Council seat to be appointed

When Chapel Hill Town Council member Bill Strom resigned this month, it wasn’t the loss of a 10-year town politician that turned heads.

It was the timing.

Strom resigned two weeks after the filing window for November elections closed, meaning any hopeful candidate missed out on the chance to run for his empty seat.

Now, the council gets to appoint Strom’s replacement.

Strom had served the town since 1999, including four years as mayor pro tem. He was two years into his third term on the council, which would have expired in 2011.

He issued a press release upon his resignation but has not endorsed a replacement.

“The timing of my resignation was for personal reasons and also allowed me to complete some town council and Triangle Transit initiatives I’ve worked on for some time,” Strom said in an e-mail.

Council member Laurin Easthom said the board will formally announce the vacant seat at their Sept. 14 meeting, when the council will begin discussing Strom’s replacement.

She also said she was unaware of the reasons for Strom’s resignation.

“He had his own reasons he has not shared,” Easthom said. “The facts are: He has resigned, his seat is open, and the council sitting currently has got to deal with it.”

Reaction in Chapel Hill has been mixed, but some voters speculated that Strom intentionally let the deadline pass.

“It looked like he was gaming his resignation so as to force the council to make a choice, rather than give voters the opportunity to choose,” said resident Barbara Crockett.

Ruby Sinreich, operator of left-leaning blog Orange Politics, said that since the details are still murky, the burden is on Strom to dispel rumors about his resignation.

“He probably has the answer, but we don’t know what it is because he hasn’t said,” she said. “It would be better if he would be more public and more transparent.”

With November’s Election Day on the horizon, debate has generally shifted from Strom’s motives to what comes next.

Since four seats are up for grabs on the board this year, voters like Crockett are calling for the council to appoint the fifth place finisher.

But Sinreich said the council should not lock itself into an arrangement too quickly.

“Any assumption of automatically appointing the fifth place vote-getter won’t make sense,” she said. “The difference between fourth and fifth could be a million miles.”


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