The Lynnwood City Council for the third time is starting the process of finding a new councilmember, after its latest pick withdrew her appointment following revelations of sexually explicit material she posted to the internet.
Hours before the council was scheduled to discuss the matter in a special meeting Thursday, Jessica Roberts stepped down from her appointment, calling the scrutiny of her personal life a “potential distraction from the council’s forward progress.”
The council did not make an official decision Thursday on how to move forward, but discussed potentially running the remaining candidates through a background check, and vetting their social media accounts. The council is set to discuss the matter further at its Monday business meeting.
The four remaining candidates are Robert Leutwyler, Nazanin Lashgari, Chelsea Wright and Forrest Baum.
On Tuesday, the Lynnwood Times posted an article revealing Roberts’ former Onlyfans account and sexually explicit posts she made to online forums before being appointed to the council. The Onlyfans account – a website where creators can lock content behind a paywall – was deleted Monday night, according to the Times.
Roberts was the second person appointed to fill the vacancy left by former Councilmember Julieta Altamirano-Crosby’s abrupt resignation in January. In February, the council voted to appoint Rebecca Thornton to the position, but she stepped down an hour before she was set to take an oath of office.
City Attorney Lisa Marshall said city and state laws around choosing a new councilmember are vague and don’t provide specific guidelines for the situation at hand. The council is free to do whatever research it sees fit, as long as it aligns with the law and a new councilmember is appointed before the 90-day deadline.
Council President Nick Coelho presented three potential ways the council could move forward.
1. Hold another vote on the four remaining candidates at an upcoming meeting,
2. Re-interview the four remaining candidates and ask a new set of questions, possibly at the March 19 work session,
3. Bring in the next five top-ranking candidates out of the 19 total applicants and conduct another interview session with eight candidates, asking new questions.
The general consensus among councilmembers was to move forward with the four remaining candidates, but didn’t decide whether they would hold another round of interviews.
City code requires the council to interview the eight top-ranked candidates and choose from that pool. Councilmember George Hurst said the council had already done so, and he didn’t see a need to depart from the city code’s guidelines and bring more candidates in for an interview.
Councilmember Patrick Decker proposed the city do a search into the remaining candidates’ social media activity and run a background check to find details that might not be discovered in an interview. Hurst pushed back on this idea, stating elected officials typically aren’t required to undergo a background check.
Roberts and Leutwyler were tied when the council took a final vote Monday to select a councilmember. Leutwyler also tied with Thornton for the final vote when the council took its first vote to fill the vacancy in February. After returning from a closed executive session to discuss the tie, the council then returned and voted unanimously to appoint both Thornton in February and Roberts on Monday.
Decker said he didn’t feel the need to take another vote, as the council had already voted on the remaining candidates twice now.
“We have already voted on the four remaining candidates,” Decker said. “We came to two [candidates], one of those are no longer viable. It seems logical that the remaining person, who was the choice of three of this council, would be the one that we would offer the position to because that individual has the most votes of the four remaining individuals.”
Councilmember Hurst echoed Decker’s sentiment.
“I don’t want to go back into an executive session again,” Hurst said. “I want the discussion on the votes up here on the dais. … I think we had a superior candidate, and ended up twice not bringing that candidate forward. I just want people to know why we didn’t do that, or why we won’t do that again.”
More information on the candidates and how the council voted March 10 can be found here.
According to state law, the council has 90 days to fill the vacancy, meaning the deadline to appoint a new councilmember is April 6.
— Contact Ashley at ashley@myedmondsnews.com.
So what she had an only fans? That doesn’t seem to have any bearing on her ability to perform duties as a council member. It’s just this town’s leadership revealing themselves to be a bunch of prudes.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a background check for all the council members though, and I think it’s a little suss that Hurst doesn’t think the council members should have to undergo one.