LULA — Lula City Councilman Vince Evans has resigned, effective immediately.
Evans, District 1 councilman, submitted a brief written resignation dated Aug. 11 that cited personal reasons for leaving the position.
“I thank the citizens of Lula and wish the City much progress under present leadership,” Evans wrote in his resignation letter to Mayor Jim Grier.
The resignation was received by city leaders Monday and then announced during Monday night’s Lula City Council work session.
“This was quite sudden, so really we’re just exploring our options of what requirements we have to meet for a special election to fill the post,” Grier told AccessWDUN. “We’ll be looking into that over the next few days, then we’ll make a decision about how that’s to be done.”
City Attorney Joey Homans told the council that because of the timing of Evans’ resignation, placing the council seat on a November special election ballot would require a separate ballot and separate poll from the General Election, and that is not a good idea and likely would result in low voter turnout.
“The timing of the resignation means that the next available special election date is March 19, 2019, unless you unless you choose to hold a special election entirely separate from all other ballot issues to be addressed in November,” a memo from Homans to city officials reads.
Homans recommended that the council look to the 2019 date to fill the vacancy for the unexpired term continuing through the first regular meeting in December 2019, then the winning candidate from the November 2019 election will be sworn in for a four-year term, in accordance with the Lula City Charter.
“It’s the complications from being past the point where we could include it as part of the ballot in the statewide election that will be held within the city,” Grier said. “It could be on the ballot for city voters, but it would be a separate ballot, separate sign-in, a separate poll, so it would really create a lot of undue confusion in the electorate, and I just would hate to see that happen.”
The council will discuss the matter further at next week’s meeting.
At the conclusion of Monday night’s work session, the council voted to enter closed session to discuss personnel, with only the mayor, council and Homans present.
After about an hour in closed session, Grier announced the council conducted employee performance evaluations and no votes were taken.
