YOUNGSTOWN — After much discussion in public and behind closed doors, city council set a Feb. 20 deadline to accept letters of interest and resumes from those interested in filling the vacant 6th Ward seat.

Those who have already contacted council members about the open seat will have to formally apply for the position by submitting the requested information by email to city Clerk Valencia Marrow at vmarrow@youngstownohio.gov.

Council wants to make the appointment at its March 4 meeting, said Councilman Mike Ray, D-4th Ward and council president pro tempore.

“Overwhelmingly, (what) this body wants to do is balance what is fair and open with what is legal and appropriate for the situation,” Ray said.

After receiving the letters and resumes, council will decide the next step, he said.

“We do not want to naively set a timeline,” he said. “We need to base it off of interest, whether it’s 10, 20, 50 or 100 (people who apply). That could greatly impact the process and our timeline and the work it takes to review this.”

But the goal is to appoint March 4, Ray said.

Council was supposed to meet at 2 p.m. Wednesday to discuss the process with the time set to accommodate Councilwoman Samantha Turner, D-3rd Ward. However, Turner didn’t show up until around 2:30 p.m., so council, which was meeting as the committee of the whole, didn’t have a quorum until her arrival.

Councilman Julius Oliver, D-1st Ward, had asked his fellow council members at the Feb. 4 meeting to start the discussion at 3 p.m. because he couldn’t be there earlier.

Councilman Jimmy Hughes, D-2nd Ward, didn’t attend so that left only three members in attendance — Ray, Pat Kelly, D-5th Ward, and Amber White, I-7th Ward. Four members are needed for a quorum.

After Turner arrived, council discussed the legal research on filling the vacancy conducted by the city law department.

The responsibility of filling the seat fell to city council because the Mahoning County Democratic Party was unable to have a quorum of central committee members from the ward meet to find a successor to Anita Davis. Davis, a Democrat, resigned with two years left on her term Jan. 1 to become council president.

The person selected would fill the ward seat until Dec. 31, 2027, with a November 2027 election for a full four-year term.

State law requires the county party to have up to 45 days to appoint, so city council cannot make its selection until at least Sunday. State law doesn’t prohibit council from discussing a replacement before that date.

State law also requires city council to make a selection no later than 30 days after the expiration of the county political party’s 45 days. That deadline is March 17.

If council cannot come to a decision, the appointment is made by the mayor, Derrick McDowell, an independent who has served a little more than a month in the position.

Law Director Adam Buente said at least four members of council would have to approve the selection of Davis’ replacement.

Buente wrote in his legal opinion: “This must be accomplished by motion and a simple majority vote by March 17.”

Also, Buente said if council deadlocks 3-3 on two candidates, McDowell wouldn’t serve as a tiebreaker. The mayor could choose anyone he wants for the position if council cannot decide.

The last time a Youngstown mayor selected a council member in Youngstown, Buente said, was in the 1940s when the three Democratic council members “fled to Florida for a month to avoid the whole council appointment issue so council couldn’t have a quorum.” The case went to the Ohio Supreme Court, which decided the mayor had the appointing authority after council failed to select someone in the 30-day period, he said.

City council members last got to fill a vacancy on the body in April 1998 when Herman Hill was removed as the 3rd Ward council member.

Because Hill was an independent, the replacement wasn’t done by a political party, but by the council members.

City council – all six members were Democrats – in 1998 appointed Republican Richard Atkinson to replace Hill by a 4-1 vote with one abstention. Atkinson won the 1999 and the 2003 elections for the 3rd Ward position.

PUBLIC AND PRIVATE TALKS

On Wednesday, council discussed in public for 45 minutes the options for how to fill the vacant seat and then after Buente asked that further discussions be kept private, council met for 35 minutes in executive session at Buente’s request. During the executive session, yelling could be heard even though the door was closed.

Ray addressed that, saying with a laugh, “I don’t think we yelled that much. We’re doing better.”

The initial consensus was to interview candidates in public with concerns about how long it would take if a lot of people apply. But having the interviews done in private was raised as a possibility.

No decision was made Wednesday.

Turner said: “This is going to be a cumbersome process no matter how we do it.”

To be eligible for the appointment, the city charter requires a council person to “be an elector of the war from which the council person is elected and not less than 21 years of age.”

Buente cautioned council that “anytime three of you are together discussing the business of the city, that’s a meeting so just call a spade a spade, this is politics. But we have to comply with the open meetings laws here. If you want to call each other and see what’s going on, that’s fine. But anytime there’s three of you speaking about this, that should be done in an open meeting.”

Before the county Democratic Party shut down its process, four people filled out a lengthy questionnaire to get the appointment.

They were Janet Tarpley, Cynthia McWilson, Brenda Richardson and Jeffrey Oates Jr.

Tarpley is a former two-term 6th Ward councilwoman, elected in 2007 and 2011. She couldn’t seek reelection to the ward seat in the 2015 election because of the city’s term-limits law. Tarpley unsuccessfully ran for an Ohio House seat in the 2014 Democratic primary and lost the Youngstown mayoral race in 2015 as an independent.

Tarpley, who worked at Mahoning County Juvenile Court for 30 years before her 2018 retirement, ran for the 6th Ward seat in the 2023 Democratic primary, finishing in a 273-273 tie with Davis. But Davis won the primary on a coin flip.

McWilson, a registered nurse, lost Democratic primaries in 1999, 2003 and 2015 for the 5th Ward council seat. After the 2022 redistricting, her home was moved to the 6th Ward.

Richardson, a self-employed hairdresser, and Oates, who didn’t list an occupation on his application, have never run for public office before.

Others in the 6th Ward who were planning to ask the Democratic central committee members for the appointment were Alex Barker, Rodney Seabrook, Jaelynn Morrison, Rubin Chappell, Catrina Donald, Yolanda Tubbs, Joseph Allen, Eric Franklin and Lichille McRae. None have ever run for public office.