Syracuse City Council appoints new member to fill seat

SYRACUSE — The Syracuse City Council has appointed Larry Shingleton to a vacant seat on the council — an appointment not without some controversy.

Shingleton was selected out of a field of 22 applicants, including eight women, for the seat left vacant by Phil Orton. Orton, who during the summer began a new job that requires him to travel, resigned in late August.

Shingleton, a 16-year resident of Syracuse and an account broker for a food manager, will fill the remainder of Orton's term, which is set to expire in 2010. Shingleton ran unsuccessfully for a council seat last year.

After hearing three-minute presentations by all but the three candidates who didn't attend last week's meeting, the council withdrew into a 66-minute closed session to debate the candidates' merits.

When it came back, a motion to appoint Planning Commission Chairman Robert Whiteley failed because of a tie vote, one from which Mayor Fred Panucci abstained.

Councilman Doug Hammond moved to appoint Shingleton to the council, and the vote ended in a tie again, with Hammond and Councilman Doug Peterson voting "aye" and councilmen Alan Clark and Lurlen Knight voting "nay."

That time, Panucci broke the tie vote with his support.

Hammond said one of the reasons he nominated Shingleton for the seat is that Shingleton only lost the election by 194 votes.

Clark and Knight said they supported Whiteley as the most qualified candidate and said while they look forward to working with Shingleton, they questioned whether November's vote was a good enough reason to appoint someone to the council.

Hammond and Shingleton go way back. Both men sponsored a petition to put before voters a controversial move by the City Council in October 2006 that made changes to city government operations.

The petition was widely seen as supporting Panucci, who argued that the council could not make changes to the city's form of government.

But Panucci said that support didn't weigh into his decision to break the tie vote Tuesday.

"A lot of people can serve and do good in the representation of Syracuse," he said, adding that even current council members might not have been the most qualified people when they ran for office.

Hammond and Shingleton were also part of a lawsuit against the City Council after the council failed to suspend its ordinance once the petition was filed. The issue at the time helped push state lawmakers to solidify in state code the acceptable forms of city and town government.

Hammond, Peterson and Shingleton's campaign signs were often grouped together during their campaigns in 2007. And the vote for the city's form of government overturned the council's October 2006 decision.

Shingleton says he was one of the ones who sued the city because the council wasn't following the state constitution.

"When I got up there," he said, referring to his swearing in, "I pledged to uphold the Constitution of the United States and the state of Utah. I take that very seriously."

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E-mail: jdougherty@desnews.com