That title was held by Val McLay, who was voted out of office during the Oct. 3 regular municipal election.
With council member Matt Shadle absent, and Roberts taking her seat on the council for the first time, council member Doug Stark nominated Mike Heimbuch, while council member Beth Wythe nominated Novak.
The council then voted twice by secret ballot and both times Novak garnered three votes to Heimbuch’s two, failing to get the required four votes to name a mayor pro tempore.
After more than 30 minutes of wrangling over city code and taking a five-minute break, Heimbuch withdrew his name from the nomination, deferring to Novak’s seniority on the council and age.
“With all the negative attention the council has been getting recently, I just thought someone had to step aside,” Heimbuch said Tuesday.
In the open vote to follow, Novak was named mayor pro tempore unanimously.
“Congratulations, Dennis, I hope you know what you are getting yourself into,” Mayor Hornaday said.
“I recognize that this is an additional level of responsibility,” Novak said. “I got a lot to live up to here. I’ll do the best I can, thank you.”
During closing comments, Roberts said she was glad to be on the council.
“I hope I do a good job for the citizens of Homer. And I wanted to say a very special thank you to Val McLay for doing everything he did for the city,” she said.
McLay was awarded a plaque, thanking him for his service on the council and highlighting more than 20 city projects he had helped move through the council.
Ben Stuart can be reached at ben.stuart@homernews.com.
The mayor pro tempore is second in command and serves as mayor when the elected mayor is incapacitated or disqualifies himself from proceedings due to a conflict of interest.
We encourage you to add your comments. To prevent spam, comments with links are manually approved during the normal business day. Please be respectful of others with your comments, bear in mind anyone in the community may be reading your comments.
