Last Monday night, at our Chesapeake Public School Board meeting, the school board voted to fill an interim seat on the board that was vacated by a person who had been elected to another city office. As stated in Virginia law, a person cannot hold two elected offices simultaneously, thus when she was sworn into her new office on December 22nd, 2021 (as she proudly proclaims on her public Facebook page), she had to resign her seat on our school board.
A fairly mundane task, one might think. There is a problem, however, that the school board failed to address, even after a local citizen spoke during the meeting expressing her concern that the school board had acted unlawfully by voting to appoint someone to the seat after the thirty day window had closed. January 24, 2022, the date of the school board meeting and vote, was on day thirty-three since the previous board member vacated her seat.
According to both the Charter of the City of Chesapeake and prior precedent set by the city, failure to appoint an interim board member within the thirty day allotted window means that the board has forfeited its right to appoint someone. In §10.01 of the city charter, it states: “Vacancies shall be filled in the same manner in which general law provides for the filling of vacancies of city council members.” What is the manner in which city council seats are filled? §3.03:1 of the city charter states: “Whenever a vacancy occurs in the office of a council member… it shall be filled by the majority vote of the remaining members of the city council within thirty days of such vacancy.”
If it wasn’t as clear as day that the appointment of the interim board member by the board on January 24, 2022 was unlawful as it was done after the thirty days granted by the city charter, we have only to look back to November 16, 2021 to see the policy in action on the very same city council whose policy is meant to be mirrored by the school board, as per the city charter. On that night, the City Council likewise had a vacant seat to fill during their meeting due to the resignation of a councilman on November 12, 2021. At the November 16 meeting, Mayor West begrudgingly concluded that “our thirty days is going to run out” as his reason for agreeing to a motion to appoint an interim member on that night instead of waiting for the next council meeting.
Both law and precedent show that the appointment of Louis Tayon by the school board on January 24, 2022 outside the thirty day window was unlawful and the the ninth seat on the Chesapeake Public School Board need to remain vacant through November 8th, 2022 election when the voters can elect someone for the remainder of the vacated term. Therefore, Mr. Tayon is an illegitimate member of the School Board at this time, and logically, any further votes by this board are therefore also illegitimate.