4 Candidates Apply For Yardley Council Seat (ICYMI)

YARDLEY, PA — Four candidates, including one current member, have put their names forward to fill a vacated seat on the Yardley Borough council.

Ryan Berry, a Republican who did not get re-elected to the council in Nov. 5 voting, resigned his current seat on the board Tuesday night to apply for the open position, which would next face re-election in two years.

He's joined by investment banker Matt Curtin, educator Demetrios Houmas and Akvile Montvilaite, a recent college graduate.

The seat became vacant when Councilwoman Sandi Brady, a Republican, resigned earlier this month, citing a toxic council atmosphere and a polling-place run-in with a councilman-elect who would later acknowledge making racially insensitive posts on a parody Facebook account.

That councilman-elect, Patrick McGovern, would go on to apologize and announce that he would decline his position on the council when his term was to have started in January.

The borough council will have a special, open meeting on Tuesday, Nov. 26, to interview the four candidates for Brady's seat. Council will then vote to fill the position at its Dec. 3 meeting.
Since there will only be one more council meeting left in the year after that, members do not intend to fill Berry's seat before the newly elected members take office.

On Nov. 5, Democrats swept all three races for seats on Yardley's 7-member council, which currently has a Republican majority. Democrats McGovern, John McCann and Kim Segal-Morris were the top vote-getters in at-large voting, besting Republican incumbents Berry and Bryon Marshall and Dan Mohn on the Republican side.

Once the new council takes office in January, they are expected to put out a similar call for applicants to fill the seat left empty by McGovern.