Printer-Friendly
Email this Story
Post a Comment (0)
Haymarket Town Council appoints members to new positions
Monday marked the first day for the 2008-2010 Haymarket Town Council and one of the first acts the council had to perform was to assign its members various responsibilities.
The council re-elected John Cole as vice mayor after he vacated the spot in February when he deployed to Iraq as a civilian contractor with the Department of Defense.
Councilman Ozzie Vazquez, who was re-elected in May along with Cole, Sue Shuryn, Bob Weir and mayor Pamela Stutz, served as vice mayor in Cole’s absence. He will stay on as the project manager for the town this cycle, putting him in charge of the Haymarket Street Scape. That project is designed to make Haymarket more pedestrian-friendly.
Vazquez was not present at the July 7 meeting.
Shuryn will work with Haymarket’s chief financial officer James Naradzay issues related to the town treasury.
Haymarket planning commission chairman Linda Landwehr also was reappointed unanimously to her post by the council.
Planning commission seats are filled by appointments from the council and its members are not popularly elected.
The biggest shake up came when first-term council member David Leake replaced Weir as the town council liaison to the planning commission on a 4-1 vote.
“I’ll say it here and I’ll say it publicly: I don’t believe he’s qualified,” said Weir as Leake silently stared straight ahead at him from across the council table. According to Weir, he could not openly discuss what made Leake unfit for the job “because it was all covered in executive [closed] session.”
Leake said his time on the Greenhill Crossing Homeowner’s Association board has given him experience with planning.
“I look at it as a new fresh project for me and I do have experience with it on the HOA side,” said Leake, stressing his experience with the Architectural Review Committee.
Weir caused a stir on the planning commission when he opposed commercial developer Gerry Kennedy’s proposal to buy the Town Center property for $2.3 million and turn it into a series of small businesses.
Kennedy pulled his plan for a brief period after he ran into unexpected challenges on the planning commission concerning transportation despite the town council approving the deal.
Freshman member Susan Edwards, a Kennedy proponent, said her vote for Leake was not affected by Weir’s opposition to Kennedy.
She and Cole cited Leake’s ability to bring a new body to the planning commission as a reason to name him liaison.
“Maybe (he has) a fresh prospective and that’s it,” Edwards said of Leake’s particular qualifications.
“I think there is value in moving this experience around,” added Cole. “It’s always tough to lose good experience or great experience that Bob has, but we need to start training other council members to do this to.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.