The Rialto City Council’s empty seat will be officially filled next week. At a more-than-three-hour special meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 7, the council interviewed candidates to fill a vacancy created when then-Councilmember Joe Baca Sr. was elected mayor in November. In an unanimous decision Tuesday, the council chose Edward A. Montoya Jr. to complete the remaining two years of Baca’s four-year council term. “Thank you all for this opportunity,” Montoya said after the decision. “You won’t be disappointed.” Montoya is the co-founder and executive director of the Rialto-based Brotherhood Bridge Foundation, a support network for veterans and first responders. According to the foundation’s website, Montoya is an Army veteran who was deployed to both Afghanistan and Iraq. He will be sworn in as the newest Rialto councilmember at the council’s next regular meeting, scheduled for Jan. 14. Under state law, the council has until Feb. 8 to appoint a replacement for Baca on the council. On Tuesday, 15 would-be council members were interviewed in the order in which their applications were received by the City Clerk’s Office: Edward A. Montoya Jr. Mike Story Javier Gomez Josef B. Britt Kelvin D. Moore Vickie Davis Ivan Ramirez Elvis Garcia Rocio Martinez Rafael Trujillo Jr. Guadalupe Camacho Jessica Justine Haro Joshua Augustus Lameisha George Ana Gonzalez “Very frankly, all of the candidates were great,” Councilmember Ed Scott said after the interviews. “I see a lot of potential for commissioners, maybe an employee or two.” In the end, newly elected Councilmember Karla Perez nominated Montoya to fill the open seat and the mayor and council unanimously approved his appointment without further discussion. Sign up for The Localist, our daily email newsletter with handpicked stories relevant to where you live. Subscribe here. Longtime Inland Empire politician Baca won with 40.52% of the vote in November’s election, trailed by sitting mayor Deborah Robertson, who held the seat for 12 years, with 29.39% of the vote. Behind them both were Rafael Trujillo with 23.62%, and Ché Rose Wright with 6.48% of the vote. November’s council election had two seats up for grabs, with incumbent Councilmember Andy Carrizales receiving 22.38% of the vote, followed by Karla Perez with 19.07% of the vote. They beat out five other candidates: Ana Gonzalez, who got 17.40% of the vote; Vickie Davis, who got 13.09%; Kelvin D. Moore, who got 12.88%; Lupe Camacho, who got 9.29%; and Paola Vargas, who received 5.9% of the vote. Montoya had not been a candidate in November’s council election. Members of the public called on the council to appoint Gonzalez, the top vote-getter in November who did not win a council seat, as they had at the council’s last meeting on Dec. 10. “Do the right thing by the voters of this city,” Rialto resident Michelle Sanchez said Tuesday. “The council seat was vacated because of an election. There’s no need to have a special election. Just take the next highest vote-getter. That’s what the city wanted. That’s what the community wanted.” And they advocated for a new city ordinance that would automatically put the next highest vote-getter in future open seats. The proposal for the ordinance “is to garner, to harvest, to secure and to just maintain the integrity of this city,” said Rialto resident Brenda Parker. “And I think that is more important than anything that anybody can do. So I’m asking you to show your integrity, to show your dedication, to show your honesty, to this city and honor the next highest vote-getter.” Baca seemed open to the idea for the future. “I wish we would have just gone back to having the third person who was the third-highest vote-getter,” Baca said after the vote to appoint Montoya, “but we didn’t have a process in place at that point. “Hopefully we can develop a process coming up shortly, in terms of the future, in case there’s any vacancies, we don’t have to go through this and we can just appoint that person that’s next in line,” he said. More on the Rialto City Council Joe Baca Sr. takes seat on Rialto City Council a decade after he left Congress 4 compete for Rialto mayoral seat in November election 2024 Election Results: Joe Baca leads in race for Rialto mayor These are the winners of the Nov. 5 election in San Bernardino County Rialto City Council to appoint new member to fill vacancy in January