Placket to resign OS City Council seat July 24

By SCOTT D. JOHNSTON

For GH Newspaper Group

Ocean Shores City Council member Holly Plackett has resigned her position, effective Tuesday, July 24, the day after the next Council meeting. By then, she and her husband, Mark, will be living in Kona, Hawaii.

It was already well known in the North Coast community that the couple has been planning a move to Hawaii, where they hope to establish a “family compound” that will eventually go to their children. Plackett told the North Coast News that the timing of her resignation from the seat she was elected to in November, 2015, was dictated by the final closing of the sale of their house in Ocean Shores.

“I didn’t want to resign my City Council seat a moment too soon,” she said. “I worked too hard for it … and without the proceeds of the house, we weren’t going anywhere.” The Placketts signed off on the sale Sunday and the buyer signed Monday with immediate possession.

She sent Mayor Crystal Dingler and Jon Martin, the Council member chosen by his colleagues as Mayor Pro Tem, notice of her resignation in an email Sunday night. In that message she indicated that she wants to attend the July 23 council meeting by phone, with her resignation effective the next day.

The mayor has created a set of suggested guidelines for the process of the council selecting a replacement, who will serve through 2019, when four council positions will be on the November general election ballot. That topic will be on the July 23 council agenda, and the council will ultimately decide on the procedure, subject to existing state law.

Any applicant must have at least one year of full-time residency in the city at the time of appointment, must be a current registered voter in this district and be able to serve out the term until the November 2019 election certification.

Dingler would like to see applications accepted from 9 a.m. Tuesday, July 24 through 2 p.m. Thursday, August 9, then announce the applicants and provide council members and the media with their resumes and bios at the Monday, August 13, Council meeting. At the next meeting, August 27, Council would publicly interview the applicants, have a private executive session discussion, then return to the open meeting and vote on a successor, who would be sworn in and participate in the reminder of the meeting.

Plackett said of her and husband’s decade in Ocean Shores, “Overall our experience was good; we had some good friends, and this is a beautiful area.” But, she said her two years and eight months on City Council sometimes produced frustration.

“As a community, we need to start understanding what’s going on in the world how we can take advantage of those changes. Progress is not always a bad thing and I’d like Ocean Shores to be a little more progressive. …

“People need to have a little more positive outlook on what can make our life a little bit better out there and not being discouraging to new ideas,” she remarked. Future councils “need to be more willing to listen to new ideas, to try things, and to be more collaborative with the community.”