Following the death of Mayor Bill Welch, State College Borough Council has 45 days to find someone to fill the seat until the end of the year, Council President Elizabeth Goreham said.
Welch, who has held his position since 1994, died Friday at Penn State's Milton S. Hershey Medical Center due to complications following leg bypass surgery, Borough Manager Tom Fountaine said.
"Locally, under the Home Rule Charter in State College, the borough council will select someone to finish Mayor Welch's term, which goes to the end of this year," Fountaine said.
Borough council doesn't meet until Sept. 14, but Goreham is hopeful the vacant office will be filled within the next month, she said. She also said she isn't sure who council has in mind to fill the void left by Welch, but she has her own ideas of what kind of person would fit the bill.
"The most important thing is to choose someone who would honor the legacy of Bill Welch," Goreham said. "It is his term of office, and I know we are all deeply shocked."
Democratic and Republican parties will also need to find new candidates for the November election, as the late mayor passed away far enough in advance of the fall election, Centre County Board of Commissioners Chairman Jon Eich said. Both parties must find candidates by the end of September, Eich said.
"In Pennsylvania you can only run on one line at a time in a primary, so he ran as a Democrat and secured that nomination," Eich said. "Then Republicans wrote him in so he won that nomination as well, so in the fall he would have had two lines in the election."
There will be a meeting today with a solicitor to make sure the borough is meeting all the local and state standards of the election codes for filling an empty office, Eich said. He added this will clear council and the two parties to begin the replacement process.
Both parties have different rules by which candidates are chosen in this situation, Goreham said, but no matter what, the selection process is going to be difficult.
"That is going to be a very strange campaign because the shadow of Bill Welch will definitely be over us," Goreham said. "It seems like it is his office that we are running for, and that is strange. He loved the borough, he loved State College and he really loved being mayor."
Goreham and Eich said the fact that both parties selected Welch as a candidate is just one example of how much love and respect State College residents had for Welch, and the two agree he is going to be missed.
"He did the job well; he was a very good face of State College," Eich said. "Borough council turns over quite frequently, and he was in the job for [many] years. He had a lot of respect."
