Commission Sets February 10 For Heady Replacement

The Jackson County Commission established rules for choosing a new mayor Monday night including a chance for candidates to speak and a February 10 vote.

The commission voted to give all mayoral nominees three to five minutes to speak, after which commissioners will be free to ask questions. Interim Mayor Joey Denson said the commissioners should have a chance to ask for more information from the candidates if need be.

“That is by far the simplest, fairest method,” Denson said. “I mean, to give the candidates an exact time frame and then if, ’cause I may think of a question after hearing John Doe speak that I wish to ask.”

The commission also approved a motion to use the roll call voting method where each commissioner gets one vote and all the candidates will have an equal opportunity to be selected. Denson said that system is how the county has chosen to handle all situations like this since he joined the commission.

County Mayor Randy Heady passed away earlier this month after a battle with cancer. The special called meeting will take place February 10 at 7pm.

Earlier in the meeting, the commission heard a motion that would have prohibited questions. The motion failed by two votes. Denson also suggested preparing a list of questions from the commission ahead of the vote, but the idea was set aside after concerns about which questions should be asked and how long it would take for all the nominees to respond to the whole list.

Denson said members of the public who want to ask a questions of the nominees should speak with their commissioner before the meeting and get their representative to ask for them.

“I don’t know that on the 10th that we need to have, and I expect the house full here, I don’t expect we need everybody to raise their hand and say ‘I want to ask John Doe standing before you at the podium a question,'” Denson said.

Commissioner Ryan Hopkins said the commission should wait until the night of the vote to decide which nominees get eliminated if there is not a majority. Hopkins said it would be hard to decide how that part of the vote should work without knowing how many nominations there are.

“I’m comfortable choosing the voting method, if we’re going to do roll call or if we’re going to vote on them individually,” Hopkins said. “But as far as the elimination process, I’m not comfortable with until we know how many nominees there are.”

County Attorney Kayla Cantrell said the new mayor must be at least twenty-five, a qualified voter in the county, and have been a resident for one year before being nominated. Cantrell said the public can request a nomination or suggest candidates, but nominations must come from a commissioner.

“If you just abstain from voting or if you don’t show up, your vote is still counted for purposes of determining a majority,” Cantrell said. “So if we have three (out of eighteen) commissioners running and then we have two that don’t show up, we still take a majority of fifteen.”

Cantrell said any commissioner who accepts a nomination for mayor will not be allowed to vote for the appointment, even if they are eliminated. Cantrell said commissioners cannot deliberate about the election outside of public meetings but they can call fellow commissioners to share information about themselves and seek support.

In other business, the commission also accepted an amended county road list for 2025 with three roads that were adjusted and renamed.