Village Board Will Use Power to Appoint New Trustee

The Village Board plans to appoint a new trustee to a board seat left vacant, after because she purchased a home outside of Shorewood.

Trustees Ellen Eckman, Michael Maher and Jeff Hanewell volunteered for a committee tasked with defining procedures for the appointment and establishing a timeline.

The board could decide to utilize a process used in recent years in which they created an Ad-Hoc Committee, solicited applications for the trustee seat, interviewed prospective trustee candidates, selected three candidates for further consideration and then held another vote to pick the new trustee.

The board actually had its choice among three other options to address the vacancy. It could have left the seat vacant until next spring’s election, held a special election or appointed someone until a special election. However, Hickey had only one year left on her term and the earliest a special election could be held is November, according to Village Attorney Ray Pollen.

Even at that, Pollen says he has received contradicting opinions from the State Elections Board on when a special election can be held.