The town of Marmet will have a new mayor by May 12.
Now that the order removing former Mayor Bill Pauley from office for abusing his position as mayor during the 2010 mayoral election has been made official, the town council set the process and dates for selecting the new mayor at a special meeting Thursday.
A three-judge panel removed Pauley from office in February. Pauley, who had been mayor of the eastern Kanawha County town for more than 30 years, admitted in a September 2015 conciliation agreement with the West Virginia Ethics Commission that he used his public office for private gain by using it to register voters after the May voter registration deadline had passed and also encouraged non-residents to vote in the town election.
"I want the public to see everything," said Bill Tardy, a town councilman. "I'm tired of all these accusations of us fixing things."
In the name of making the process transparent, the council will accept a letter of intent to run and resumes from any "qualified, eligible voter and resident."
Those applications must be submitted at City Hall by 5 p.m. Wednesday. Once all the applications have been received, the town council said that the applications will be sealed and given to town lawyer Scott McClure.
McClure will not unseal the applications until a public meeting on May 6.
Once the documents are unsealed, however, residents will have a chance to look at the letters of intent and resumes at City Hall.
At that meeting, if the council receives more than five applications, it will go through the resumes and narrow the number of candidates down to three or four.
Once the candidates are narrowed down, they will be interviewed by council members and will be subject to questions from town residents.
There was some discussion on whether there should be a limitation on what questions residents may ask and if residents should have a time limit for their questions.
Council members decided that each person who wants to speak will be given two minutes and that they should only ask questions that have to do with serving as mayor.
Council members said they will select the new mayor at a meeting on May 12. The meeting will be open to the public and the council will vote openly, by raising their hands in support of a candidate. If there is a tie and two candidates get two votes, any candidate not involved in the tie will be eliminated and the council will vote again.
The town council stressed throughout the meeting that they plan to make the election as open as possible to the public.
"We've had the same mayor for 30 years," said Councilman Mike McGhee. "Let's start this new era right."
Reach Daniel Desrochers at dan.desrochers@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-4886 or follow @drdesrochers on Twitter.