Councilor and Mayor-Elect Nann Worel officially resigned from the Park City Council Thursday night. Worel will be inaugurated as Park City’s next Mayor in early January. She told her council colleagues and the public she is resigning to trigger the process required to fill her now-vacant seat on the council.
“I have thoroughly enjoyed serving with all of you," Worel said. "I’ve enjoyed serving on this council, but at the conclusion of this meeting, I am resigning my seat on the city council. That’s a weird thing to do, it’s kind of a scary thing to do, but I am doing that so that we can open applications for my vacant seat.”
Worel thanked outgoing Mayor Andy Beerman and Councilors Tim Henney and Steve Joyce for their nearly 25 years of combined service to Park City.
Worel was elected to the mayor’s office in November’s municipal elections alongside Tana Toly and Jeremy Rubell, who won elections for Park City’s two open city council seats. Worel, Toly, Rubell, and current councilors Max Doilney and Becca Gerber will be tasked with selecting a candidate to serve out the remaining two years of Worel’s council term.
The application period for the now-open seat began Friday and ends at 5pm sharp on January 5th.
People interested in applying for the seat must meet several minimum requirements for holding elected office in Park City.
Candidates must be United States citizens, be at least 18 years old at the time of the next municipal election, must have been living within Park City limits for at least one full calendar year, be registered to vote in Park City, and must not be convicted felons or classified as mentally incompetent.
In accordance with Utah’s open meetings act, two days of public interviews in front of the city council and mayor are scheduled for January 7th and 11th. The new councilor will then be appointed by the four sitting councilors and mayor on January 13th.
Gerber told KPCW she has yet to meet with her fellow councilors about what they will be looking for in a candidate, but is excited to see who in the community steps forward.
“I think that this is going to be a conversation that we really want to have with our new council," said Gerber. "As we move into it, I think we’re always looking for a new perspective, and to make sure you’re hitting many parts of the community, but we haven’t really had time to have that conversation in depth yet.”
The questions in the application are broad. The application asks what candidates think the role of city government and city council is, and how each candidate is already involved in the community; it avoids specific questions about issues currently in front of the council.
The last time the council had to fill an open seat was when Mayor Andy Beerman vacated his position on the council to take over as mayor in 2018. KPCW public affairs host Lynn Ware Peek was selected to serve the remaining two years of that term.
A link to the city council application can be found here.
