The Encinitas City Council will appoint someone to fill Mayor Bruce Ehlers’ newly vacated District 4 seat instead of seeking a costly special election. “We have things to do and we need to get somebody now,” Ehlers said Wednesday as he explained why he supported using the appointment process to fill his old seat, which represents the Olivenhain and New Encinitas areas. The council’s vote was 3-1, with Councilmember Joy Lyndes opposed. That split echoes the Nov. 5 election results. Ehlers, and newly elected council members Jim O’Hara and Luke Shaffer, endorsed each other and ran on a slate of fighting state high-density housing mandates. The previous council majority — former Mayor Tony Kranz, former Councilmembers Allison Blackwell and Kellie Hinze, plus Lyndes — opposed this position, arguing it would lead to developer lawsuits. Appointing someone to fill out the slightly less than two years remaining in Ehlers’ council term is relatively cost-free because it will only involve staff time, City Clerk Kathy Hollywood said. Having a special election would cost $275,000 to $450,000, depending on whether it was a mail-in-only election or a polling place one. Hollywood said the city will immediately post the application form on the city’s web site. Applications will be due Jan. 9, and the council could select someone later that month or in mid-February. A special election couldn’t have occurred until Aug. 26, she said. Using the appointment process, instead of hosting a special election, has been controversial in recent years because so many council members have been selected this way. Lyndes, plus former Councilmembers Blackwell, Hinze and Joe Mosca, all initially were council appointees. When Ehlers was elected to represent District 4 in 2022, replacing Mosca, he said the council at that time wouldn’t have picked him as an appointee because of his position on state housing mandates, but the voters backed him and that’s why elections can be beneficial. Lyndes, an appointee who later won election to her District 3 seat in 2022, said Wednesday that lately she has been so “demonized” for being an appointee that she now opposes filling the District 4 seat using this process. The council’s vote occurred close to midnight — nearly six hours into a meeting with a packed agenda — but a half-dozen public speakers remained to voice their views. Both some supporters and opponents of the new mayor and two new council members said they wanted to appoint someone, but gave differing reasons for doing so. Supporters said they saw this as a one-time situation and noted voters had just had their say in the November election. “I have not changed my opinion or position,” Encinitas resident and former Mayor Sheila Cameron said. “However, the circumstances have changed and that makes everything entirely different.” But Encinitas resident Marco Gonzalez, who supported the previous council majority, said he thought Ehlers, O’Hara and Shaffer were now being hypocritical by supporting the appointment process, saying O’Hara, in particular, has previously strongly opposed the appointment system. “Let’s just own the hypocrisy,” he said, adding that he continues to support using the appointment process for cost-saving reasons, even though he doesn’t agree with the new council majority’s political views. O’Hara said that Gonzalez was right about his recent views on the appointment process. He said he supported appointments when Mosca was picked in 2017, but began to oppose it when Lyndes, and then Blackwell, were appointed. He said he also felt that Ehlers had previously opposed appointing people. O’Hara added that he now would “reluctantly” support this appointment, but wished he could require the selected person to vow not to run for election later. Ehlers said people weren’t accurate when they said he has supported special elections instead of the appointment process. He voted against the appointment of Blackwell early last year, but he said he would have supported appointing someone who vowed not to run for election later. “I’m very pragmatic when it comes to money,” he said. Under the city codes, applicants must be at least age 18, live within the District 4 boundaries, and be a registered voter. Ehlers said he would prefer to pick someone who lives in New Encinitas, instead of Olivenhain, was “nonpartisan” like him — he’s a former Republican who is now registered as Independent — and is willing to “work hard and read” massive council agenda packets.