State College Borough Council on Monday selected an interim member to fill a vacancy on the seven-member governing board.
John Hayes will fill the remainder of former council member Divine Lipscomb’s elected term through Dec. 31, 2025. Lipscomb, who was elected in November 2021, resigned effective May 12 because he is moving out of town.
Hayes was among four borough residents who applied for the open council position, along with Nathan Romig, Tony Sapia and Tyler Thompson. Each gave presentations during a council work session on May 13.
A 15-year resident of the College Heights neighborhood, Hayes is a professor of food science at Penn State and serves on the State College Transportation Commission.
“My central motivation for applying for this open position on council is my strong interest in planning and transportation, and more critically, the way these decisions impact the daily quality of life for residents and potential residents of our community,” Hayes said during his presentation.
Citing data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve, Hayes said there is a housing affordability crisis locally and nationally that can be attributed to the underproduction of housing over the last 15 years. For that reason, he said, Hayes was “generally supportive” of the growth in high-rise development over the past decade in downtown State College, noting that a community cannot “stay trapped in amber and still prosper.”
“But I also believe substantial mistakes were made in terms of misaligned incentives that led to unintended and undesirable consequences, such as one-and-a-half Super Walmarts worth of unfilled commercial space downtown,” Hayes said. “This is why I support efforts for a comprehensive rewrite of our zoning in the borough. Such a rewrite is long overdue as continuing to patch a zoning code introduced during the Eisenhower administration will not and cannot meet our long-term needs for the future.”
Using a process similar to those utilized in filling other vacancies in recent years, council members names were drawn at random to determine the order of nominations on Monday night. The first nominee to receive a majority of four votes would win the position and no further votes would be taken.
Council member Kevin Kassab drew first position and nominated Romig, who received Kassab’s vote but no others.
Next in the order was council member Nalini Krishnankutty, who nominated Hayes. Kassab voted no, but Krishnankutty, Gopal Balachandran, Matt Herndon and Josh Portney voted yes to give Hayes the needed four votes. Council President Evan Myers did not vote on either nomination because he was last in line and the outcome had already been determined.
Council members praised each of the applicants as having been strong candidates for the position
Krishnankutty said the ultimate choice of Hayes was not a reflection on the other three candidates. Her criteria, she said, aimed to “really keep in mind who we were replacing, what the mandate of the voters had been.”
“I wanted to say that only to say it doesn’t mean any of the other candidates that I didn’t nominate were not worthy of the position or wouldn’t have done a great job,” Krishnankutty said.
Mayor Ezra Nanes thanked each of the candidates for performing a public service in applying.
“I, too, felt very proud last week,” Nanes said. “I felt we had four spectacular applicants. Having been through this myself actually twice and not been chosen, your participation in the process is a service to the community and it means a lot. Thank you to all four of the applicants. You do us all proud.”
Hayes will be sworn in during council’s regular meeting on June 3.
“The borough is a great place to live and I sincerely believe that we all want to make it a better place to live for present and future residents,” Hayes said during his presentation. “Achieving this goal requires coalition-building, and those coalitions may result in unexpected partners or allies who may not see eye-to-eye on issues that are outside the remit of the Borough Council. By focusing on concrete steps we can take locally, I believe we can craft policy that will make our great town even better.”
