Acting Mayor Jones Okay, the next item of business is 11.2, City Council appointment to fill the Mayor Vacancy. Tonight, the phase that we are in is nominating people who have given written applications, nominating them, elevating them to the next stage to be interviewed on September 7, 2022. So tonight, I will take public comment on this item and then we will go to Councilors who will name their nominees to be interviewed. Each Councilor has the option of nominating one person. So, before we start, is there any public comment on this item? If so, please come up and state your name, and try and keep it to 3 minutes.
Maggie Bornstein Hi, thanks, it’s Maggie Bornstein for the record. I’m being vain [silence].
Acting Mayor Jones It’s, it’s one. It’s on now…..[silence]
Alderperson Anderson Acting Mayor, I don't mean to interrupt Ms. Bornstein, but we can't hear her virtually.
Acting Mayor Jones All right, hang on a second. The switch is…. you know okay…. try it now okay….
Maggie Bornstein Okay….
Acting Mayor Jones Okay, just start over, and state your name.
Maggie Bornstein Can you?
Acting Mayor Jones Go ahead and speak.
Maggie Bornstein Sure. Again, my name is Maggie Bornstein for the record. In summary, people in this community, particularly women are really still excited with, what it what a fleet of wonderful candidates. Though I will say I’ve heard from a lot of women feeling like that there was a lack of representation in female applicants and there's a number of reasons why we know that's true, like our society more broadly and culturally locally and I would say a lot of it is really hard to manufacture out of a community, but I will say a lot of it is how we show up for women in our lives every single day. I’ve done youth mentorship to girls in our community. I have a little sister and I think of, I encourage you all to implore the reasons why you're sitting here today and consider the people who encouraged you to put yourselves forward and take a chance on yourself and think about maybe women in your life you can extend that gratitude and grace too because it's missing. It shows it's missing and yet we still have such a lovely field of candidates, and I don't want to negate that, but thanks so much.
Acting Mayor Jones Thank you. Anyone else that wants to provide public comment? Go ahead and step up.
Kevin Hunt My name is Kevin Hunt. I live at 308 Parkside Lane. I, I know I emailed all of you or most of you earlier today and I’m sure you got so inundated with emails, you've probably haven’t had a chance to look at it yet, but I’d like to suggest that because of certain perceptions in the community, whether they're accurate or not, I think it's very important that people who have experience and are qualified and who are not already sitting on the Council have, be elevated to the next level and I’m thinking of two people in particular. I’m thinking of Fred Rice and I’m thinking of Patrick Weasel Head, my, my only concerns about Mr. Weasel Head, who I have a great amount of respect for is his commitment to homeless outreach services, but through the interview process that's something that can be expanded upon, clarified, and then from there an intelligent decision can be made. I think what's really unfortunate, whether it's accurate or not, but I certainly trust my sources is that there's certainly a very strong public perception that this entire process is perfunctory in pro forma and that there are six if not seven votes already predetermined and locked up for who is the eventual interim Mayor's going to be and I think to the extent that you try to disabuse us of this misconception if it is a misconception, it will certainly suit you well in 2023 when people are up for election because the public feels that in fact there was true consideration given and this process isn't really perfunctory. I’d like to strongly encourage you to elevate Mr. Rice, who his, his application aside from being of a very high quality, I think you're going to have a lot more credibility in what you do if you have someone who's not currently sitting among you, who takes the reins, but has extensive experience and has served on this Council before, is fair-minded, and isn't already the favorite pick of the majority that's censoring other people's questions and not adhering to the equality of members. Thank you.
Acting Mayor Jones Come on up.
Teigan Avery Hi, I’m Teigan Avery and I want to say first off thank you acting Mayor Jones and City Council for all the hard work that you do. It does not go unnoticed even though it might feel like it. I want to especially shout out the roundabouts going in on Mullan. So, I, in case you didn't get my email today, I want to introduce myself and also for the benefit of the public, I’m Teigan Avery one of the applicants for Mayor and just to let you know who I am. I’m a recent graduate of the University of Montana. I just got my Master of Economics and I’m what some people might call a certified nerd and I became a certified nerd after spending a year researching and interning with the City of Missoula focusing on affordable housing in Missoula, which I started as a 19-year-old. So, therefore, a certified nerd and I applied today to be the Mayor of, to interview with you for Mayor of Missoula because I plan to use the knowledge from my research in the classroom and from my lived experience to guide Missoula towards a forward-looking, livable, lovable Missoula with evidence-backed policy. My economics training has revealed to me that the individual issues that Missoula encounters are a part of a system, whether that is housing, businesses, taxes, climate, transportation, schools or public health, and that none of these problems can be solved in a vacuum. And I also seek to channel the energy of Missoulians, of City Council, and of city staff towards planning for the future while living in the present and respecting the past. So, I hope not to just speak at you but to speak with you on September 7, 2022, in an interview and to have a deeper dialogue about the things that I think I can contribute to this city and the passion that I have for this city through more than a note card speech and explain why I love roundabouts so much. Thank you.
Acting Mayor Jones Do we have public comment from anyone in the room? If anyone is attending virtually and they want to provide public comment, please raise your hand, I’ll call on you. I’m not seeing any raised hands, so and no other public comment in the room, so we will go forward with nominating people to be interviewed for the Mayoral vacancy. I’m gonna wait for our clerk to be all ready.
Marty Rehbein I have all of the names right here on the desk and we're gonna throw them in the hat, as they get nominated. My family is in heavy construction, so I had this in the back of my car and then we'll draw them out to determine the interview order.
Acting Mayor Jones Thank you. Okay, so please raise your hand if you would like to nominate anyone. Ms. Sherrill.
Alderperson Sherrill Thanks and I’m having trouble with my computer, so I know you can hear me, but I don't know for sure if you can see me. I appreciate, I first want to say that I really appreciate all the applicants, and this was a talented pool of people, so I really appreciate that. I am going to nominate Jordan Hess and if I may speak to it, president or Mayor Jones?
Acting Mayor Jones Go ahead.
Alderperson Sherrill I think that this is a really big decision for us. I was elected to do what I believe is right for the city. I’ve been entrusted with that by my constituents, and I take that responsibility very seriously. I believe this is the time to appoint a candidate who we believe is the best applicant for our community right now. Beyond that, I believe in the democratic process and next November all our voters and not just the 12 of us, will decide who our next Mayor will be. I believe we need to appoint a Mayor who has experience to step in as seamlessly as possible, to keep the city running smoothly until that time. To me, this means having a deep full understanding of our policies, our departments, our funding and our staff. I believe this appointment needs to be, needs to have a long-standing trusting relationship with staff that's built on many years of experience. Jordan has been on the Council for nine years and was part of the development of many of the policies we currently operate under. He is our Vice President of Council and has chaired our Land Use and Planning Committee for many years, which if any of you watch those committee meetings, they are very technically challenging committees and they are the most controversial usually. Jordan is not always the loudest in the room but he is many times the most thoughtful and insightful. If you look back at past meetings, many of us have said at some point in time how much we hate speaking after him, myself included. This is because he is able to take complex issues with many sides and articulate them clearly and thoughtfully. He's able to consider public concerns as well as input from Councilors he doesn't agree with to print to frame his opinion. As I said, I have read all of the applications and there are a lot of really talented people who applied. I am nominating Jordan because I don't think any of those applicants have the level of experience in municipal government, understanding of our policies and funding, or the trust and relationships in our staff but I do want to say that I really, really appreciate the quality of the applications that we received but I do think that all of those things for an appointment from this body are really important. That being said, I know we will have the opportunity to interview many other candidates and I am going to look forward to, to doing that but my nomination is Councilman Hess.
Acting Mayor Jones Thank you. Next, we have Jennifer Savage.
Alderperson Savage Hi everyone. I am in an airport one of the busiest airports in the world actually, and so it's a little hard to speak but I would like to nominate Mike Nugent and I feel like it will be a disservice to Mike for me to try and speak to his candidacy right now and hoping I would get an opportunity to do that later, but I just want to make sure that he's nominated.
Acting Mayor Jones That does sound like a busy airport. Thank you. Stacie Anderson.
Alderperson Anderson Thank you Acting Mayor Jones. I would like to nominate Patrick Weasel Head and to quickly speak to that. I think that he brings a diverse lived experience, as well as previous Council experience and we, I think, would benefit from having a deeper conversation with him outside of just his application.
Acting Mayor Jones Thank you. Mr. Carlino.
Alderperson Carlino Yeah, I’d like to nominate Teigen Avery for the Mayor interview. I think it'd be important to have a young person's voice and somebody who understands the urgency of the issues and also to have at least one applicant who's not a man for the job, that's been held by a man this entire time up until acting Mayor Gwen Jones, but I also think, I was really impressed with Ms. Avery's application and, and her research on the issues with housing and I’d like to hear more from all the applicants. I think it’s; it would actually be a great service to the community to hear from all the people that applied and allow a public interview for as many people as possible. And even a candidate forum I think would be great, but yeah.
Acting Mayor Jones Thank you. Any other nominations? Any other hands raised? Let me check online, oh Ms. Vasecka.
Alderperson Vasecka There we go, thank you. I also looked at all the applications and was very, very impressed. There, there were ranges of backgrounds, ranges of ages, ranges of amount of time in Missoula and I was, I gotta say it was it was really interesting reading all the applications and seeing all the and the answers. I, as many of you know, I did endorse Jacob Elder in his Mayoral campaign last year, and I am well I have not made a decision yet because that would be unfair to the applicants and to the interviewees, I would like to see him move forward and I would like to see him interview with all the Councilors and I am excited to see the entire interview process before we all make a decision. This is, it's a lot of pressure to be put on 12 people to decide the next interim Mayor of, of Missoula, while when it usually is elected by all the voters in Missoula. So, it's tremendous, a tremendous amount of pressure for us and I’m not taking this lightly, but I do want to see how, I want to see him move forward. His values, the majority of his values do align with mine, a lot of his political leanings do align with mine, and I like how he doesn't, doesn't seem to be too far left, too far right. He seems to be very much of a moderate and I like that, and I would like to see that in our Mayor so I will be nominating Jacob Elder to the interview process.
Acting Mayor Jones Thank you. And Ms. West.
Alderperson West I think this is one of the saddest and hardest exercises I’ve ever gone through, and I think there were lots of really awesome candidates here and I think I want to add Fred Rice to the list of interviewees. I think he, his resume is pretty impressive, and I would like to hear more from him, I guess it's that next week, next week.
Acting Mayor Jones All right. Any other raised hands to nominate? And I’m looking online, going, going, gone. All right, so we will close nominations and Ms. Rehbein, would you like to choose the order in which we have? I believe we have six interviews.
Marty Rehbein We’ll hold it and have Mr. Hunt draw.
Acting Mayor Jones All right then.
Kevin Hunt I’m just now having some narcolepsy.
Acting Mayor Jones Okay.
Kevin Hunt I can’t raise my hand afterwards.
Marty Rehbein Jacob Elder, we'll see you at 9 00 a.m. Jordan Hess. So, we have Jacob Elder interviewing first. Jordan Hess will be interviewing second. Fred Rice will be entering third. Teigan Avery will be interviewing fourth. Two more. Okay, Mike Nugent’s going to be interviewing fifth and there's only one more name in the hat, so I’ll draw that one. And that of course is Patrick Weasel Head. So, our interview order will be Jacob Elder, Jordan Hess, Fred Rice, Teigan Avery, Mike Nugent, and Patrick Weasel Head. We will be doing six interviews on September 7, 2022. Interviews start at 9 00 a.m. and we'll be talking about questions this coming Wednesday. It's my understanding that will establish the length of the interviews based on the number of questions that we ask, yes?
Acting Mayor Jones Yes and I had a communication from the League of Women Voters. They'll be running the interviews, so, I’ll, I’ll communicate with them regarding timing and how long per interview, but we're looking probably at between 45-50 minutes per interview, but we'll finalize it with the amount of questions that we have and have very specific start times for everyone so that they can be here, and it will be in chambers in person
Marty Rehbein So, the city clerk office will update our website to indicate who, which of these folks who applied have made it through for the interviews and the interview order, and we'll provide the notice of the update on our committee schedule. That'll probably be reissued this Friday. Good luck to the folks who applied and thank you, er to the folks who are interviewing and thank you to all of people who applied. It's always gratifying to see we have a lot of people who are willing
Acting Mayor Jones Thank you Marty. Thank you everyone for your participation in this and I think we've got the process queued up.
City Council members selected 6 candidates to interview on September 7, 2022. Following is the list of candidates in the order in which they will be interviewed:
Jacob Elder
Jordan Hess
Fred Rice
Teigan Avery
Mike Nugent
Patrick Weasel Head