READING, Pa. – Reading City Council struggled through numerous contentious motions on Monday to appoint new members to fill three vacancies on the city redevelopment authority.
While none of the votes taken were unanimous, the three new redevelopment authority members ultimately appointed were S. Sergei Szortyka (CEO of Quaker Maid Meats), Kevin Yarnall (a realtor and real estate broker) and Joey Miranda (president of the Pagoda Foundation).
On Oct. 27, council interviewed six candidates who applied for the positions on the authority.
Reading City Council got to work Wednesday night on bringing the Reading Redevelopment Authority back to its full membership.
The sticking point on Monday was that the rankings given to the candidates by councilmembers through an email survey did not match the final result.
In the score tally, Szortyka ranked first, Yarnall was second and Bladimir Mercedes was third. Coming in at fourth, fifth and six respectively were Miranda, Karen Glass and Wanda Negron.
During the Committee of the Whole meeting prior to the voting meeting, Councilmembers Jaime Baez and Melissa Ventura said they were prepared to move forward with selecting the top three candidates.
Council President Donna Reed, however, said she still had questions and wanted to only select only one candidate so that the authority would have a quorum and then appoint two additional members at another point.
“I think this is the perfect time and platform that we’re in to have that discussion and those questions answered or question them,” Baez told Reed. “I guess I’m just curious to know what questions are out there, and why are we not moving forward with filling up these seats? We have three amazing candidates who council thought were the top three contenders.”
“I think the public deserves transparency, and the public deserves to hear what those questions are and what it is that’s holding us back from moving forward with the three candidates,” he said.
Reed would not specifically state her concerns.
But council solicitor Michael Gombar, who explained the deliberations must be made in public, said if there were any questions concerning the eligibility of the candidates which could lead towards potential litigation, the matter could be discussed in a very limited matter in a closed-door executive session.
There did appear to be concerns of residency, but Gombar explained only one of the new members needed to be a city resident, while the other two could be residents or business owners in the city.
Of the six candidates, Mercedes and Szortyka were non-residents.
Council had already scheduled an executive session to occur between the Committee of the Whole and the voting meetings.
During the voting meeting, Reed attempted unsuccessfully to table the vote on all three candidates.
Ventura attempted to make a motion to appoint only Mercedes, but that also failed.
During several more attempts at making motions and making amendments to motions, council voted 4-3 to appoint Szortyka and Yarnall, with Wesley Butler, Chris Miller and Reed voting no.
Another 4-3 vote was made to appoint Miranda, with Vanessa Campos, Ventura and Baez voting no.