Jackson council narrows applicants, schedules five for interviews for vacant seat

At a Jan. 21 special workshop, the Jackson Town Council moved to interview five applicants for the vacant fifth council seat and set the interview schedule and rules that will guide the appointment process.

Town staff told the council the town received 17 timely applications and two additional applications submitted after the deadline; the council would use an initial public preference round (projected on screen), then a second round restricted to the top vote-getters, and could deliberate in executive session under Wyoming Statute 16-4-405 before making a public appointment by simple majority.

"The town received a total of 17 applications," the town manager said during the meeting, summarizing the staff report and a draft timeline that included special interview meetings on Jan. 23 and Jan. 24. The manager told council each interview would be scheduled for about an hour in 1 hour 15 minute slots to allow breaks and turnover between applicants.

Council members said they were impressed by the applicant pool and discussed how many names each member should be allowed to advance from the full list. After an initial public aggregation of preferences, council members agreed to advance a limited group into a second round of preference selections. Councilman Schechter urged the process be broad enough to capture differing perspectives: "I would rather have a process that we had everybody select as many names as they thought they would like to consider," he said during the discussion.

Staff presented the first-round tallies on screen. After further narrowing, the council recessed to executive session under Wyoming Statute 16-4-405(a)(ii) and (a)(vii) to deliberate confidentially on candidate evaluation, then returned to public session and filled interview slots incrementally.

By motion, the council voted to call three applicants for interviews on Jan. 23: Shelby Reed; Allison Speedy; and Katie Wilson. Later, the council moved to add Frederick Gordon and Scott Anderson to the list of interviewees, bringing the total scheduled for interview to five. Those motions were made and seconded on the record and approved by the council in public session.

Council members also discussed transparency of the preliminary tallies and whether to project those tallies publicly. Some council members favored posting the preliminary preference tallies for transparency; others raised concern that projecting tallies might chill discussion or affect deliberation.

The council postponed finalizing the interview questions. A motion carried to continue the interview-question discussion to the council's evening meeting, with the council noting that the questions previously submitted by members are in the staff packet and that the council intends to provide applicants with the general framework of questions in advance of interviews.

No final appointment was made at the Jan. 21 workshop. The council directed staff to schedule the interviews and return with a final agenda and questions at the evening meeting; the final appointment will be made in public session by a majority vote following any executive-session deliberations allowed by state law.