The City Council will hold a special meeting Monday night to appoint a new member. It will be the second such appointment in as many months.
The session will begin at 6:30 p.m. and replace the regularly scheduled council meeting that had been set for Tuesday.Four Murray residents filed applications for the job by the Sept. 14 deadline, but two of them were dropped from the candidate list when it was determined they did not have the required number of valid voter signatures.
That leaves former two-term Councilman Lynn Turner and political newcomer Bob Carter as the remaining candidates for the District 2 council seat vacated last month by John Ward.
Both men will be interviewed in open meeting, and the remaining four councilmen will then vote on a replacement for Ward.
In the event of a 2-2 tie, state law provides the matter must be decided by drawing lots.
City Attorney Frank Nakamura said he interprets that to mean the winner can be decided by a coin toss, a drawing of names or some similar method.
The new council appointee will serve until Dec. 31, 1999.
Ward, who resigned from the council last month for personal reasons, defeated Turner in a write-in campaign last November.
A retired Murray police sergeant, Turner served eight years on the council and served a stint as council chairman.
Carter, who is employed as manager of systems and technical support for BlueCross BlueShield of Utah, has lived in Murray for five years.
He holds an associate's degree in computer science and was employed in the oil industry for 13 years, working supervisory positions in Louisiana and Alaska.
This will be the second Murray council appointment in the past six weeks.
Robert V. Stauffer was appointed Aug. 11 to replace Gary Ferrero, who stepped down last July after 11 years on the council to become judge of the city's new Justice Court.
Dropped from the candidate list because of insufficient signatures were Betty Crossman and Lynn Chatterton.
Crossman only submitted 149 of the required 150 signatures, and a voter registration with the county clerk's office determined that only 132 were properly registered and lived in District 2.
Chatterton submitted 169 signatures but came up four short when it was determined that only 146 met the registration requirements.