Township board misses opportunity with appointment

The Woodlands has taken the next step toward self-governance and is moving toward a fully elected board by the people. That will become a reality in 2010 with elections for the remaining seats on The Woodlands Township board that did not expire in 2008.

However, board members missed an opportunity to show they support the voice of residents with their appointment to an open board seat Wednesday.

In a split vote, the board – mainly those who did not have to run for re-election on the May ballot – appointed Bob Kinnear to fill a seat vacated last fall by Les Tarrance, whose seat was set to expire in 2010.

Kinnear, who served on the board from 1996 to 2007 including time as board director, certainly has the experience to fill the seat. However, his term expired in 2008 and he opted not to seek re-election. By appointing him to a vacated seat that expires in 2010 after relinquishing his seat, the board basically gave him a free pass in the 2008 elections.

That shouldn’t sit well with voters in the newly formed township or the 14 candidates who worked hard during the campaign for the open seats – most of them capable of serving the people.

The change in governance, easily approved by voters in November, was a mandate that residents want to have a say in governance, and that should include filling vacated seats.

When Tarrance resigned, the board had the options of appointing someone, leaving the position vacant until it was up for election in 2010 or determining another method to find an appointee. Existing legislation for the township calls for a board vacancy to be filled through an appointment by sitting board members.

The board opted to wait until after the election to appoint someone. This opened the door for the sixth-highest vote-getter (the top five were elected), as well as other candidates, to be considered.

“On its face, and at first blush, it sounds good,” board chairwoman Nelda Blair told The Courier last fall. “But there are some laws governing bodies like ours that frown on appointing somebody who was not elected.”

So, the board, at the recommendation of the Executive Committee (which includes Blair, Lloyd Matthews, Alex Sutton and Vicki Richmond) opted to appoint an individual who was not elected because he did not seek re-election.

When a community has 14 candidates vying for five positions in an open race, a person who receives the sixth-highest votes and was close to being elected should be considered a viable candidate for the appointment.

The board also could have sought recommendations from the public, and considered those names before making a decision. If The Woodlands truly is to become an open form of government, the board must enlist the people’s opinions. That could have been accomplished through appointment of the next-highest vote-getter or seeking recommendations from the public.

While the board must push for legislation to enable voters to fill an open seat in the future, it could have at least followed the voters’ will by appointing Jeff Long, the sixth-highest vote-getter in the May election. Long has served on The Woodlands Association board and as its president, as well as served on the Montgomery County Transportation Task Force and The Friendship Center board and helped negotiate the transition agreement that created The Woodlands Township.

He received 2,030 votes on the 6,314 ballots cast (32.2 percent) and was the only candidate who received more than 2,000 votes not to be elected. The candidates who were elected garnered votes on 36.6 percent to 60.8 percent of the ballots cast.

Community and board members should want an individual who shows an interest in serving the community to sit on the board. We believe Kinnear could have done that by running for re-election. Since he did not seek to retain his seat, the board should have looked elsewhere for a willing candidate supported by the people. And that would have been Long or one of the other candidates who received respectable voter support in the May election.