MOUNT VERNON – Councilman Tanner Salyer’s resolution to change Mount Vernon City Council’s voting order to stop the rotation got no support from his fellow council members, most of whom thought the method with more than 30 years of precedent worked fine.
Salyers promised to propose a standardized voting system when the issue of Safety-Service Director Rick Dzik changing the council’s voting order came up.
The resolution got a first reading and will come up for a vote, Councilman Mike Hillier said.
Dzik was suspended for two weeks without pay after it was revealed he had the voting order changed on May 10. At that meeting, council voted 4-3 on a contract to provide College Township with fire and EMS protection and also 4-3 to approve a community advocate position for the Police Department.
Hillier said the decision on meeting issues like council votes should be limited to the decision of the council president, a position now held by Bruce Hawkins.
“I’m going to begin by saying this: I didn’t call for this committee meeting,” Hillier said. “I don’t think it’s necessary. I do not support this legislation.”
Former City Clerk Jan Brown said voting was done by rotation during her time with the City and her predecessor’s, Hillier said. The person who voted last was moved to vote first at the next meeting, with all other councilmembers shifting down in the vote order.
“Whether you believe it was manipulated or whether it was an attempt to manipulate the vote in a way that cast doubt on the process, the process is rather loose and random,” Salyers said.
Salyers said the voting order does not matter as council members are elected to be independent voices, so the vote of who he sits next to does not impact him. He said the resolution would establish a rule which does not exist for the current voting process.
“It’s a knee-jerk reaction to something that 1) shouldn’t have happened, and 2) we shouldn’t be going down this road to change something that’s been this way for 30 years,” Councilmember John Francis said.
Councilmember Samantha Scoles said she asked Hawkins to consider an organizational meeting that could address the voting order to give future council presidents a starting point for their own systems.
Councilmember Julia Warga said she did her research on how other cities in Ohio handled voting and by calling former Councilmember Sam Barone, who served the First Ward from January 2012 to December 2019.
“I talked to him and his wife, and they told me that they’ve been following council since the ’70s and this is how it works here, and it’s never been a problem until recently,” Warga said. “And they don’t think there’s a reason for it to change.”
Clerk of Council Tanya Newell told council she did not know where it came from that the person who votes last in one meeting moves to first at the next meeting.
“I’ve been here for nine years,” she said. “That’s never been how I’ve done it. The person that votes at the beginning of the meeting goes to the end. That’s how I’ve always done it.”
The person hired as clerk after Brown was trained by her predecessor, but Newell said she herself wasn’t. Since being hired, Newell said she continued to get training and certifications to do her job.
