Houston city council seats Burnett

HOUSTON -- The widow of a candidate who won a spot on Houston's city council last month before dying of a heart attack has been appointed to fill her late husband's vacancy.

Houston City Council appointed Rosemary Burnett to fill a council seat her husband, Carl Burnett, had won before his death.

Rosemary Burnett's appointment came midway through a four-hour meeting in which the council and an audience of Houston residents addressed key issues, such as animal control and priorities for capital improvements. There were also pleas for consensus building after a contentious October election and a fair amount of extra-parliamentary bickering.

Houston is coming out of an election in which five council seats were up for grabs and four out of five races finished with margins of fewer than six votes. Carl Burnett won his seat by six votes, defeating incumbent council member Kim Kasper, who also served as the council-appointed mayor of Houston. The election was contested by incumbent candidate Mike Markiel after election-day rumors of free drinks at the Houston Lodge, which is owned by Burnett's family.

Gary Miller, who owns a local store and operates a gravel pit, spoke in support of appointing Rosemary Burnett to the seat left vacant when her husband died. Miller described Houston as a city of factions -- Miller himself is embroiled in a dispute over the conditional-use permit for his gravel pit. Miller's own objections to a gravel pit permit on land owned by his neighbor, former council member Jerry Nelsen, helped trigger the election season storm.

At Thursday's meeting, Miller said the factions each deserve a voice in the political process and called for the town to move forward.

"We've got the fire hall club, the do-gooders club, and the lodge, which I like to refer to as Cheers -- and Cheers has a right to be represented whether I agree with them or not," Miller said.

Kasper, Rosemary Burnett, and Fred Hallamek all applied for the vacant seat. At the meeting, Kasper accused new council member Cliff Moore of running a campaign against her reappointment, then withdrew her candidacy.

"It's not right to call other council members and poll them," Kasper said. Kasper alleged that such calls were a violation of Alaska's open meetings act. "It's not right for Cliff [Moore] to call the other council members and try to get them to change their vote. And with that, I'm going to withdraw my name."

While Kasper collected her coat and bundled up before leaving, Moore tried to get the last word. "We ran a perfectly clean election and people took it upon themselves to sling mud on it and degrade a legal process," Moore said.

Burnett then spoke briefly to the council. She said her family-owned bar at the Houston Lodge had come under scrutiny by state alcohol regulators because of rumors that started on election day that the bar was giving away a drink to anyone who had voted.

"My liquor license has a mark against it now, and now I have to go before the director [of the Alaska Alcoholic Beverage Control Board] and defend myself," Burnett said. "I have worked very hard to clean that lodge up . . . I hope that our council can grow past all of the petty arguments."

The audience applauded Burnett when she finished her brief speech. Mayor Dale Adams then led the council in a voice vote, and Burnett was unanimously elected. Council member Ken Mortensen was absent from the meeting.