Picking your enemies … or not

City Councils are constantly changing. Changes don’t wait until elections. Resignations occur all the time. Appointments are made to fill vacancies.

Well, most of the time appointments are made to fill vacancies.

Then there is Wapato, WA.

The city council is this Central Washington town has turned away the only applicant for a city council seat that has remained open since January.

Eliva Lopez is a former council member who decided to apply for the open post. But at last Monday’s meeting, Lopez’s application was denied.

Council members tell the Yakima Herald-Republic that Lopez, 34, was denied because her past tenure on the council was too closely aligned with former councilman Juan Orozco, who they consider too controversial.

Mayor pro tem Tony Guzman says Lopez wouldn’t be a good fit and cause “unnecessary friction.”

The appropriateness of refusing to seat the only applicant for a council seat will be discussed  in Local Politics 101 class on Wednesday.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 4:19 am and is filed under Local Politics 101. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Comments are closed.