Okay, I'll go ahead and call the special meeting, uh City Council meeting to order for October 19th, 2026.

I will uh confirm that we have three council members in uh in attendance.

These are the three council members that I have asked Vice Mayor Craig Hawkins and Councilwoman Ruth Pierce to help facilitate the city council vacancy application process.

Um we spoke to the other two uh council members and uh in that process and felt that it was uh they declined to at this current initial onset to to be a part of that, and so

uh

three of us will go through this process and uh make some recommendations and move some applicants forward to the whole body future council meetings coming up soon.

We'll um turn the time over to Travis Rothweiler, our city manager, for a few minutes as we outline some of this process and have a conversation.

Uh

Mr.

Mayor, members of the council.

Um, my role today, as you said, was to uh more or less walk you through the legal requirements of the process and kind of share um the work that the staff did to get to this point today.

So in September, uh, Councilman Stone elected to resign from his seat that he was duly elected to, and that created an opening on the city council.

Uh Idaho Code has a series of requirements that we are following as a part of this process.

The first is um Idaho Code 50601.

And Idaho Code 5601 says that whenever there is a vacancy that occurs in the middle of a term, it is the responsibility of the mayor to nominate a candidate or candidates to fill the vacancies for consideration by the council.

Um, the opportunity to affirm or not his selection.

It simply says yes or no on the candidate or candidates that are moving forward.

And it says that a person is eligible to hold the city council office if the person is a qualified elector when the declaration of candidacy or intent is submitted and remains a qualified elector for the duration of his or her term.

So

what is

a qualified elector in the eyes of Idaho Code?

First, they have to be a resident and they have to reside as their primary residency inside of the City of Twin Falls's corporate boundary.

Second, they must be 18 years of age.

And third, they must be a citizen.

Those are the three requirements that are articulated in Idaho Code as to what are the qualifications for someone to serve.

As part of the process, we published and we held open a period for almost three weeks, an application period for individuals to submit their interests to this selection committee, and also which will be made available to the other members of the city council, and they are open to public record.

Unlike other personnel items that are protected under Idaho Code, any time that a person is submitting their names for qualification or they put their names on a ballot, there is no records exemption that applies.

One last thing is that it says that the Idaho, the person that is submitting must have resided at their place of residency for at least a period of 30 days.

So when we said when we put this information out through a series of press releases and public announcements, we placed the application as well as five questions that were developed by the mayor onto the city council's page, and individuals who were interested had to fill out the application, and they also responded to those five questions.

They also had to acknowledge that their submittals in their entirety would be a matter of the public record.

And they also acknowledge that they are a duly qualified elector.

We provided that definition on the application, and each one of those candidates affirmed that process.

And it will also be an opportunity for the council to ask questions.

The mayor will take that information, and it is anticipated that on November 9th, he will name one or two candidates depending upon the outcome of the upcoming state election in which one of the members of our city council is a candidate for.

That is entirely your discretion.

The length of time that you give to them to present is the discretion of the mayor, as he is the facilitator and leader of all council meetings.

Staff is happy to help you navigate the process, but I've hopefully set the table for you in terms of legal responsibilities that you have and the process that has been outlined not only previously but also in the weeks to come.

Happy to stand for any questions.

Thank you, Travis.

And I think you can affirm this, but as you've said all the applicants that we've received are qualified electors from everything that I've read in the application.

And so I just want that to be on the record that we've found that all of the all of the applicants that we'll be reviewing tonight or at least looked at.

Again, I'll I'll reiterate what you said that it closed on the 16th of October.

Um and so over the weekend, I know that uh I looked over them.

I'm assuming that the other council members also looked over them, and so I think we've come here tonight uh in anticipating of moving uh a few candidates forward for that uh November 2nd.

Um I would like to reiterate that I appreciate we did have a good uh pool of applicants.

There's always it's always great to see the interest now that this is my uh second time of trying to fill a vacation on the city council.

It is nice to

see

um people still interested in serving

on

on city council.

So

Mr.

Mayor, yes, I can validate again.

Uh all of the members, all 15 candidates that have been submitted uh for your consideration have uh affirmed first that they meet the definition of qualified elector, and that affirmation was validated by the county elections office uh and our team worked closely with them and they were timely in their responses.

It did close on the 16th, and we did not receive any applications after the cutoff time.

So the entirety of individuals who had submitted uh for consideration are now available to you for your deliberation.

Perfect.

Thank you, Travis.

Um Ruth, Craig, do you want to say anything before we kind of jump in to looking at this and figuring out uh how we move forward?