and they were going to hold an open period of time where qualified members of the public could apply for the position of City Councilmember. This process could definitely be fraught with potential issues, but I felt it also offered a unique opportunity to allow the people who know the most about what it takes to do the job to pick the person who will sit alongside them for at least the next two years.
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The application period brought out 30 members of the community to vie for the single seat. It offered many an opportunity to compete on a level playing field for a seat that normally requires a huge time and financial commitment for campaigning. All they had to do was to interview with the sitting councilmembers and show them they had the right stuff.
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Twenty-four potential candidates showed up for the interviews and sat sequestered in a conference room adjoining the City Council chambers. One by one they went in to be interviewed. Many returned commenting on how they could have done better. Most everyone always feels like they could do better after an interview, especially in this case as responses came flooding back into a mind freed of the addling effect of standing in front of a crowd and being interviewed by four of arguably the most influential people in the town. Not an easy interview.
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The 24 were whittled down to just four who returned the following week. This must have been an incredibly difficult process for the interviewing councilmembers but it was about to yield results.
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The final interviews were in depth and I feel that a thorough job was completed, especially when I saw the final decision.
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Only one person got a unanimous vote—Caitlin Robinett Jachimowicz. She was told to come back the following week, get sworn in, and take her place at the dais alongside the rest of the City Council.
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The selection of Caitlin brought many missing voices to the dais in one person. The mother starting a family in our community, the female professional, the younger adult, the native Morgan Hillan who left and came back for the same reasons so many of us love this community.
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The process of selecting a councilmember could have gone wrong but in this case we got it right and we all benefit.
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The future now has a voice on our City Council.
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John McKay is president of the Morgan Hill Downtown Association, a city planning commissioner and co-founder of the Morgan Hill Tourism Alliance.
