SARANAC LAKE — The Harrietstown council is waiting to make a decision on how it will fill the vacancy left by the resignation of Councilwoman Ashley Milne until after the Nov. 4 election.

Next Tuesday there’s an election to fill two seats on the board. There are four candidates in the running.

Incumbents Johnny Williams and Tracey Schrader are running for reelection. Doug Haney and Craig Donaldson are also running to serve on the board.

Milne’s resignation creates a third vacancy on the board. This seat won’t be on the ballot and it’s up to the council to appoint a new member.

When this appointment will be made, and how to make that decision, are being debated.

There are several ways the council could select an appointee. They could ask whoever places third in the election to serve. They could solicit application letters as they have in the past. They could just choose someone to appoint. Or they could choose some other method. They could even leave the seat vacant for up to two years.

Whoever the council appoints will serve the remainder of Milne’s term, which expires at the end of 2027.

Councilman Williams feels strongly that the council should decide the mechanism it will use to appoint a new member before the election, saying the method they choose could have implications on the election.

The rest of the board wanted to leave their options for filling the seat open. Some want to see how close the election is and decide if the third-highest vote-getter is someone the taxpayers want, or if they should get a wider pool of applicants to send in letters of interest.

Williams wanted them to put it on the record now, feeling that leaving their options open would not be transparent and make the democratic process “a little less final.”

Council members said some people in town have been presuming the council would select the third-highest vote-getter as the appointee.

Williams said he would not prefer this method, but would go along with it if that’s what the board wants.

He prefers the method the council took when they filled a vacancy after Howard Riley resigned in December 2022 — by soliciting letters of interest from the community and selecting an appointee from that list.

Schrader doesn’t think it’s appropriate to choose the method before the elections. She wants to let the voters make the call and then the board makes their decision after.

She said campaigning is a lot of work. If the person who placed third is beat out by someone who just wrote a letter, that didn’t feel right to her. Whoever comes in third, she said taxpayers will have voted for them and stated they want them on the council.

Town Supervisor Jordanna Mallach said she didn’t feel strongly about one method or another. The public does not usually get a say in council appointments. It’s the board’s job by law.

Councilman Jeremy Evans felt the council should wait to make a decision. He said there are a lot of unknowns and he wants to reserve the right to have options.

Evans felt if the election vote is very close between the people who come in second and third, the council should just appoint the person who comes in third.

If the person who comes in third is right behind the person who comes in second, Mallach wondered if they should bother soliciting letters of intent.

Williams felt they should still decide if they’ll do this before the election, and suggested they set a percentage threshold where this would get triggered.

“I think the public deserves transparency on what their vote for the board actually means,” Williams said.

He felt not choosing a method before the election makes the vote less meaningful.

“We shouldn’t get to decide after the fact,” Williams said. “It leaves it up to the board. … It makes it personal.”

Mallach said it’s a personal decision no matter what. Williams felt the mechanism of appointment isn’t personal, but choosing the mechanism after the election would be. He’s worried people would think it isn’t fair.

Schader said it looks weird to put out a call for letters right around an election.

The board can also keep the seat vacant. They could wait for the people elected on Nov. 4 to be sworn in in January and allow that board to make the decision. She said they could even leave the seat open until the end of Milne’s term in December 2027.

Mallach said it’s not detrimental to the board’s actions to have four members instead of five. They’re still able to pass the budget and take votes. The budget vote is scheduled for Nov. 13.

Williams made a motion to fill the vacancy after the budget season by open submission of letters of interest. It failed 2-2 with Williams and Mallach voting to approve it and Schrader and Evans voting against it. Because it did not have a majority, the motion failed.

Council members said they’ll revisit this discussion at their Nov. 6 meeting, two days after the election.

Mallach said they might not even know the results on Election Night. Often, these local elections are so close they require a recount or absentee ballots to be counted, which takes a couple of weeks.

Williams wanted to set procedure for the next time there’s a vacancy, to be consistent. He made another motion which would state that future vacancies would be filled by appointment via open submissions of letters from community. But this motion did not move forward because it was not seconded.

“I think this is a mistake,” Williams said.

Mallach said the board will vote on the appointment no matter what — that procedure doesn’t change. She felt there’s no need for additional procedure.

Schrader said they could set procedure, but a board years from now could just change or ignore it.

Evans wondered if any other towns do anything to set precedent on these decisions.

The contested four-way election for two council seats will be on the ballot Nov. 4. Early voting has already started. For more election information, go to tinyurl.com/mryjzn27.

Schrader and Haney are running on the Democratic line. Williams and Donaldson are running on the Republican line. To read more about the Democratic candidates, go to tinyurl.com/5w753fxe. To read more about the Republican candidates, go to tinyurl.com/bdzz25sp.

Milne resigned earlier this month, halfway through her term, after she and her family moved out west to be closer to family and for job opportunities. To read more about Milne’s resignation, go to tinyurl.com/5d2372vu.