Berlin Boyd (l) and David Pool were among the District 7 applicants who qualified.
Four of the five previously stymied applicants for the District 7 City Council position vacated by Lee Harris, who resigned to serve as state Senator, are now available for picking, along with the previously qualified Barbara Swearengen Ware and Bryan Carson, by the 12 seated members of the Council on Tuesday.
The four, all of whom fell short of a previous deadline of January 8 — announced, apparently erroneously, by Council chairman Myron Lowery — are: Berlin Boyd, David Pool, Charles Leslie, and Audrey P. Jones. All had filed petitions for the seat by the January 8 deadline, and had submitted the required number of at least 25 voter signatures from District 7. But enough of their signatures were adjudged invalid by the Shelby County Election Collection — in most cases by only one or two signatures —to keep them from qualifying.
Council attorney Allan Wade would reopen the matter with a later opinion, however, which argued from the text of the city charter that the actual deadline for signatures should have been noon on Thursday, February 15. By noon Friday, all applicants save for Curtis Byrd Jr. had furnished enough additional signatures to qualify. The signature totals of Boyd and Pool were quickly judged to have passed muster; those of Leslie and Jones received a further check.
The Council will decide which of the now qualified applicants will serve on Tuesday, February 20.
Two of the applicants — Ware and Boyd — have prior service on the Council, Ware as a regularly elected member and Boyd, as an interim member who was selected to fill in for her when she resigned following a misconduct charge. The charge stemmed from the discovery that she had habitually tipped personnel at the County Clerk’s office for annual license re-registrations without necessity, as was then required, of having her vehicles inspected.
