The Carbondale City Council agreed to a plan to fill outgoing Mayor Joel Fritzler’s vacant chair.

Potential candidates can apply for the position between Feb. 4 and Feb. 14. The city council will then hold closed sessions to narrow the number of candidates before acting in open session.

Fritzler announced his resignation on Jan. 13 effective Feb. 3. Councilman Don Monty was selected to serve the remainder of his term Jan. 21 at a special session of the city council.

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During Monty’s comments immediately following the vote, he distributed a tentative schedule for filling the vacant seat in time to vote on the budget.

“Our timetable is somewhat constrained, because, in my opinion, we need to have the rest of the council to act on a city budget,” Monty said.

The council discussed the schedule and requirements for applying to the position at Tuesday’s city council meeting.

“Even though statutorially, the acting mayor gets to put forward the name, it’s my feeling it is a decision that all of the city council should be brought in on,” Monty said. “And to that end I’ve proposed both a timetable and an application process.”

The application period will officially open Feb. 4 when the vacancy becomes official. Potential candidates must submit an application along with a résumé, references and a letter of interest about why they want to be on city council and what makes them qualified.

They must also include their primary concerns regarding the city and potential solutions for the problem.

The candidates must meet several statutory requirements as well. They must have been a registered voter for at least one year, a resident of Carbondale for one year, have no criminal felony convictions and owe no debts to the city such as back taxes or unpaid water bills.

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“When you think about it, all this stuff comes out in the election process,” Monty said. “Candidates stand up in front of the public maybe at forums or maybe knocking at people’s doors. And these issues or views are going to come up and I find it quite reasonable that the city council standing in for the public in this case to ask for this information so we can make an assessment.”

The deadline to turn in applications to city hall is Feb. 14.

The council will then schedule two special closed sessions of city council. One will be a held on or near Feb. 18 to review the applications and narrow the pool of candidates to three.

Another closed session will be held on or near Feb. 25 for the council to interview the finalists. The council will then make a final decision in open session.

Members of the community are encouraged to contact their councilmember the same as any other issue to comment on who they think should be the next member, Monty said.

The new councilmember will officially take office at the regular March 4 meeting.

The council also heard a report from Douglas Reichl of Tartan Realty Group and Michael Fitzgerald of OKW Architects regarding a proposal for downtown development at 710 S. Illinois.

The plan would call for the development of multi-use commercial and residential apartment buildings in the area currently occupied by 710 Bookstore.

The ground floor would be for commercial use with four floors above for residential rental space.

Reichl said he wanted to fill the council in on what they planned to do with the space before moving forward with the project. He said 710 Bookstore has expressed interest in staying in the location.

The next meeting of the city council is Feb. 11 at 7 p.m. in city hall.

Seth Richardson can be reached at [email protected], on Twitter at @EgyptianRich or at 536-3311 ext. 268.