South Suburban board discusses process to fill vacant seat

BY NINA JOSS NJOSS@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

e South Suburban Parks and Recreation Board of Directors voted unanimously to hold an application process to ll the vacant seat of former board member David Lawful, who passed away suddenly in May.

At the May 24 meeting, several public commenters expressed frustration with this decision and a desire for the district to evaluate recent election results when choosing a new board member.

In South Suburban’s May 2 election, which took place eight days before Lawful died, Pam Eller and Ken Lucas received the most votes.

Candidate Elizabeth Watson came in third place, trailing about four percentage points behind Lucas and beating out candidate Alexis Barrere by only ve votes, according to the o cial results.

Candidates John Priddy and Michael Edwards earned approximately 14% and 7% of total votes, respectively.

According to the district’s bylaws and state law, any vacancy occurring on a special district board shall be lled by a vote of the remaining board members, with the appointee to serve until the next regular election.

At the meeting, Chair Susan Pye and previous board member Jim Tay- lor both made tributes to Lawful.

“ is is a tremendous loss not just for me, but for the South Suburban community,” Pye’s tribute said.

“From small park dedications to large district-wide projects, Dave has made a lasting impact on our organization.”

Choosing a process

At the meeting, Executive Director Rob Hanna said whatever appointee the board chooses must be a resident of the district. Other than that stipulation, he said, the process for choosing a new board member was completely up to the board.

Immediately after Hanna shared this information, Vice Chair Pam Eller asked if the board would get to see “the nal compilation of questions for the candidates.” She also asked if it would become public information when applicants lled out applications.

Before Eller’s questions, no earlier comment in the discussion or public agenda documents mentioned an application process.

On the meeting agenda, a single memo said, “the board needs to discuss and provide direction as to the process to ll this vacancy,” and noted that the district’s legal counsel had provided the board information regarding the legal requirements of the process.

Watson, who was in attendance, said she and other attendees thought it sounded like the board had come to a decision before the public meeting.

“When Pam Eller asked the question about the application process, that basically says ‘ is board already knows what they’re going to do,’” Watson said in an interview with Colorado Community Media. “ ey’d already decided. And how did they decide that, and when did they decide that and how was that not open to the public?”

South Suburban Communications Manager Becky Grubb said board members expressed interest in creating an application process through one-on-one “conversations with Rob (Hanna)” before the meeting.

“ e board basically went through standard operating procedure in having Rob (Hanna) draft policy,” she said. “ ey all had input in one way or another, but there was no meeting, which is why there was no public meeting.”

She said each board member shared their goals with Hanna in separate, individual meetings.

Later in the May 24 meeting, the manager of administrative services, Jennifer King, publicly read a timeline for an application process. e timeline was not available on the meeting’s public agenda.

Grubb said documents related to the application process were not in- cluded in the public meeting agenda because sta did not have nal documents to share before the meeting. e board’s discussion of the selection process during the meeting took less than 10 minutes.

After listening to public comment at the meeting, she said board members individually reviewed the application plan and approved it separately on May 25.

Acknowledging the election

During the public comment portion of the discussion, community members shared their hopes that the board would choose an appointee from the recent election results.

“ e untimely passing (of Dave Lawful) was less than 10 days after election,” said one Centennial resident. “For the board to appoint someone that was not involved in that election, that did not put forward the e ort, the desire to be on this board in that election, I think would be an a ront to voters in this district.” the that date amount Suburban vacant expressed resent added margin Barrere’s, should the rere absolutely ing with have of can community member,” tending is ban of meaningless

Littleton resident Adam McDaniel said he would be concerned if the board appointed someone who was not a runner-up.

“If the untimely passing of the board member had happened prior to the election, then there would have been three board members open,” he said.