NELSONVILLE, Ohio — During its special meeting Monday, Nelsonville City Council appointed three new council members to fill vacant seats for the month of December.
The Dec. 1 meeting started with the swearing in of current council members Cory Taylor, Nic Joseph-Saul, Cameron Peck, and McCray Powell, who all ran for one-month terms before the city transitions to a charter-less government next year.
The council then appointed Taylor as a temporary chair of the meeting and Joseph-Saul as a temporary clerk of council so the new appointments could be made.
Amy Hollenbaugh and Nancy Sonick were unanimously appointed to serve on the council, following the end of terms for Opha Lawson and Jonathan Flowers.
Sonick previously served on council but resigned in July and ran as a write-in mayoral candidate this past general election.
Council President Gregg Clemment’s term was also up, but he was unanimously reappointed to council “to serve for the month of December, only to have a full council,” Taylor said.
The council then unanimously appointed Peck to serve as the new council president and Joseph-Saul to serve as the new council vice president.
The terms were up because of the “December problem,” a term coined by Ad-Hoc Advisory Commission Chair Reid Courtney to describe the one-month lapse between the end of charter-based council members’ terms in December and the beginning of statutory-based terms for members in January 2026.
However, the terms for the appointed council members could run longer than just one month.
In August, the council repealed Issue 23, an initiative overwhelmingly passed by voters in November 2024 that abolished the Nelsonville City Charter and would return the city to statutory-based government.
The council repealed the Issue by adopting, Ordinance 54-25, which, according to City Law Director Jonathan Robe “remains the law” and “the default rule.”
Robe told the Independent the terms can be best described as a “contingency.”
“The contingency, of course, is, does Issue 23 control, or does Ordinance 54-25 control?” he said. “If Issue 23 controls, it’s a one-month term. If Ordinance 54-25 controls, [the terms run until] December of 2027.”
Until a court strikes down Ordinance 54-25 or the council revokes the repeal of Issue 23, the future of the city’s government remains uncertain. The city has already made numerous attempts to have a court rule on Ordinance 54-25, to no avail.
Nelsonville City Council meets every other Monday of each month, at Nelsonville City Council Chambers, 211 Lake Hope Drive. Its next regular meeting will be 7 p.m. Monday, Dec. 8. Meetings are live streamed on YouTube. Find more atcityofnelsonville.com.
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