When Bill Martin takes office as Havre de Grace's new mayor Monday, the city council will be in a unique position.
Martin, who has served as a councilman since 2008, will get to appoint his successor once he becomes mayor, a rare circumstance.
Although mayors have filled vacancies in council terms before, this is the first time in decades, if ever, that an incumbent councilman ran for mayor in the middle of a term and won.
David Craig, who served as Havre de Grace mayor from 1985 to 1989 and again from 2001 to 2005, said Wednesday he could not recall another time such an event has happened.
When Craig was elected, "I had somebody step down and I had to appoint a council member," Craig said about choosing someone for the council mid-term. "It has been done."
Now state secretary of planning under Gov. Larry Hogan, Craig left the city's mayor's office, two months into his third successive term in mid-2005, when he was appointed county executive to fill the term of Jim Harkins, who had resigned to become head of the Maryland Environmental Service. Craig was later elected to full terms as county executive in 2006 and 2010, completing the final one last Dec. 1.
When Craig resigned the mayor's post in 2005, then city-council president John Correri succeeded him and served until 2007, when Wayne Dougherty was elected mayor. Correri, who lost to Dougherty in the 2007 mayor's race, had appointed the late Vincent Way to complete Correri's city council term.
Correri eventually returned to the city council, but he and another incumbent, Fred Cullum, were defeated in their re-election bids in last week's election, as voters re-elected incumbent Councilman Randy Craig, David Craig's son, and first-time candidates Monica Worrell and David Martin, who is no relation to Bill Martin, the mayor-elect.
The new council members will also be sworn in to their terms Monday night.
Bill Martin said it may take him a while to choose his successor on the council.
He noted his seat will not be vacant until he is officially sworn in as the city's new mayor. In addition, whomever he selects must also be approved by a majority vote of the five remaining city council members.
"At the moment, I didn't really give it a whole lot of thought," Martin said about his council successor, explaining he was focused on winning the election, in which he defeated Charles Hiner.
"My appointment probably won't come until the second meeting in June," he said, explaining he is "going to properly vet somebody."
The empty council seat, however, "has been the burning question everyone has been asking me," he said.
Martin said if Monica Worrell had not won a council seat, "I would have been more focused on putting a woman on the council."
"I am going to put the right person in, and it's going to be a person who is going to do the right thing for Havre de Grace," he said.
Martin said he has "some names that have been thrown at me" and "I am going to vet them."
Choosing one of the two incumbents who lost, Correri or Cullum, "is a possibility also," he said.
"There's a lot of trains of thought going on right now. Do I put someone on who already has council experience?" Martin wondered. "I think it's important to have a woman on council, at least one, maybe more."
But, he said: "I want the right person in that seat."
"I am going to have an aggressive administration and we are going to make changes in the city, and I am going to make sure whoever I put in my seat is going to have the fortitude to deal with the changes," he said.