After former Chapel Hill Town Council member Rachel Schaevitz resigned in February of last year, the town has again delayed a decision on how to fill her vacancy.
When Schaevitz announced in January of 2020 that she’d be stepping down in order to move to New Zealand with her family, the Chapel Hill Town Council dropped down to eight of it’s nine members.
After her departure, at their annual retreat last year, the town deliberated on further reducing the size of the council to seven members.
Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger said they hoped to get more input from the public – to reaffirm whether to open up Schaevitz’s seat in an application process or to reduce the number of council seats for good. The pandemic threw a wrench in those plans.
“A year ago, at the retreat, we didn’t know about a pandemic coming and we had planned to have that conversation first about a possible reduction,” Hemminger said. “So that’s what delayed us and then we got thrown into this world that was just so different to operate in that we pushed that conversation off as we got down to doing the work we were doing.”
The town initially received some input from the public suggesting community members to fill Schaevitz’s role, however it also received concerns about how reducing the number of seats on the council could reduce diversity.
At this year’s town council retreat, held virtually just last week, the Chapel Hill Town Council again discussed the possibility of reducing the council size from nine to seven members. Again, they chose to delay that decision.
“Because of COVID and because it’s an election year we decided that that conversation had really no fair way to go forward in the public realm,” Hemminger said. “So, we decided we’re going to postpone that discussion for now.”
As far as operating during a pandemic with just eight council members, Hemminger said they have fared pretty well as there has not been a lot of split voting. She said council meetings tend to run long at night with nine different voices speaking and adding an extra member right now would just further complicate how the council coordinates and conducts its business.
“I think being put into a position and trying to learn how to be a councilperson during a pandemic would be overwhelming for anybody,” Hemminger said. “The council generally felt that we were so close to the filing period by the time we could have a lot of public input – and again only virtual public input – that it might make more sense to just wait and let the voters decide.”
Learn what else was discussed at Chapel Hill’s latest town council retreat here.
Lead photo via Town of Chapel Hill.
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