- Meagan Guthrie was appointed to the Ludlow City Council Thursday night
- The choice came down to Guthrie and another applicant, whose nomination failed to garner a second from council
- Council Member Julie Navarre encouraged the community to stay politically engaged, especially in the face of the impending election
The Ludlow City Council voted Thursday to install Meagan Guthrie to the open seat on the council that appeared after former Council Member Sarah Thompson was appointed to the mayor’s seat earlier this month.
When a council seat opens up in the middle of a term, the remaining city council members must appoint someone to fill the seat within 30 days of the vacancy. Otherwise, the power to appoint falls to the governor.
City councils in the commonwealth have latitude in how they go about making the appointment, and Ludlow had put out calls for letters of interest from residents about a week ago.
“We had a number of letters that were received,” Thompson said.
Council Member Stephen Chapman made the first motion to nominate someone. He and the other council members said that there were several qualified applicants, but Chapman liked one named James Cicchetti. Chapman made a motion to nominate Ciccheti, but it failed to garner a second from another council member.
Council Member Julie Navarre made the motion to nominate Guthrie.
“I feel like Meagan and Jim were very close,” said Council Member Paula Grazsus.
“I was impressed by Meagan,” said Council Member David Ziegler.
Grazsus seconded Navarre’s motion, then the council voted. Grazsus, Navarre and Zielger voted in favor of Guthrie. Chapman voted no, and Council Member Abby Miller abstained from voting.
Guthrie currently works as the director of addiction response for Hamilton County across the river. She’s lived with her husband in Ludlow for six years.
She said she wanted to focus “really a lot on the coalition building, the grassroots. What can we do to make sure that the community is heard and listened to?”
When asked if there were any specific goals she wanted to push for while on the council, she said she wanted to focus on bringing in more businesses to the city.
“What [can we] do to kind of look at what can incentivize more businesses to want to come to Ludlow and stay in Ludlow,” Guthrie told LINK nky, “but also being respectful of what makes Ludlow so unique.”
The other council members were complimentary of the engagement they got from the residents who decided to put their names in the running for the open seat. Navarre reminded residents that an election was coming up and encouraged people to remain polticially engaged.
“I hope that we see the same energy from the city that we saw attempting to fill this position…,” Navarre said. “It would be fabulous for us to have a large pool of people to be running for council.”
