Doug Clyde was first elected to the Summit County Council in 2016. Prior to that he served on the East Side planning commission. He says he’s been mulling the decision to vacate the seat before his term ends for some time but decided now is the right time.
I've been looking to leave for some time, and I'm announcing that I'm going to be leaving,” Clyde said. “I'm not giving it a certain date, but it will be sometime in October. And the principal purpose of the announcement is just to give people time to react to that and in time for the Democrats to decide what they're going to do in terms of replacing me.”
He says he needs to leave now because he’s got too many other things he wants to do and being a council member has been more than a full time job.
“The job has been, while very enjoyable in many aspects, has been unfortunately, way too demanding,” Clyde explained. “And, you know, I have served 12 years -- half with the planning commission, and the remaining six as a council person. And as noted, I enjoyed it, especially working with our great staff. It is, but it's long past my time to retire, I simply just have too much else to do.”
Clyde isn’t announcing the exact date he will retire, saying when he makes that announcement, the process for finding his replacement begins, and he’s not quite ready to vacate the seat.
"Everything's triggered by the actual date that I stand up and say, this is the date,” Clyde said. “And there are a couple of votes hanging out there a couple of things that I'm concerned about that I'd like to follow through on. I don't know when they're going to transpire precisely. And so, I'm just trying to give everybody a heads up that I'm going to retire soon as in, you know, easily the next 30 days. And get people prepared.”
The vote he says he’s waiting on has to do with water quality -- an issue he has been passionate about even before serving on the planning commission.
In terms of finding a replacement to serve out the remainder of his term, he says it will go to the Summit County Democratic party to decide. That process could take five or six weeks.
“That's one of the reasons why I'm concerned about people knowing about this is because there'll be a gap there, there will be a gap in which they won't have a fifth council person,” Clyde explained. “That's not a major problem. But you don't want that to last very long. You know, you want to try and minimize that gap. And so, all the clocks start from the date in which I actually resigned.”
