Published: November 24, 2007 10:13 pm         

Outlook for filling empty Keyser council seat not too promising

Members at odds over who will serve with them

KEYSER — The remaining two Keyser City Council members will once again take up the issue of the third council seat when they meet in regular session Monday.

The outlook for actually approving someone to fill the vacant seat is not promising.

The seat, formerly occupied by George Chidester, has been vacant since Aug. 27, when Chidester submitted his written resignation and walked out.

Although former council candidate Dave Sowers, who ran against Chidester in June and lost, has been vocal in the interim about his interest in being appointed to the position, Councilman Marq Rice and Councilwoman Sally Burnside are apparently not agreeing on the idea of having Sowers serve with them.

“I won’t say I have a flat-out objection (to Sowers), but I’d like to give some other people a chance,” Rice said during a recent meeting.

“We said we were going to do some interviews.”

According to Burnside, a date was set for interviewing candidates and Sowers was the only one who showed up.

“We did have another gentleman who said he was interested, but he didn’t show up for his interview,” she said.

Burnside said that Rice was unable to attend the interview because of his work schedule. He was not able to interview Sowers when Burnside and Mayor Glen “Bunk” Shumaker met with him.

“I worked over that day,” Rice said. “I called and told them, but they decided to go ahead with the interviews.”

Rice maintains that there are other residents out there who have expressed interest in the council seat.

“They said they were going to submit their letter of interest within the past two weeks, but I was told no one had yet put in their application as of last week,” he said.

City Administrator Deborah Pamepinto told the Times-News on Wednesday that no one — to her knowledge — had submitted any letter to the city office.

“Surely, with the large turnout of residents we’ve had since all this started, there’s someone out there who would be interested in the job,” Rice said.

Burnside said since the officials have not had a chance to meet since last month, “I guess we’ll just have to go into Monday’s meeting as we are and see what happens.”

Rice said, “There’s no law that says we have to decide.

“If we cannot come to an agreement, we may have to wait until the next election.”

Monday’s meeting gets under way at 2:30 p.m. in the Council Chambers of City Hall.

Contact Liz Beavers at lbeavers@times-news.com.