LOWER POTTSGROVE >> Here we go again.
Yet another member of the Lower Pottsgrove Board of Commissioners has resigned.
This time its James Vlahos, whose resignation was accepted Monday night and who was only elected to a full four-year term about four months ago.
The news was first reported online in The Sanatoga Post Tuesday morning.
This marks the fourth resignation from the board of commissioners in the last two years.
“My business has really picked up quite a bit,” Vlahos told The Mercury Tuesday afternoon.
In his resignation letter, Vlahos also cited his obligations to a number of service agencies, including, “Montgomery County Community College Foundation; Vietnam Veterans of America, Chapter 565 and Elks 814 Veterans Committee.”
Vlahos, who is president of Vlahos-Dunn Insurance on High Street, said “in the last couple of years, the economy has stabilized and business has been very good. My business has to come first.”
Asked what had changed since he decided to seek a full four-year term in November, Vlahos said “I didn’t want to pull out of the race in the middle, they really are a good bunch of guys. But after the new year, things at the office really picked up and I had to make a decision.”
Business obligations were also the reason Vlahos offered when he resigned from Pottstown Borough Council in November 2006.
In fact, Vlahos has never completed a term of office to which he was elected.
His 2006 resignation from borough council occurred one year before his term was expired.
And his resignation Monday comes just two years and one month after he was appointed to the Lower Pottsgrove Board of Commissioners in June 2014, to replace Jonathan Spadt, who stepped down a month earlier.
Vlahos was elected to a full four-year term in November and his resignation means whomever is chosen to replace him will serve until “the next municipal election” at the end of 2017, according to Township Solicitor Charles D. Garner Jr.
The seat is then once again open in a general election for the remaining two years of the term, Garner explained.
Board Chairman Bruce Foltz said he and the rest of the board was “totally taken by surprise” by the resignation, which is they “really didn’t sit down and talk about how we want to handle replacing him.”
However Foltz said the township will accept applications for the next week or 10 days from those interested, as well as contact those who applied last year to replace Shawn Watson to see if they’re still interested in serving.
“We have to do something pretty quick,” said Foltz. “That 30 days doesn’t give you a lot of time.”
More recently, the board has been reaching out to the community in such occasions and Garner advised the board to make the process “as transparent as possible.”
When Ray Lopez was chosen to replace Shawn Watson – who resigned in September 2015, after The Mercury revealed he had a long list of unpaid taxes, including to the township and school district – applications were sought.
Five people applied and Lopez was chosen from among those applicants.
The others who applied were Charles Nippert, Justin Valentine, Robert Franciose, and B. Scott Fulmer.
By contrast, when Vlahos was appointed in 2014, there was no open application process and he was simply selected by the four remaining commissioners.
And in February 2015, when James Kaiser resigned, former West Pottsgrove police chief Earl Swavely Jr. was appointed without seeking any applicants.
Legally, the board’s only obligation is to choose a replacement within 30 days, said Garner.
The board can ask for new applicants, choose from among the four who applied last year or make an entirely different choice, Garner said.
The only regularly scheduled commissioners meeting that falls within the 30-day window is on Thursday, May 19.
If the board has not decided by then, said Garner, is must schedule a special meeting. If it does not act, a judge can appoint a replacement.
“I have enjoyed serving the people of Lower Pottsgrove Township over the past two and a half years,” Vlahos wrote in his resignation letter. “To the residents of Lower Pottsgrove, thank you for your trust over the past several years.”
