CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – The City Council will try again this week to appoint a Ward 2 councilperson, in a meeting Thursday at 4:30 p.m. However, there are lingering questions about the process for the council votes last week.

During the special called meeting last week, the council had narrowed the selection down to two candidates: AC Lopez with 6 votes and Eric Claunch with 6.

The council then voted in a runoff between the two, with the mayor not allowed to vote. The result was 6-5 for Lopez. With 7 votes required, the council continued voting, with alternating runoff rounds of voting.

After a couple of stalemate rounds, Councilperson Jimmy Brown asked, in reference to the runoff, does the one with the least number of votes not fall off from the voting process. He asked if there’s actually only one candidate remaining: Lopez.

City Attorney Eric Bitter responded, “According to paragraph A., the last sentence, the applicant with the highest total of votes in the runoff shall continue forward. So, if you continue forward, you’ll have one candidate moving forward and that candidate would need 7 votes.”

That would seem to suggest that Claunch should have been removed from the process after the first 6-5 runoff round, and the council should then have voted on Lopez alone – whether to approve his appointment to the council, with 7 votes required.

Clarksville Now has reached out to Bittner for additional explanation.

20-minute City Council recess

Councilperson Brian Zacharias asked for the council to take a recess to look further into appointment procedures. “I’m only saying this, because I’ve been through this process in the exact same situation we’re going through right now. And it was handled differently. I just want to make sure we get this right,” he said.

Before breaking off into recess, Pitts made it clear that the recess would be only for the city attorneys to discuss the process, not council members. Bittner and a member of his legal team went into the hallway alone to discuss the matter. After more than 20 minutes, Bittner returned to council chambers, and the City Council returned to session.

Bittner said that after reading the appointment procedures over and over again, “The way we’re going to read this is there is no low-vote total because all 12 voted and it became a tie and it’s 6-6. I’m going to recommend that we just run (Eric) Claunch and (AC) Lopez head-to-head until someone changes their vote,” he said.

He added that the council had to reach 7 votes, and the city may want to take a look at amending and cleaning up the appointment voting procedures moving forward into the future.

As the meeting continued, a motion to postpone was passed 10-2 due to a voting stalemate between the selection of the two candidates.

The special-called council meeting will be Thursday at 4:30 p.m. in Council Chambers, 106 Public Square.

Chris Smith contributed to this report.

| DOWNLOAD THE APP: Sign up for our free Clarksville Now app