Well, that was uneventful.
The City of Mill Valley’s scheduled June 7th City Council election was canceled last week due to a lack of candidates for the three open positions on the five-member council. City officials estimated that scrapping the vote will save the city $45,000 in election expenses.
There were three open positions. Mayor John McCauley chose not to run for a third term, and Mill Valley native Max Perrey, who leads the city’s Emergency Preparedness Commission and co-chairs Sustainable Mill Valley, filed to run for a four-year seat on the council. Perrey had fallen approximately 420 votes short in the tight 2020 council election.
Stephen Burke, a former Mill Valley parks and recreation commissioner who played a key role in the city’s traffic task force in 2016, was appointed in September 2021 to fill out the term of former councilwoman Tricia Ossa, who moved out of state, also decided to run for a four-year term. Councilman Jim Wickham, originally elected in 2015 to a four-year term and later elected to fill out the remaining two years of former Councilmember Jessica Jackson’s term, decided to run for another two-year term.
With a trio of vacancies and a trio of candidates who filed papers, city officials leaned on the California Elections Code that allows the city council to appoint the nominees and cancel the election. The new councilmembers will be sworn into office June 21 at City Hall.