Last Wednesday, Trumbauersville Borough Council met for a monthly meeting rescheduled from Thursday July 11 due to a lack of quorum during severe weather. The primary agenda item was temporarily filling vacancies for both mayor and council member.

            Last month, council accepted the resignation of Mayor Melissa Baine and Councilman Harcourt Trimble. Both are moving out of the area and will therefore be unable to complete their respective terms.

            The rescheduled meeting pushed the vote beyond the 30-day timeframe allowed by state law for council to fill a vacancy. Therefore, council was forced to create a vacancy board, voting in resident Peter Gehring to serve as chair.

            Through the vacancy board hearing, two candidates were nominated for mayor – Steven Spor and Jim Black. With the absence of a seventh council member, the vote was tied and Gehring cast the deciding vote for Black. Jim Black, proprietor of Blacks' Tree and Landscape, has been a borough resident for 15 years.

           Council President Edward Child explained that, although Baine's term was set to end in 2022, Black will serve as mayor until December 31, 2019 and residents will vote for a mayor in the November general election.

            For the vacant council member position, Becky Spor, owner of Spor's General Store, received more votes than Wesley Comes to finish out Harcourt Trimble's term, set to end December 31. Wesley Comes is already on the ballot for the November election.

            During the public comment period Wednesday night, Comes requested an update on the status of a proposed sober house at 20 East Broad Street in the borough. Child indicated that there had been no recent updates. Last month, the borough sent a letter denying a request to consider the property a single-family residence. That request was made by property owners JBKM Sullivan, LLC because the lot size is too small for a boarding house.

            Borough Secretary Larry Smock reported that the property owners are seeking an attorney versed in federal regulations.

            "My guess is they are trying to find somebody to claim that we are discriminating against this class of people which just isn't true," Child said.

            "We haven't said anything that even addresses who is going to be in the building. It's just that when you rent up to ten individual rooms out with ten individual leases for people who come and go and none of these people knew each other beforehand, that's a boarding house."