State College Borough Council deadlocked Monday night on vacant council seat. Here’s what comes next
After five rounds of voting and a spirited discussion, the State College Borough Council has still not been able to agree on an appointment for the vacant council seat left by Dan Murphy and his sudden resignation last month.
The council will reconvene again 6 p.m. Wednesday in the hope that at least four of the six current council members will vote yes on one of the current candidates. If they can’t, they’ll have to meet a third time — or, by midnight Oct. 1, a judge will decide on the appointment for them.
“No fights, no arguments,” Councilwoman Theresa Lafer said during Monday night’s meeting. “I think that we will eventually choose somebody.”
Eleven candidates are vying for the vacancy, whose term will run through 2021. Although no candidates are yet out of the running, and any of the 11 can be appointed Wednesday, Monday’s council meeting essentially boiled down to two candidates: Ezra Nanes and Jeffrey Kern.
Nanes and Kern were nominated in each of the six voting rounds and, in each round, they received three votes apiece. Three council members — Janet Engeman, Lafer and Peter Marshall — consistently voted yes on Kern and no on Nanes, while the other three — Jesse Barlow, Deanna Behring and Evan Myers — remained steadfast in voting yes on Nanes and no on Kern.
Nanes ran in 2018 as the Democratic challenger to Republican Jake Corman for state Senate in the 34th District, while Kern previously served as a borough council member and is the chairperson of the borough water authority.
Three council members pointed to Kern’s experience, free time and familiarity with budgets as deciding factors, while the other three council members preferred Nanes’ policies and felt he better reflected Murphy’s values (and represented voters) and boasted an admirable community involvement background.
“I was very impressed by the candidates,” said Marshall, who preferred Kern over Nanes. “There’s no question we got a good group of candidates, some of whom I hope will run in the next election. But this is an appointment.”
Other candidates who were nominated at least once included Thomas Dougherty III, Ron Madrid and Katherine Oh Yeaple. None received more than two yes votes.
Wednesday’s council voting process will mirror Monday’s. Names of council members will be drawn out of a hat to determine the order of nominations, nominations will then be made in that order, and those nominations will then be voted on one by one. As soon as someone receives four votes, he or she will then become the new council member.
“I’m hoping we’ll come to some agreement,” Barlow added.
Here’s a closer look at what the council members said about the two main candidates:
Case for Kern
Engeman: “It takes a long time to learn all the ways that things work, learn the terminology, know what the acronyms are, know what the procedures are. And that’s something a person who’s had experience in local government already has.”
Lafer: “The same people are here, or offering to come back in the cases of Mr. Madrid and Mr. Kern, because the community is extremely important to them — and they have invested their lives into making it a better place for every single one of us, whether we live in their neighborhoods, or on the other side of town, or in other parts of the Centre Region. So, first off, their experience counts and it matters, and it makes them extremely generous members of the community.”
Marshall: “I once had a council member from State College, a new council member, tell me that it took them almost a year to really become completely versed with the council process, the budget process, how the ABCs work, the procedures — and this is a 15-month appointment. I do not think that we can consider a learning curve that’s long. We have some really significant issues to deal with.”
Case for Nanes
Behring: “I guess what I hear my colleagues saying is that this is a budget year, so we need people with budget experience. I would argue, though, that this is — almost more importantly — one of the most unusual years any of us has ever lived through. And so a lot of those budget issues are kind of turned on their head, so my counterpoint is that we need somebody who the community looks to for leadership, someone who learns quickly, someone who has good judgment and somebody we can support to learn the ropes, somebody who is willing to do the homework. And, from what I’ve seen of Ezra Nanes and his commitment to community leadership ... he’s been a true community leader.”
Myers: “It’s important what we’re looking at. We do need a fresh view. We need a fresh idea of how we’re going to approach things, not the same people that have constantly been involved over and over and over again, which includes many of us. It’s time for fresh views. As I said before, you only get experience by getting experience. You only help the community by doing that, not by keeping people excluded. And when there are so many major problems, so many major issues that we have to deal with, it’s time to get other perspectives.”
Barlow: “I just wanted to say because I voted Ezra all those times, I’m not going to repeat the comments that Deanna and Evan have made.” (Barlow largely stayed outside of the debate and chose to nominate candidates last to be fair as the council president.)
