The Greensboro City Council is scheduled to select a new councilmember at the virtual meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 14, and there is no lack of choices.

The application deadline was Wednesday, Sept. 9 at 11:59, so if you were meaning to apply but putting it off you have procrastinated too much.  However, a lot of people didn’t.

The City Council has 47 self-nominated candidates to consider.  The original plan was to give each nominee five minutes to speak to the council about why they should be appointed to the vacant City Council seat, but after online applications started flooding in, the time limit was reduced to three minutes.  Even with the reduced time limit, if all nominees speak for three minutes, realistically the City Council is looking at least three hours of listening to them speak.

After that the City Council has to make a decision on who to select to replace former At-large City Councilmember Michelle Kennedy who resigned to accept the job as director of the Greensboro Neighborhood Development Department.

The city released a spreadsheet of the applications listed in alphabetical order, so it is simply a coincidence that former City Councilmember Mike Barber, who is considered one of the leading contenders for the seat, is at the top of the list.  In 2017 Barber finished in fourth place about 100 votes behind Kennedy, and in the at-large City Council race, the top three win seats on the City Council.

Also by coincidence, the third name on the list is former City Councilmember and current Guilford County Board of Education member T. Dianne Bellamy-Small.

The 47 people who nominated themselves for the open City Council seat are:

Mike Barber

Pandora Bell

  1. Dianne Bellamy Small

Julia Blizin

Brenton Boyce

Steven Burns

Kim Clark

Harold Clayton

Rev. Eric Cole

Logan Combs

Roger Cooper

Daniel Craft

Kristan Dunphy

Justin Fennell

Theresa Furman

Dr. LaToya Gathers

Robyn Gest

Dorothy Goebel

Lee Goldston

Kali Griggs

Jacob Hicks

Hugh Holston

Uzma Kashi

Matthew Kennedy

Joel Landau

Rickard Levy

Gerry McCants

Christopher Meadows

John Merritt

Derek Mobley

Jason Norris

Blake Odum

Jacqueline Perkins

Hester Petty

Rebecca Phillips

Jeffery Roberts

Mickela Roher

Katie Rossabi

Michael Rubin

Nicky Smith

Heather Stinson

Dr. Linda Wilson

Gerald Wong

Carolyn Woodruff

John Wright

You can view all the applications here: https://www.greensboro-nc.gov/government/city-council