The Town of Fountain Hills has received 11 applications from citizens interested in being appointed to the Town Council seat left vacant by the resignation of Cecil Yates.

The list includes two people who ran in the primary election for one of the other available seats, as well as another person who is a current write-in candidate for the school district governing board.

The list of applicants includes Amy Arnold, Richard Carroll, Clayton Corey, Gerry Friedel, Greg Golucci, Peter Gray, Sharron Grzybowski, Sherry Leckrone, Anders Lundin, Bob Shelstrom and Greg Smith.

The Town Council will begin the appointment process next week with a closed executive session to review the applications and discuss narrowing the field of candidates.

The process will then move forward to a public evaluation. The public participation element to the selection will be an open forum that allows residents to pose questions to the candidates.

The town council will interview candidates and ultimately make the decision on who will fill out the remainder of Yates’ term until December 2020.

At this time there is no timeline for the process or scheduled meetings beyond next week’s closed session.

This is the sixth such appointment since incorporation in 1989.

In nearly every instance the same question has come up – why not hold a special election to fill the seat? And in each case the answer has been the same – the process for filling a vacancy on the council is prescribed by state law and the town cannot legally hold such a special election.

State law does give municipalities the option of filling a vacant term until the term expires, or until the next regular election. The town has chosen to write into its code that the appointment be for the remainder of the term. In this case that is also the next council election.