BELLEAIR BEACH — What to do about filling vacancies on the City Council? This has been a nagging problem since the beginning of the year, when only four of the seven seats were filled.

City officials recently reopened the application process, intending to fill one vacancy until pressures from hurricane recovery prompted the mayor to call for all three vacancies to be filled. At an emergency meeting held via Zoom on Oct. 8 — the day before Hurricane Milton made landfall — the topic of filling empty council seats was high on the agenda.

Officials basically had to decide between having seven members or five. Based on a ballot initiative last March, the size of the board will be reduced to five in November 2026. But until then, it’s still a seven-member board.

City Attorney Randy Mora said at a previous meeting that it was up to the council whether to fill one, two or three seats, “but actually there are three vacancies.”

Several council members agreed with the idea of ​​taking one seat, making it a five-member council, since there are going to be five in 2026 anyway.

But that thinking changed when the hurricanes hit.

“At this critical time, council must respond immediately to all emergency meetings, regular meetings and work sessions to quickly and efficiently restore our city,” said Mayor Dave Gattis, stressing the importance of having a quorum to conduct business .

“Tonight, we have the three candidates who answered the call for another councillor. … Any disruption of government business makes Belleair Beach ripe for dissolution. We need to be able to do business in these tough times. So tonight, I’m asking you to approve these three volunteers as interim board members,” Gattis said.

The candidates – who must run again in 2026 if they want to continue in office – were all named after making brief presentations.

Todd Harper, a Belleair Beach resident since 2015, noted that he served on the board from 2018 to 2019.

Harper said he’s always been geared toward serving his community, which “takes precedence over a lot of other things,” and touted his 30 years of experience in a technology business.

Jody Shirley served on the council from 2018 and as deputy mayor from October 2022 until her resignation in December due to stricter financial reporting rules — a requirement now “on hold” following a court order. Shirley said her current motivation for serving on the board is to help with hurricane recovery.

She was asked what she would do if the state imposed stricter disclosure requirements again.

“I guess we’ll have to work it out at that point,” Shirley said. “Clearly the city has bigger issues than whether or not I’m going to resign whenever the Form 6 (disclosure filing) might come up again.”

Anders Wellings applied earlier in the year to serve on the board, but officials weren’t ready to fill seats at the time. He has since joined the Board of Adjustments.

Wellings said he has attended council meetings and is “quite aware of a lot of the issues.” An engineer by trade, he wants to “get things done and do the right thing for this city,” Wellings said.

“I’d like to thank all three of you for stepping up,” Gattis said. “Our city is in great need right now.”

Regarding the possibility of reintroducing the Form 6 requirements, the mayor said, “I have a feeling that the state of Florida will not follow our elected municipal officials in these trying times.”

The vote was unanimous to appoint Harper, Shirley and Wellings to the vacant council seats, and each was sworn in by City Clerk Renee Rose.

Emergency measures established

Resolutions were passed extending the state of emergency for Hurricane Helene and adding Hurricane Milton.

After City Manager Kyle Riefler gave a status report, Councilman Frank Bankard had some words of praise for him.

“One thing I left out of the city manager’s report was the city manager rescuing elderly couples in the middle of the storm (Helene). Amazing, Kyle. You are a gem to this city. We need to do something for you and the rest of the staff. It has to be something monetary, because ‘thank you’ only goes so far,” Bankard said.

Riefler noted that with Helene and other storms in the past, “we’ve been very fortunate. I think we’re a little higher up than the rest of the barrier island beach communities, so sometimes our damage is less.”

Gattis added, “We have to continue to keep Madeira, the Redingtons, Treasure Island and all those communities in our thoughts and prayers, as well as Belleair Beach, because it’s devastating what happened to everyone.”