CAROLINA BEACH — In Carolina Beach, Steve Shuttleworth will retain a seat on the Town Council despite not gaining enough votes to retain a spot in the November elections.
On Tuesday evening, after the swearing-in of new Councilmembers Jay Healy and Lynn Barbee and now-Mayor LeAnn Pierce, a decision had to be made —- who would fill Pierce’s vacated seat?
Pierce won the election to serve the town as mayor after running against several challengers, but since she was already a Town Council member, she would be leaving a seat behind with a two-year term remaining.
There are two ways the Town Council could have filled the seat, either through nominations and a majority vote in favor of a nominated candidate, or an application process — they opted for the first.
Barbee and Healy won the elections with 1,149 and 1,016 votes respectively while Shuttleworth ended up with 1,011 votes — a razor-thin margin. That is part of the reason why the newly seated council and the mayor chose to nominate Shuttleworth to fill the vacated seat.
But it was not a unanimous decision.
After the initial motion was made to appoint Shuttleworth, Councilman JoDan Garza protested the move without first having a discussion on the situation.
Garza explained that this has been a possibility on everyone’s mind during the campaign season in the event that Pierce did win and was something they had discussed.
For Garza, the best and fairest option for filling the seat would be to hold an application process and see who wanted to possibly take the spot.
But apparently, the rest of the council disagreed.
Healy and Pierce both expressed the need to hit the ground running and with two new councilmembers on the board, the experience Shuttleworth has was something that would come in handy.
Pierce also previously explained that since the town was still in the process of finding a new town manager, the fifth board member should be a part of that decision.
Ultimately the vote was 3-1 with Barbee, Healy, and Pierce all giving Shuttleworth the spot, while Garza stuck to his previous opinion and voted against the appointment.
It was not just the council who thought Shuttleworth was best for the job, once he was confirmed, the audience erupted into cheers and applause as he was sworn in, and re-took the previous seat he had only minutes prior, vacated.
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