ANNA MARIA – In the coming months, the Anna Maria City Commission will have two vacant commission seats to fill by commission appointment.
Commissioner Deanie Sebring’s final meeting will be on Sept. 21. After that, she and her husband, Tripp, are moving to France. She will leave office with approximately one year remaining in her two-year term.
Commissioner Robert Kingan is not seeking reelection in the fall election and his current two-year term will expire on Dec. 7. The person appointed to fill Kingan’s vacant seat will have approximately two years to serve.
How the two vacancies will be filled was discussed at the city commission’s Sept. 7 meeting. The commission has not yet determined whether the pending vacancies will be filled one at a time or both at once. That decision will be made at a future meeting.
The commission will use the appointment process employed in recent years which includes soliciting applications from interested candidates and each remaining commissioner then ranking the applicants in order of their preference.
The upcoming appointment process will also use the new pre-selection vetting process and public question and answer forum introduced in January when Charlie Salem and Brian Seymour sought appointment to the seat vacated by Carol Carter. Salem was appointed to fill that seat and he and incumbent Commissioner Jon Crane are running unopposed in the fall election. No candidate qualified to run for the third open seat to be vacated by Kingan.
When the application process begins, Mayor Dan Murphy suggests the applicants specify whether they’re seeking an appointment to the one-year or the two-year term.
Commission Chair Mark Short asked City Attorney Becky Vose about the city’s residency requirement for commission candidates.
Vose referred to a memo she provided to the commissioners. The memo notes the city charter requires commission candidates to be qualified voters in Anna Maria and have at least two years of residency in Anna Maria before qualifying for office. The memo notes candidates cannot be city employees and cannot hold another municipal office that would remain in effect after the candidate is elected or appointed to serve on the city commission.
Short asked Vose how the city defines city residency. Vose said under Florida it’s simply a matter of where the candidate believes in good faith their primary residence to be.
Vose noted residency is not well defined by the city or the state, but those who claim Anna Maria residency but also claim a property tax homestead exemption in another city run the risk of violating the homestead law and/or losing their homestead exemption.
Crane said he’s concerned about the number of remaining Anna Maria residents who would be interested in serving on the city commission.
“I used to have more friends in this city,” Crane said of the city’s shrinking population.
Sebring said she had already spoken with someone interested in serving. Kingan said he also spoke with someone who expressed great interest in serving.
No timetable for the pending appointments has been established yet.
Anna Maria commissioners are paid $4,800 per year.
