PORT ANGELES – Port Angeles has a new Mayor and a new Deputy Mayor.

At Tuesday night’s City Council meeting, councilmember Mike French was the only member with a nomination for Mayor.

“I’m going to nominate Kate Dexter to be Mayor and then I’m going to be extremely open-minded as far as other nominations for Mayor or Deputy Mayor, but I think that Kate has shown over the last two years as being Deputy Mayor that she knows how to run a meeting, that she can, you know, make tough decisions in very difficult circumstances, and I am completely convinced that she’ll be a fantastic leader for our Council.”

“Thank you very much. I will accept the nomination and it would be a privilege to serve as Mayor if I’m elected. Are there any other nominations?”

There were none, and Kate Dexter was unanimously elected.

The nominations for Deputy Mayor were interesting. Freshman member Charlie McCaughan spoke first.

“Well, I would like to nominate. Mr. French.” 

“In that case, I’m going to nominate Navarra Carr.”

“Okay.”

French went on to say that he would accept the nomination, but made the case that he thought it was a better idea to give the position to one of the new members of the council.

Carr accepted the nomination, and then freshman Brendan Meyer spoke up.

“Are there any other nominations?”

“Is it uncouth to nominate myself for Deputy Mayor? Okay, then then I nominate myself.”

“Make your case.”

“Okay. Well, yeah, I’m very…one of the big tenets of why I ran was communication with the public and getting out there and meeting people. And like you said, having somebody who’s established, like Kate, run…be the Mayor, who is…I’ve watched for half a year up here, I think it is important to have a Deputy Mayor be somebody new, to sort of pass the torch as we continue down this road.”

In the end a vote was taken and Carr was elected Deputy Mayor with 5 votes.