By: News On 6
New members of the Broken Arrow City Council will officially begin their new terms on Tuesday in a meeting where city counselors will vote on who will take over the position of mayor.
As a result of the election held on April 6, Debra Wimpee was re-elected to Ward 1 and Lisa Ford was elected for the first time to the Ward 2 seat, taking the position away from council member and City Mayor Craig Thurmond.
That means all five city councilors, will be voting for mayor and one of them will take over the role.
Traditionally in the Broken Arrow council, the mayor holds both a council position and the mayoral position at the same time.
City of Broken Arrow
Broken Arrow City Councilors Debra Wimpee and Christi Gillespie were elected mayor and vice mayor, respectively, at the council s Tuesday meeting, the first time in city history the positions will both be held by women.
Wimpee, an incumbent who held off multiple challengers to retain her council seat earlier this month, was nominated for the position by Gillespie. (In Broken Arrow s council-manager form of government, mayor and vice mayor are chosen by a vote of the council from among the five elected city councilors.)
Each vote was unanimous. You know, mayors don t cry, longtime Councilor Johnnie Parks told Wimpee, who teared up shortly after the vote on her nomination.
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2 New Broken Arrow City Council Members To Begin Terms
Happening Monday, two new Broken Arrow City Council members will take their newly elected seats. Then on Tuesday evening, the council will vote to decide on the new mayor and vice-mayor amongst themselves.
On April 6, Broken Arrow residents voted to re-elect Debra Wimpee for Ward 1 and elect for the first time Lisa Ford to fill the Ward 2 council seat. Ford is replacing 20-year city councilor veteran Craig Thurmond, who has been serving since 2001 with nine of those years as the mayor. He was elected to the mayoral seat in 2012.
Wimpee and Ford begin their new terms at noon on Monday and will publicly be sworn in Tuesday evening at 6:30 p.m. during the regularly scheduled city council meeting. During the meeting, the council will nominate and vote on the positions of mayor and vice-mayor amongst themselves but those results will not be official until certified by the election board.
Broken Arrow Mayor Loses Reelection, City Council To Vote On New Mayor Tuesday
Broken Arrow will soon have a new Mayor, after Craig Thurmond lost his city council re-election bid to Lisa Ford.
Following Ford s election, the women will be the majority on the Broken Arrow City Council for the first time. Really looking forward to coming out of a world pandemic and then having new leadership in our city,” Wimpee said.
Debra Wimpee said her win will help bring the city together again after one of its toughest years ever. I gave up my job and seat at the Union School Board because I felt like it was that important for our citizens voices to be heard,” Ford said.