MOUNT CARBON - Unable to find candidates to fill seats on the borough council, Mount Carbon has set a court date in an effort to reduce its council from five members to three.
"With Mount Carbon being a small community, there are only so many people who want to get involved, and last year we had a couple of instances where we had trouble getting a quorum," Mayor Jeffrey J. Dunkel said Monday.
The borough recently filed a petition on the matter to the Schuylkill County Court of Common Pleas, and a hearing has been scheduled for 9:30 a.m. May 2 in Courtroom No. 3, according to borough solicitor Chris Riedlinger, Pottsville.
"The judge has to approve the request," Riedlinger said.
If it's approved, the council will work with Riedlinger to develop a process to reduce its council membership, Dunkel said.
"This won't happen overnight," borough Councilwoman Jennifer Raess said Monday.
"I believe this will be in place by the end of 2015, where it would be a three-member council. It usually takes one to two years for it to work out properly," Dunkel said.
According to the Borough Code, boroughs not divided into wards must have seven members on their councils, but boroughs of fewer than 3,000 residents may have five or three members on their councils.
Mount Carbon has a population of 91, according to the website for the U.S. Census Bureau at census.gov.
Councils with ewer than 3,000 residence can decrease the number of council members with a petition containing signatures from 5 percent of the registered voters in the community, according to the Borough Code.
The current members of the board and their political affiliations are: Kirk Kirkland, president, Democrat; Michelle Stephenson, Republican; Raess, Democrat, who was appointed to the board in April 2011; Harry Haughney, Democrat; and John McCord, Democrat.
McCord was appointed to the board April 9, according to Susan B. McCord, his wife, the borough secretary.
Mount Carbon is a member of the Pennsylvania State Association of Boroughs, Harrisburg.
Courtney Accurti, the association's director of communications, said she doesn't see municipalities making petitions to reduce the size of their councils everyday.
"It seems to crop up from time to time in some of the smaller municipalities but there hasn't been a distinct trend," Accurti said Monday.