Special election seems likely for Brighton council seat

BRIGHTON — Members of the Brighton City Council did not manage to appoint a member at their meeting June 17, likely setting up the vacant decision-making seat for a special election in early August, according to municipal staff.

Council Member Rose Jaynes made a motion at the meeting to post a public notice of the vacancy — an administrative requirement to appoint a new member — which was seconded by Council Member Dick Green. That motion failed with council members Chuck Emry and Scott Hughes voting it down for a 2-2 tally, according to the city clerk.

Similar motions failed with identical outcomes at the council’s May 6, May 20 and June 3 meetings, according to minutes published in The Southeast Iowa Union.

Iowa law requires the city default to a special election if the vacancy goes unfilled for 60 days. That deadline is coming up on June 26, with June 17 being the last scheduled meeting before the date.

The dispute started in mid-April, when then-Council Member David Pratt resigned from the office after missing several meetings in a row. Pratt said his career as a trucker kept him out of town more than he’d hoped when he ran for the office, a race he won last November by less than 10 votes according to Washington County election officials.

City officials said the last special election — between Hughes and former Council Member Cathy Rich in March — cost around $1,100. Mayor Melvin Rich, as well as Council Member Jaynes have criticized plans for an election, saying the city was already short on cash and lamenting the expected months of operation with one less decision-maker, making it harder to reach a quorum at meetings and easier for decision-makers to reach deadlocked tie votes.

“It’ll be September before you have anybody seated, if you have an election,“ Melvin Rich said at a meeting in April. ”What’s the right thing for the town … Where are you going to find the money?“

Hughes and Emry, however, have held out in favor of an election to replace Pratt.

While Emry has voted in favor of a vacancy-filling appointment in a previous term on the council, he’s argued that municipal fights since then — like a funding dispute with the volunteer fire department spanning 2022 and 2023 — made public input necessary this time around.

“Let the citizens vote, that’s why we have elections,” he said in April.

Also at play is the question of who would get the position, if the city follows through on an election or appointment. Pratt formally endorsed Cathy Rich to take his place in his resignation letter. She’s credited by some for balancing budget books in her previous terms, but blamed by others — namely firefighters — for last the string of tense funding disputes, from which some hostility still looms over the city.

Rich, for her part, has said she’d accept an appointment, but was unlikely to run for office if it came to another election.

“I would be interested, for the good of the taxpayers,” she said in an interview in April, adding that, “It is very difficult to run for a position, and to have people … criticize the work that you’ve done.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com