Rimbert returns to council; named president

The newly elected Ober­lin city coun­cil took office Mon­day night in front of a nearly packed coun­cil cham­bers at City Hall.

Six of the seven mem­bers were sworn in by Judge Thomas Januzzi at the begin­ning of the meet­ing. Charles Peter­son was not in atten­dance; he made travel plans prior to the meet­ing being sched­uled. Accord­ing to Belinda Ander­son, coun­cil clerk, Peter­son was vis­it­ing fam­ily and friends in New York and is expected to be sworn into office some­time this week.

Five mem­bers of coun­cil served dur­ing the last coun­cil term: Sharon Soucy, Scott Broad­well, Eliz­a­beth Mead­ows, Bryan Burgess, and Peter­son. Ron­nie Rim­bert returns to coun­cil after tak­ing the last term off due to bylaws restrict­ing the num­ber of con­sec­u­tive terms a coun­cilmem­ber can serve. Aaron Muc­ci­olo began his first term on coun­cil Mon­day night.

Rim­bert was unan­i­mously elected coun­cil pres­i­dent by his five peers in atten­dance at the meeting.

“I’d like to say to all my col­leagues, thank you very much. It’s a great honor. I’d also like to thank every­one in the audi­ence for com­ing out in this weather and brav­ing it. We all really appre­ci­ate it,” said Rim­bert. “We hope to see you at every coun­cil meeting.”

Sharon Soucy was elected vice pres­i­dent of coun­cil, the same posi­tion she held dur­ing the last term.

Muc­ci­olo nom­i­nated Broad­well for vice pres­i­dent of coun­cil, but there was no sec­ond for the nom­i­na­tion, though law direc­tor Eric Sever said a sec­ond wasn’t nec­es­sary for select­ing the pres­i­dent or vice president.

Mead­ows then nom­i­nated Soucy and Broad­well sec­onded the nomination.

When coun­cil voted on the mat­ter, Broad­well received one vote while Soucy received all the others.

Among those in atten­dance at the meet­ing were Vil­lage of Sheffield mayor John Hunter and pros­e­cu­tor Chris Cook, 4th dis­trict con­gres­sional can­di­date Jim Sloane, and other can­di­dates for var­i­ous polit­i­cal offices around the area.

After the mem­bers were sworn in and the pres­i­dent and vice pres­i­dent were elected, coun­cil got down to business.

Coun­cil liaisons for var­i­ous boards and com­mis­sions were appointed. Mem­bers of coun­cil also set the alter­na­tive dates for meet­ings that con­flict with hol­i­days. In essence, it was decided that if a meet­ing would nor­mally be sched­uled on a hol­i­day, the meet­ing would be moved to the fol­low­ing day at 7:30 p.m.

Finally, Feb. 4 was set as the date for the 2012 City Coun­cil Retreat. The Ober­lin Fire Sta­tion is ten­ta­tively set as the loca­tion of the retreat.

Posted by Scott Mahoney on Jan 5 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.